A content analysis of educational advertising in Canterbury

Abstract

There is growing interest and evidence in the New Zealand education sector of the application of marketing principles and techniques. This has been brought about, in part, by a declining birth rate and a more market-driven economy. Faced by such changes educational institutions have increased their efforts to attract external funding and students. Advertising is one obvious way they have been doing this. This phenomenon, also reported in the UK, USA and Australia (Hayes, 1991; Pelletier, 1985; Stewart, 1991) in the past decade, is the focus of this paper. An initial investigation of New Zealand educational advertising research revealed little evidence of prior work in this field although overseas, institutional advertising appears to have attracted more research interest (McNamara,1985; Abernathy and Butler, 1992; Chamblee and Sandler, 1992). Given the limited budgets of many local educators, and their lack of marketing expertise, how are these managers promoting their services and how well are they doing this? The researchers examined these questions using educational advertisements collected over a five month period. Copy was then analysed using content analysis. Results indicated a heavy use of informative advertising, and a now ‘buy’ format. A high percent also list course components or subjects being offered, and provide contact names and numbers. These advertisements are, therefore, primarily akin to sales promotions.