User-generated and brand-generated content as indicators of university brand personality and business strategy

Abstract

The rising competition and social media usage increased the importance of university brand personality and strategic marketing in higher education. This study explores the interrelationships between brand-generated content (BGC) and user-generated content (UGC) on social media and universities’ competitive strategy and brand personality. BGC that included four universities’ tweets and UGC that consisted of consumer comments were analyzed by content and correspondence analysis in R programming language. The findings indicated that BGC was in alignment with universities’ generic strategies. BGC-UGC dispersions across brand personality were in alignment for the differentiator university, while there was a mismatch between BGC and UGC for low-cost universities. The differentiator university was associated with being prestigious, cosmopolitan, and conscientious, while the low-cost universities were associated with sincerity. The findings supported the applicability of generic business strategies to the higher education context and showed the strategic link between brand personality and the pursued generic strategy.