FOREIGN TRADE UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION ---------***--------- GRADUATION THESIS Major: International Business Administration HOW THE CHANGES OF MARKETING MIX IN DISEASE CRISIS TIME INFLUENCE BRAND HEALTH OF UNIVERSITY: THE CASE OF FOREIGN TRADE UNIVERSITY Student full name: Le Duc Bao Trung Student ID : 1612250040 Class : English 1 - High Quality Intake : 55 Supervisor : Assoc. Le Thai Phong Hanoi, Jun 2020 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT .ii LIST OF TABLE. iii LIST OF FIGURE. v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .1 The rationale of the research .3 Scope of research .4 Structure of the research.
3 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .1 Theoretical foundation on brand health .1 The concept of brand health .2 Components of brand health and how to measure them .1 Brand awareness and usage .3 Disease crisis and how it affects university marketing mix. 26 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .1 Deductive approach and inductive approach .2 Concluding the research approach .1 FTU’s marketing mix. The impact of COVID-19 on FTU’s marketing mix .1 The change in Price .2 The change in Programming.3 The change in Promotion .4 The change in Place .3 The impacts of these changes on FTU’s brand health and the research hypothesis .1 In the perspective of potential customers.2 In the perspective of current customers. 51 CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION.1 Scale Test on each variable .1 Scale Test on PMPC .2 Scale Test on PL .3 Scale Test on PMCC .4 Scale Test on PR .5 Scale Test on PG .6 Scale Test on BAU.7 Scale Test on BD .2 Exploratory Factor Analysis for BAU model .1 Exploratory Factor Analysis: BAU - Independent variables.2 Exploratory Factor Analysis: BAU - Dependent variable .3 Exploratory Factor Analysis for BD model .1 Exploratory Factor Analysis: BD - Independent variables .2 Exploratory Factor Analysis: BD - Dependent variable .4 Correlation Test for BAU model .5 Correlation Test for BD model .6 Test on Regression Model (BAU model) .1 Regression Model: BAU model .2 ANNOVA Test: BAU model .3 Regression weights: BAU model .7 Test on Regression Model (BD model) .1 Regression Model: BD model .2 ANNOVA Test: BD model .3 Regression weights: BD model .9 Hypotheses testing on each variable .1 The change of Promotion for Potential Customers .2 The change of Place .3 The change of Promotion for Current Customers .4 The change of Programming .5 The change of Price.
86 CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FOREIGN TRADE UNIVERSITY .2 Communicate as per the context – Messaging and Tone .3 Anticipate and Adapt .5 Increase the digital content efforts .6 Adjust the Marketing Strategy. 95 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT At the very outset, I am much thankful to Faculty of Business Administration for supporting me to accomplish my four years at Foreign Trade University. It gives me immense pleasure to thank a great number of lecturers for their dedicated efforts which have contributed directly or indirectly in educating and changing me to a better version. Besides, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor Mr.
Le Thai Phong for the continuous support of my graduation thesis, for his patience, encouragement, enthusiasm, and knowledge. His guidance and feedback helped me a lot in solidifying my point of view to construct the blueprint of this research. I could not have imagined having a better mentor for my graduation research paper. Moreover, I must manifest my thankfulness to all members of Faculty of Business Administration including Mrs.
Tran Minh Thu, Mr. Cao Dinh Kien, Mrs. Nguyen Thuy Anh, Mrs. Bach Mai and Ms.
Hanh Linh who also have helped me a lot during my university life as well as during thesis implementation process. Last but not least, I thank all of my colleagues at Metric Analytics for their cooperation and encouragement during the research. Sincerely, Le Duc Bao Trung Hanoi, May 2020 i ABSTRACT This study aspires to have an overall understanding over the impact of COVID-19 on the brand health of universities in Vietnam, followed by a case study of Foreign Trade University. The paper also attempts to clarify the factors related to marketing- communication strategy of universities and its changes brought by COVID-19.
Only then the relationships between these changes and universities’ brand health could be justify and interpret thoroughly. To achieve the objectives, primary data was collected with the help of structured questionnaires. 350 responses were gathered from the distribution of the google forms survey. Further, primary research also was conducted with utilization of the journal articles from the previous researchers.
Moreover, the data for this research was analyzed through IBM SPSS statistics software. Results of the study revealed that FTU have done a fantastic job to respond to the fight against COVID-19. However, the outcomes of these actions are still just above the average. To handle the next crisis like COVID-19, FTU and other universities have to prepare for the uncertainty, to make the changes happen every day.
Moreover, higher education institution should fully take advantage of the digital space, with advanced technology knowledge and systems set up that is ready for just being used if needed. Keywords: impact, COVID-19, university brand health ii LIST OF TABLE Table 2. 1: David Aaker’s brand equity 10 (1996). 3: Reliability statistics from PMPC’ dimensions.
4: Promotion for PMPC’ Item-Total Statistics. 5: Reliability statistics from PL’s dimensions. 6: PL’s Item-Total Statistics. 7: Reliability statistics from PMCC’s dimensions.
8: PMCC’s Item-Total Statistics. 9: Reliability statistics from PR’s dimensions. 10: PR’s Item-Total Statistics. 11: Reliability statistics from PG’s dimensions.
12: PG’s Item-Total Statistics. 13: Reliability statistics from BAU’s dimensions. 14: BAU’s Item-Total Statistics. 15: Reliability statistics from BD’s dimensions.
16: BD’s Item-Total Statistics. 17: KMO and Bartlett’s Test (BAU – Independent variables). 19: Total variance explained (BAU – Independent variables). 20: Factor loading based on the size of a sample.
21: Rotated Component Matrix (BAU – Independent variables). 22: KMO and Bartlett’s Test (BAU – Dependent variables). 24: Total variance explained (BAU – Dependent variables). 25: KMO and Bartlett’s Test (BD – Independent variables).
27: Total variance explained (BD – Independent variables). 28: Rotated Component Matrix (BD – Independent variables). 29: KMO and Bartlett’s Test (BD - Dependent variable). 31: Total variance explained (BD - Dependent variable).
32: Correlations Coefficients between variables (BAU model). 33: Correlations Coefficients between variables (BD model). 34: Regression Model Summary values: BAU model. 35: ANNOVA for coefficient values in regression: BAU model.
36: Coefficients: BAU model. 37: Regression Model Summary values: BD model. 38: ANNOVA for coefficient values in regression: BD model. 39: Coefficients: BD model.
40: Descriptive statistics: BAU model. 41: Descriptive statistics: BD model.79 iv LIST OF FIGURE Figure 2. 1: Interbrand’s brand value chain (2014). 2: Interbrand’s brand valuation methodology (2014).
3: Brand Finance’s brand valuation approaches (2010). 4: The Brand Health Wheel (1988). 5: The Awareness Pyramid (1989). 6: The seven Ps of services marketing (1981).
7: The nine Ps of higher educational marketing (2008). 8: Deductive research approach. 9: Inductive research approach. 10: The University Recruitment Cycle (2002).
11: Official research model .51 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS COVID-19 Coronavirus disease of 2019 FTU Foreign Trade University FSSC FTU Student Service Centre FIIS FTU Innovation and Incubation Space PMPC Promotion for Potential Customers PL Place PMCC Promotion for Current Customers PR Price PG Programming BAU Brand Awareness and Usage BD Brand Delivery v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 The rationale of the research American Marketing Association (2017) defined marketing as the action, set of initiations and processes for building, connecting, delivering, and exchanging contribution that comprise value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. The academic definition is clear, but still, there are an enormous grey shade when talking about the application of marketing. For each industry, there are many approaches to shape the marketing strategy, followed by countless tactics to accomplish the final goals. This research would mainly mention the art of winning customers’ mind in the industry of education, which is a service-as-a-product business (Irene and Jeannie, 2008).
We have 4P model to construct the marketing strategy of traditional physical businesses. Nevertheless, as the world is constantly moving on, new businesses come with new marketing models. The approach of a higher educational institution is very different from the way FMCG companies work. As service is intangible, inseparable (between production and consumption), perishable and variable (Zeithaml, Parasuraman and Berry, 1985), traditional 4P concept is not enough to position all the related aspects of a university.
Moreover, the context in this research may be more special than ever. Although the industry evolution 4.0 have rapidly changed the way brands market their product since few years ago, COVID-19 have been twisting the concepts even more dramatically for the past few months. Many marketing techniques is right today, but then will be out of date tomorrow. Higher education market faces the same problems as what the entire economic system are dealing with.
All students around the world were forced to be stayed at home for the safety of community, which led to several changes in the way this market operates. This research attempt to dig deeper, to demonstrate the connections between these changes and the overall concepts of higher educational marketing, and further, the impacts of these changes on the brand health of universities. Why is brand health? John A. Quelch from Harvard Business School said: “For many non-profit organizations and consumer goods companies, their brand is, along with their people, 1 the most important asset they have.” A strong brand is a crucial factor for any successful business or organization.
Brand health is not just about how much revenue the company generates, but the strength of the brand and its ability to create affinity within the minds of consumers (Perceptive, 2016). Failing to have a strong, healthy brand, can affect a business to sell, to attract and hire the talented staff, and to grow. Without it the company’s customer awareness and bottom line would be suffer. Higher education businesses need to maintain good brand health too, for the same reasons.
In this disease crisis time, every decision from university could have certain effects on its brand health. Therefore, the research topic “How the changes of marketing mix in disease crisis time influence brand health of university: The case of Foreign Trade University” for the purpose of illustrating the connections of COVID-19 with the university brand health overall is urgently needed.2 Research objectives This research aims to reveal the relationship between the changes of university marketing mix during the pandemic and its brand health, from that to evaluate the condition of marketing outcomes as well as the university brand health during COVID-19 through the case study of FTU. Specifically, the research would be implemented with the following objectives: • First, it demonstrates the model of university marketing mix. • Second, it describes the model of measuring university brand health.
• Third, it validates the possible changes of university marketing mix during COVID-19. • Fourth, it analyzes the relationship between these changes with FTU brand health. • Fifth, it evaluates the condition of FTU brand health during COVID-19. • Sixth, it recommends various strategies and policies that FTU is likely to follow in this post - pandemic period.3 Scope of research 2 The scope of this study is to evaluate whether the impact of COVID-19 on higher educational institutions’ brand health is positive or not with a specific case study of FTU.
The study will help universities to be aware of the situation from which they can consider the right strategy for the next period. 142 high school students and 151 FTU students have been invited to do survey with the hypothesis that they would represent the whole population of FTU’s current customers and target customers.