A cross-cultural study of online marketing in international higher education - A keyword analysis

Abstract

Higher education is a dynamic global industry with a highly competitive and developed market. Universities communicate their international programs to attract prospective students interested in studying abroad. This study addresses a question whether there is a difference between communicated characteristics of international programs among universities from various cultures. Websites of seventy universities coming from different cultural clusters are analysed using data-mining methods. The results suggests that marketing communications in international higher education do not stand on cultural grounds as there are only minor differences between international program communications across the world. The only difference in the group of prime international higher education providers was found between the Anglo-Saxon universities and the rest of the world.