THE IMPACTS OF MARKETING MIX ON STUDENTS CHOICE OF UNIVERSITY

Student choice is a part of consumer behavior, that is how individuals or group select, buy and use goods or services. There are five steps in students choice of selecting a university: 

1. Needs and Motives

2. Information Gathering

3. Evaluating Alternatives

4. Decision Making & Enrollment

5. Post Choice Evaluation

In the step of student choice, marketing staff of higher education institution should try to establish the consumers’ unmeet or unsatisfied needs, so they are able to find ways to fulfill these needs. Students’ needs could vary in nature. Marketer can not create needs but they can however activate need recognition through raising their awareness of unperceived needs. 

Once the needs for studying at the university have been recognized, the potential students then search for the information to meet these needs. classified the information sources as personal and non personal sources. Personal sources for examples: family, friends, teachers. Non personal sources: advertisements, prospectuses, and mass media.

The next step that the students take after obtaining the needed information, then evaluate the alternatives of universities that he/she can enroll. The process of evaluating alternatives involves the reduction of choices until one or two remain. The student evaluates the potential university based on a number of attribute such as: the program, the cost, the facilities, the process, the teachers and the location.

The final step in the decision making process, namely the post purchase phase, consists of four components: post purchase dissonance, service product use, service product disposition and purchase evaluation.