Branding in higher education: a bibliometric analysis and research agenda

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an influx of research in higher education (HE) branding, which has emerged as an important strategy for HE institutions to gain a competitive advantage and increase market share. This study aims to uncover the intellectual structure and emerging trends of HE branding by performing a bibliometric analysis on 435 research articles retrieved from the Web of Science between 1998 and 2021. Two bibliometric techniques were applied: co-citation analysis and co-word analysis. The co-citation analysis revealed five clusters of HE branding literature: (i) HE brands and branding frameworks; (ii) Antecedents and consequences of HE brand components; (iii) Internationalization in HE branding; (iv) HE communication strategies; and (v) HE brand value co-creation. The co-word analysis emphasized the importance of the co-creation of HE brand value as a key research theme from 2016 onwards. This study also offers future research directions to advance the HE branding literature.