Alumni represent their alma mater, both consciously and unconsciously, through the contribution that they make to society. An alma mater leaves an indelible mark on an alumnus/alumni both in the cognitive domain with knowledge, skills and critical thinking and in the affective domain with nostalgia, loyalty and fond memories. If the university adopts a model of building lifelong alumni relationships there is potential to gain wider, meaningful benefits from the alumni constituency. By educating students, alumni and the institution itself, the benefits of an incremental approach to institutional advancement practice can become embedded within an institution’s values and management practice.
Too often alumni slip away after graduation if a means…show more content… The literature search was concentrated mainly on international resources e.g. textbooks on alumni marketing, articles from reviewed journals, proceedings from conferences and internet sources. The methods of abstraction, deduction and comparison were applied.
The critical literature review suggests further need for research and importance of following all the aspects and the impact of the marketing approach of the higher education institutions. In conclusion, summarization of benefits, generalization and final evaluation of results are drawn.
2. Alumni Relations in Marketing Higher Education
Alumni provide a valuable marketing channel for universities to use – they have very valuable impact on all the publics the institution has to cooperate with. Higher education institutions can benefit greatly from building bridges with alumni – alumni realitions are the constant part of the overall markting…show more content… It’s a way of continuing monitoring of the external and internal marketing environment. The building of the positive image and systematic communication with all stakeholders is extremely important. Marketing and its instruments have to be included in the overall development strategy if the institution – it is inevitalble to develop and retain the competitive advantage and to communicate it to all publics of the institution (Lesáková, 2010).
Marketing succeeds only when all departments work together to achieve goals. To address all these different shifts, marketers are practicing new approach of holistic marketing.
Holistic marketing is the “development, design, and implementation of marketing programs, processes, and activities that recognize the breadth and interdependencies of today’s marketing environment” (Kotler – Keller, p. 18). Four key dimensions of holistic marketing are:
1. Internal marketing - ensuring everyone in the organization embraces appropriate marketing principles, especially senior