Exploring The Impact Of Universities’ Digital Advancement On Students' Perceptions – A Driver of Reputation and WOM behavior?

Abstract

Universities nowadays face an increasing competition \ for high-potential students. As students rely on opinions \ of their peers when deciding for a study program, universities \ benefit from positive word-of-mouth (WoM). A \ good way to increase positive WoM is to establish a favorable \ reputation among their current students. Therefore, \ this study investigates reputational drivers with a \ focus on the influence of digital offers. It explores students’ \ perceptions of universities’ digital advancement \ and how it impacts university reputation and their WoM \ behavior. First, this paper introduces a measurement \ for students’ perception of their universities’ digital advancement \ (PDA). The results of a PLS-SEM model underline \ the quality of the proposed measurement. Second, \ this paper highlights the explanatory power of the \ PDA construct on students’ assessment of university \ reputation and on their WoM behavior. Particularly, results \ show that the PDA construct is the third most influential \ driver for universities’ likeability and students’ \ related WoM behavior.