Journal Article II
Jooyoung Kwak
Article reviewed:
Heckman, R. & Guskey, A. (1998). The Relationship between Alumni and University: Toward a Theory of Discretionary Collaborative Behavior, Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 97-112
The article, “The Relationship between Alumni and University: Toward a Theory of Discretionary Collaborative Behavior”, studies the relationship between alumni and university with the theory of relationship marketing, which is a part of customer relationship management. According to Forbes, Relationship Marketing is “a strategy designed to foster customer loyalty, interaction and long-term engagement and to develop strong connections with customers with customers” (2013). The …show more content…
97), more higher education institutions have started embracing marketing strategies nowadays and it may be considered as outdated in the article. In fact, the article was published in 1998, which is almost 20 years ago and maybe too old to be considered as a good and strong reference. Also, as the authors mentioned, it is not suitable to generalize the results of this study because the survey data were acquired through self-report of alumni from only one university. It could have had more credential if the survey had more participant schools and deployed diverse data collection …show more content…
It gave me a new perspective as a higher education practitioner as mostly I have been focusing on leadership theories. It seems that relationship marketing, or customer relationship management in the higher level, focuses more on psychological reasoning for me. Not all marketing strategies are applicable in higher education but adopting some should be beneficial for higher education institutions, especially because many of them function like businesses nowadays. Also, considering many higher education administrators have business background, applying marketing strategies sound right if they are not against educational values. This article truly opened up my eyes in that point of