The effects of pre-enrolment emotions and peer group interaction on students’ satisfaction

Higher education institutions are increasingly involved in measuring students' satisfaction and communicating messages to prospective, current, and previous students. A review of the literature suggests that institutions have traditionally focused on cognitive rather than affective measures, and have communicated messages in a media environment that could be dominated by the institution. This paper seeks to contribute by investigating the role of peer-to-peer social network media in evoking emotions about attending university prior to enrolment and subsequent satisfaction with it. A two-stage study involving 519 prospective students from a UK higher education institution were asked about their cognition and emotions one month prior to enrolment and again one month after. Hypotheses related their involvement in online peer-to-peer media to their perceived level of satisfaction, emotions evoked, and likelihood of recommending the institution. It was found that emotions were a better predictor of likelihood of recommendation than cognitive measures of satisfaction. Positive emotions evoked during the pre-enrolment phase led to positive emotions post-enrolment. There was an association between prospective students' level of involvement with online communities prior to enrolment and their level of evoked positive emotions

Corporate negative publicity – the role of cause related marketing

This paper examines the effects of cause-related marketing (CrM) strategies on consumers' moral judgement and purchase behaviour in the context of experiencing substantial corporate negative publicity. Data for the study were collected from 343 respondents through mall intercept technique from two large shopping malls of Australia. Quasi-experimental design technique was adopted for the study, where the participants chose one particular cause out of two (ongoing conventional cause vs sudden disaster due to garment factory collapse in Bangladesh). The findings revealed that 56% of the respondents supported the sudden cause and are willing to pay (WTP) more for the betterment of the garment workers' living condition. The findings further indicated that CrM variables such as cause–brand fit, cause familiarity and cause importance influence consumers' moral judgement towards the CrM campaigns, which eventually influence them to pay additional money for the product. The multi-group moderation and mediation tests offer interesting theoretical and managerial insights