Ever since the higher educational reforms were initiated in 1996, the competition in the marketplace of 546 Malaysian private education institutions has become tougher than ever. In fact, many Malaysian private colleges have experienced difficulties in recruiting students. Operating in such a competitive marketplace, many private colleges believe the importance of building a strong brand image in order to differentiate their offerings from their competitors, as evidenced by their co-branding with foreign universities. The increased competition has made these private colleges realize that possessing a strong brand is an essential part of their competitive advantage. / Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) has been seen and practised as a valuable brand strategy since the 1990’s and it plays a major role in the process of developing and sustaining brand identity and equity. This research will be using a Malaysian private college (anonymously labelled as EJ College) as a case study to explore the feasibility of adopting IMC as a branding strategy for the college. / The research has identified four main barriers to IMC adoption, as perceived by the management and staff. These include a fear of change, departmental silos, lack of IMC expertise and poor stakeholder database support. Approaches to overcome the barriers were suggested: strong support from the management and the board of directors, a strong employee relationship, corporate learning, IMC training workshops as well as sophisticated customer and stakeholder databases. / Thesis (DBA(DoctorateofBusinessAdministration))--University of South Australia, 2006.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/267122 |
| Creators | Wong, Shawn Kim-Sing. |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | copyright under review |
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