Business Administration (PhD) / Διοίκηση Επιχειρήσεων (PhD)

As a consequence of an increasingly competitive and dynamic business environment, the higher education sector has become more commercialised than ever before, resulting in branding becoming an imperative concept and an inextricable component for a university’s success. Branding in higher education has proven to be an effective strategy which has received considerable attention in recent years, and a growing number of articles on the subject have begun to appear in the literature. However, a clear gap within the literature indicates that students’ perceptions of university brand images have not been thoroughly researched. Consequently, this research focuses on examining the impact of a ‘positive visualisation course in brand identity’ on the perceptions of freshmen students of a university brand image. A grounded theory methodology was selected, consisting of semi-structured interviews specifically designed to target first-year university students. An experiment was conducted in which a positive visualisation course in brand identity was carried out among first-year students. The findings strongly suggest that a positive visualisation course in brand identity positively affects freshmen students’ perceptions of a university brand image. Additional factors result in the development and formation of related perceptions throughout the year. This study contributes to and expands on the existing literature by presenting an inductively generated theoretical model to guide future research into the links between positive visualisation courses in brand identity and first-year students’ perceptions of university brand image.