Abstract:

At the university level, since the twentieth century, the pressure to conform teaching and research to the economic, technical, and administrative demands of the moment have been emphasized, seeking to design appropriate recipes to satisfy an increasingly demanding market (Morín, 2018). Thus, today's universities develop their activity in a highly competitive and complex environment, seeking to increase the offer of studies in the region in which they operate and even overcome it through the international offer thanks to the virtual modality (García and Pelekais, 2012). In that sense, Manes (2008) considers that it is necessary for every university to impound a marketing area in its process, seeking to maximize business opportunities. Thus, and according to Durán and Parra (2014), the university marketing strategy, whether in the public or private sphere, is considered key to improving the service offered in an increasingly demanding client, while helping to create diversity and compete in increasingly heterogeneous markets.

Focusing our attention on the role that higher education plays in Mexico, the Mexican government set up an “Educational Modernisation Programme” since the 80’s decade, increasing the public expenditure in Higher Education increased from 0.42% of GDP in 1990 and 1% of GDP in 2010 (López, Lagunes and Recio, 2009). With this, the Mexican university system is made up of a variety of institutions: there are universities financed by the central federal government, universities financed by local state governments, and private universities (Sagarra, Molinero, and Agasisti, 2017).

In this framework, the objectives of the present research were to:
(1) establish which are the most determinant variables of brand capital in the higher education sector,
(2) decipher which are the most outstanding variables by students in Mexican private universities.

Thus, and after reviewing the seven major proposals on brand capital models in the literature (Farquhar, 1989; Aaker, 1992; Keller, 1993; Faircloth, Capella, and Alford, 2001; Yoo and Donthu, 2001; Delgado and Munuera, 2002; Buil, Martínez and De Chernatony, 2010), we have considered four elements that are identified by these authors and were also deemed to be of importance in previous studies.

These are:
(1) brand awareness,
(2) brand image,
(3) perceived quality, and
(4) brand loyalty.

In order to corroborate the established hypothesis, we conducted empirical research quantitative in nature, by means of a survey aimed at a group of 1,220 undergraduate students from two private universities in León (Mexico).

Grade 5 Likert scales were used, based on the measurement scales proposed by Aaker (1992) and Keller (1993) and were adapted to our field of study, higher education. The techniques for data analysis were based on descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis, using as a working tool SPSS v19 for Windows for descriptive techniques of data and EQS 6.2 for executing multivariate techniques.

As a work in progress, it should be noted that we are currently in the analysis phase, through the application of different methods of analysis depending on the information to be obtained, distinguishing between (1) psychometric characteristics of the measuring instrument, divided into an analysis of the quality of the items and the validation of the scales; and (2) hypothesis testing.

Keywords:

Marketing, brand capital, higher education, private universities, Mexico.