Abstract:

Literature reviewing and university practice analysis prove that as marketers began to recognize and emphasize the importance of educational services, they consequently called for services to form a separate relevant part of a business’s marketing strategy; and educational businesses should be little exception in this context. Internationalization of Russian schools is stipulated as a priority of the Russian national policy in the field of education. The former has a cluster of formats and tools, and increase in the number of international students enrolled with the country’s schools is among those. The topic of this study deals with education service marketing as a part of education management, i.e. a concept related to the understanding of the functioning of the international service marketing in this narrow field, and investigation of the character of its engagement with the educational sector.

Thus, the research question of this study was a two-tier one: in general, if the phenomenon of service marketing has an influence on the educational sector of a country, and, in particular, if there is any identifiable dependence of the university attractiveness (as a business' asset) on education as an ethnic value. The case-study discussed in the present conference paper is based on the two focus countries, i.e. Ghana and Russia. In this way, the study aimed at offering deeper insights into the service marketing in education as influencing the patronization of the educational services. Consequently, it was grounded on the comparison of the two dissimilar cultures (with reference and accordance to Hofstede’s cultural dimensions).

The methods used in the study were both quantitative and qualitative, comprising literarture reviewing (both academic and public streams, i.e. research publications, reports of governmental institutions and public organizations, etc.), expert report analysis, interviewing and a diagnostic questionnaire (i.e. content and context analysis). Semi-structured interview has been conducted that covered 163 Russian and Ghanaian natives who had experienced local national and/or international educational services.

As a result of the study, the researchers proposed a model referred to as ‘the Cross-cultural Educational Service Marketing Model’. The model has five stages (each stage featuring steps) which should be undertaken - as well as the set of the methods which may be used in coordination with each individual step - in the process of reaching the university’s potential students. Grounding on the research outcomes, an educational institution - striving to meet the requirements of the national policy in the part of internationalization as an educational priority - may now be equipped with an efficient and universal school management instrument that can be used to reach any targeted student community - across cultures - by observing the offered provisions and implementing the outlined steps of the model.

Acknowledgements:
Authors acknowledge the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation for their sponsoring and administrative support of this research.

Keywords:

Service marketing, education management, education development priorities, international programmes, crosscultural communication, Russia, Ghana, national values.