The growth of a marketing orientation in HE in industrialised countries has been fuelled by factors such as rapid expansion, increasing competition, diversification of institutional programmes accompanied by legislative imperatives, which have resulted in quasi-markets in the education environments. The result has been the growth of the element of choice for the customers of education. Similar forces are replicating themselves in less developed countries. However, due to a limited research and publication base, little is known and understood about the emergence and growth of marketing in these institutions.
Current models for developing a marketing orientation in education have lacked a contextual immersion and have largely underplayed the importance of marketing support systems to stimulate institutional marketisation. The research was thus based on three aspects of marketing in universities in Zimbabwe. First, how marketing was understood, defined and perceived by VCs and institutional marketers; second, how the marketing function was organised and practiced across the university sector; third, how sixth form pupils and head teachers perceived the effectiveness of current marketing strategies in the universities.
Based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies, steeped in a belief of the value of triangulation as a strategy for conducting valid and reliable research, nine VCs, 18 marketers, 480 sixth form pupils and 10 head teachers took part in the research involving use of interviews, questionnaires and document analysis.
Findings confirm the need for considering both context and marketing support systems in developing universities' marketing orientation. The thesis proposes a model, (CORD-contextual analysis, organisation and co-ordination, researching the customer interface and developing the curriculum) as a strategy that could help universities place the customer at the centre of decision making in matters of curriculum development.
