A conceptual paper is developed in regards to the influences of institutional research, word-of-mouth (via internal students and faculties), quality signaling (to external prospect students and stakeholders as potential customers), and customer relationship management, on student recruitment performance as a special form of customer decision. Grounded on the marketing communication perspective, we propose that the student recruitment performance is largely affected by word-of-mouth, quality signaling, and customer relationship management as strategic marketing communications, which are facilitated by institutional research. Institutional research is interpreted as a strategic marketing tool that can help identify, communicate, and visualize the strengths of a university. The conceptual model contributes to the search for marketing mechanisms through which institutional research can generate impact to external stakeholders. Formal propositions and their implications for future, larger-scaled surveys were discussed.
From a non-profit organization’s marketing perspective, higher education institutions (HEIs) promote itself by actively communicating the strengths, features, unique positions, and so forth, to its internal and external “customers,” including existing and prospect students and parents, the surrounding community, and governmental units (Kotler, 1982; Licata & Frankwick, 1996). For example, the decision making of that a prospect student in determining if s/he is attending a college can be treated as a cognitive psychological process involving the interaction between a college’s quality signaling and a customer’s evaluation of that signaled quality. Put differently, the “customer decisions” of whether accepting services sold from an university can depend on the result of university-stakeholders communications.
With the extant progress in educational theory and practices by adopting a marketing perspective, there are significant unresolved issues in research and practices that warrant more systematic investigation. Knowing the importance of marketing communication, for example, what is the foundation for universities to communicate with internal and external stakeholders? Through what mechanisms and occasions can universities communicate with and signal to stakeholders? To respond to such gaps in the literature, WE propose that institutional research of a university (Knight et al., 1997; Jedamus & Peterson, 1980) plays a role of strategic communication in facilitating internal and external stakeholder communication, engagement, and cognition building. Overall, the propositions include the following.
Proposition 1. Institutional research outcomes (i.e., created knowledge) generates significant impacts on students recruitment performance
Proposition 2. The impacts of institutional research on student recruitment performance is mediated by strategic marketing mechanisms, including quality signaling, word-of-mouth, and customer relationship management
Proposition 3. Quality signaling, word-of-mouth, and customer relationship management intervene interactively on the effects of institutional research on student recruitment

• Rueywei Gong(Cheng Shiu University, Taiwan)
• Fu-Sheng Tsai(Cheng Shiu University, Taiwan)