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Social media as a promotional tool in higher education in Malaysia

Article · September 2011

DOI: 10.1109/NatPC.2011.6136267

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 Social Media as a Promotional Tool in Higher
Education in Malaysia
Nour Mohammed Almadhoun P. Dhanapal Durai Dominic
Computer and Information Sciences Computer and Information Sciences
Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS
Perak, Malaysia Perak, Malaysia
Abstract—Undoubtedly, marketing is an important tool to
position and brand Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).
Nowadays, higher education is facing big challenges, which have
made a lot of HEIs interested in attracting more students.
Likewise, education marketing division in the Ministry of Higher
Education (MOHE) Malaysia was set up for the purpose of
promoting Malaysian higher education. In recent years, with the
rising importance of social media, many promotional tools like
traditional print and broadcast media have faced major
challenges, as many newspaper and television channels lost their
audiences. Overwhelmingly, the majority of Malaysian HEIs are
beginning to embrace some forms of social media for
promotional purposes. This research is mainly descriptive and
explanatory, and partially exploratory in nature. The collected
data will be qualitative and quantitative based on survey
questionnaires and semi-structured interviews on the application
of social media in promoting Malaysian higher education. Beside
these methods, secondary data collection from an analysis of
Malaysian HEIs’ online social communities will be conducted.
Keywords-higher education institutions; marketing; malaysian
ministry of higher education; promotion; social media
I. INTRODUCTION
Higher education branding and marketing are considered
as one of the most important factors, which indicate the
success of HEIs. Nowadays, a lot of universities find
themselves in a highly competitive environment. They are
pooling their efforts to present a clear image of offering a
brand. Likewise, students must be convinced that “what they
see is what they get”. So, many HEIs interested in attracting
more students and excellent applicants for hiring. This idea
has coincided with the Education Marketing Division in the
MOHE Malaysia, which set up for the purpose of promoting
Malaysian higher education locally and overseas as well as to
seek international recognition and collaboration for Malaysian
higher education programs [17].
Marketing plays a big role as an investment in the future.
Promotion is one of the marketing mix, includes all of the
available tools to the marketer for 'marketing communication'.
Promotion can be in mass media like TV, radio, newspapers,
internet, and mobile phones, in which the advertiser pays an
advertising agency to place the advertisement [27]. In recent
years, many newspapers and television channels lost their
978-1-4577-1884-7/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE
Lai Fong Woon
Management and Humanities
Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS
Perak, Malaysia
audiences, since traditional print and broadcast media as
promotional tool have faced major challenges [10].
Accordingly, a research by Forrester Research1 has indicated
that audiences and attention is shifting to online channels, as
52% of Europeans are regularly online at home. Around 36%
of European internet users watch less TV, 28% have reduced
their newspaper and magazine reading and 17% have
decreased listening to the radio since going online [18]. Today,
social media tools are making it possible to communicate
directly with almost any audience. You don't have to rely
entirely on the mass media as a conduit and a filter. That's not
to say newspaper, radio, television and blogs aren't important
[5]. We can conclude that the tools for communicating with
the target audiences and marketing have significantly changed
from traditional media to a new phenomenon known as “social
media”. So, colleges and universities are beginning to embrace
social media and realizing the potential power and
implications for using it as a component of their overall
marketing mix [19]. Reference [16] explained that Colleges
and universities are using social media to recruit and research
prospective students. It is clear that online behavior can have
important consequences for young people and that social
networking sites can, and will, be utilized by others to make
decisions about them. In addition, incoming students have
used social media to help them get information about HEI and
to connect with others with similar interests before coming to
the campus. Many universities have successfully taking
advantages of social media as a promotional tool. One of these
example is Harvard University, the place where Facebook
originally started out and the oldest institution of higher
learning in the United States and the first corporation
chartered in the country. They are using the Facebook,
YouTube, Twitter, and Blogs as a part of their social media
strategy to develop interaction with their target audiences [11].
Another example is The University of California, Berkeley
which has one of the most well known channels and volume of
subscribers on YouTube in higher education [25].
Dramatically fast developing technologies and a massive
number of social media users have realized the potential
1
Forrester Research is an independent research company that provides
pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and
technology.
power and implications for using social media in education
marketing. Reaching the students worldwide just by the click
of a mouse is not a dream; it is the enormous and enticing
opportunity for many countries and educational institutions
since there are a lot of creative and clear examples that success
to reach the students worldwide.
II. PROBLEM FORMULATION
The MOHE Malaysia’s vision is to turn Malaysia into a
Center of Excellence for Higher Education. Accordingly, its
first objective is to ensure at least three Malaysian universities
are listed among the best 100 universities in the world. In
addition, encouragement the internationalization of the
country's higher education is another objective, which can be
reached by attracting foreign students [17]. Consequently, to
promote Malaysian education overseas and realize the
aspiration of the government, in making Malaysia a Centre of
Educational Excellence, the MOHE has established four
Malaysian Education Promotion Centers (MEPCs) overseas.
These offices provide accurate information to prospective
international students and serve as counseling centers for
students and parents. These offices are in China, UAE,
Vietnam, and Indonesia [17]. Therefore, a website was created
for MEPCs to effectively promote and act as an umbrella to
link to their many related websites under the MEPCs. Notably,
this website serves a lot of students and contains treasure of
abundant information about Malaysian HEIs. Nonetheless, this
web site can’t always provides up-to-date information, also
fail either to offer students an interactive dialogue or to
involve them in the communicative process, negatively
affecting students' college search. Reference [13] argued that
when one considers the wide variety of publics with which a
university needs to communicate, the use of just the
prospectus or the university’s website is unlikely to be
effective. The growth of social media has affected the way
organizations communicate. Today’s students come to higher
education as digital natives, with hundreds of hours of
experience in virtual environments. Therefore, there are about
16 million Internet users in Malaysia and IDC Research
projected Malaysian Internet users will reach 20.4 million by
2012. Recently, a brief survey done by YouthSays, Malaysia's
largest youth community website with over 160,000 members
showed 95% of a total of 900 respondents have Friendster's
account, 90% with Facebook and 38% with Twitter [14].
Malaysia social networking activity has exhibited high level of
engagement. In 2010, Malaysia is ranked the ninth country in
the world and the second in the Asia Pacific region in terms of
Facebook users.
As this phenomenon continues to grow, this indicates a
potentially effective new platform for Higher education
promotion. Accordingly, HEIs’ Pages on social media tools
have become one of the best ways to be in close contact with
potential students, promote relevant events, and help students
feel safe and at home on campus. Therefore, they need to use
social media to start a global marketing and public relations
campaign both for the higher education system itself and its
institutions. Moreover, many Malaysian universities like
UTM, UM, USM have successfully taken advantage of
comparatively using social networks to share information and
be in contact with the students. Research on the topic of social
media usage by HEIs is important because of the high
attention that students are giving to this area. FaceBook,
YouTube, Twitter, and other social media tools are playing an
important role in people’s everyday life, businesses, and
educations. Looking at the vast penetration of social media
and projected number of active users in the future, we can
expect HEIs in Malaysia to be more and more involved in use
of social media as a promotional tool.
III. RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND OBJECTIVES
This study is undertaken to answer the following research
questions:
• How effective is the use of social media as a promotional
tool by HEIs in Malaysia?
• Do social media include all the information about factors
affecting prospective students’ enrollment and potential
employees’ application to HEIs?
• How effective is social media as an interactive platform
to increase prospective students’ enrollment and
potential employees’ application to HEIs?
Due to the fact that social media is constantly developing,
has become widely used for marketing purposes in higher
education besides Many Malaysian universities have
successfully taken advantage of social media. Thus, further
research is needed to provide a better understanding of how
social media can be as a promotional tool for HEIs in
Malaysia in order to turn Malaysia into a Center of Excellence
for Higher Education, recognition how they use it to start a
global marketing and public relations campaign both for the
higher education system itself and its institutions, and what are
the problems and concerns associated with these tools.
Therefore, this study will focus on the following sub-
objectives:
1- To examine the effectiveness of the social media as a
promotional tool for Malaysian HEIs and how it is
being applied.
2- To examine whether or not social media affecting
student’s enrollment and potential employees’
applications to the Malaysian HEIs.
3- To investigate the power of social media as an
effectiveness interactive platform to increase
prospective students’ enrollment and potential
employees’ application.
In order to provide answers to our research questions an
adapted model from the new communication paradigm by [15]
will be used. It will be modified in order to use it in the HIEs.
This model explains that the internet has become the main
media for communicating with target students and potential
employees, since they are going away from traditional media,
and they are turning more and more to it for seeking
information regarding their decision making. These
information are about the factors in which the prospective
students and potential employees ask about to make their
choice decision. This model aims to show the rising power and
critical nature of discussion between students, employees,
alumni, and staff using social media. Additionally, it shows
how the impact of the interactions between them in the social
media space is influencing students’ enrollment and
employees’ application to HEIs. Traditional promotional mix
elements for higher education will be used in cases where
social media are not used.
IV. LITERATURE REVIEW
Marketing in higher education is needed to mitigate the
effects of decreasing government funding and increase in
competition [9]. Reference [6] argued that the successful
institutions will be those that can do strategic marketing
planning, carve out niches, and develop new programs that
will drive students to the institution. Marketing of HEIs is
moving toward student orientation. As competition among
universities intensifies, a need for thorough understanding of
the student perception and expectations is becoming more
vital [12]. Thus, the marketing of HEIs is gaining more
prominence among university administrators. In order to
survive, these administrators need to understand how various
student segments differ in their decision-making behavior [8].
A student usually searches for information on how to satisfy
his need. The institution’s role at this level is to discover the
kind of information the student and their parents wish to
know, and how can they collect information. A survey was
conducted by [12] to establish the important criteria for
student selection when choosing a particular higher learning
institution in Malaysia. From the results, five factors were
significant in student’s decision for selecting higher learning
institutions. It is crucial that higher learning institutions
understand the perceptions and expectations of students and
translate them into marketing activities that would attract and
retain students. Table 1 shows the five factors were significant
in student’s decision.
TABLE I. INSTITUTIONS CHOISE DECISION FACTORS AND VARIABLES
Institution choice
Institutions choice decision variables
decision factor
• Job opportunities
• Availability of course
• Time Required for completion
1 “personal factors” • Tuition Fees
• Entry Requirements
• Availability of part-time studies
• Marketability of degree
• Quality of teaching
“Academic quality
• Library collection
2 and facilities”
• Institution’s reputation
• Facilities
• Program structure
• Campus size and layout
3 “Campus” • Campus attractiveness
• Number of students
• Extra-curricular activities
4 “Socialization”
• Opportunity to meet friends
“Financial aid and • Scholarships/Financial aid
5 procedures” • Procedures and policies
Administrators also need to develop some degree of
understanding on international students, and what these
students will expect once they arrive in the Malaysian campus
[23]. MOHE Malaysia has taken up a lot of marketing
strategies and a lot of promotional tools are used to make
Malaysia a ‘favored’ destination for international and local
students besides making education an important commodity
which will generate foreign exchange for the country [17].
Merill Lynch2 estimated roughly that around US$2 trillion can
be generated from the education business [24]. In Malaysia,
education is also a prime contributor to the nation’s economy
with estimation that each international student spends at least
RM30 000 per annum. Malaysian private HEIs alone
contribute RM1.3 billion annually to the national economy; a
large amount of it comes from revenue obtained from
international students [2]. Promotion is one of the key 4Ps in
the marketing mix and plays a key role for market success.
According to [13], Promotion encompasses all the tools that
universities can use to provide the market with information on
its offerings. Education institutions need to communicate its
services to the target market through promotional strategy.
Reference [20], states that the appropriate promotional mix
must be created in order to meet the promotional objectives of
any given promotion strategy. As with Neil H. Borden’s 3
marketing mix, marketing communications has its own
‘promotion mix’. Reference [13] includes the following tools
in the higher education promotional mix: advertising,
publicity, public relations and sales promotional efforts.
According to [21], the combination of promotional mix of
higher education consists of direct marketing, sales promotion,
advertising, internet and sponsorships.
With the emergence of social media, the tools and the
strategies for communicating with target people have
significantly changed. According to [1], the term “social
media” is widely used nowadays. The first time it appeared
was in 2004, after LinkedIn created its social media
networking application. Reference [1] defined the social
media application as an online technology tool to allow people
to communicate easily, utilizing the internet to share and
discuss information. According to [29], social media is
defined best in the context of the previous media paradigm.
Reference [29] asserts that traditional media such as
television, newspaper, radio and magazines are one-way, static
broadcasting technologies. He argues that magazines and
2
Merrill Lynch is one of the world's leading financial management and
advisory companies, providing financial advice and investment banking
services.
3 Neil H. Borden is professor emeritus of marketing and advertising at the
Harvard Business. The term "marketing mix" became popularized after
Borden published his 1964 article, The Concept of the Marketing Mix.
newspapers are distributing an expensive content to the
readers while advertisers pay for the privilege in order to
insert their ads. In addition, readers have no possibility to send
their instant feedback if they disagree with something. Now it
is easy for everyone to create, and most importantly, to
distribute their own content with the new web technologies. A
blog post, a “tweet” on twitter, or a YouTube video can be
produced and viewed by millions virtually for free .According
to [29], social media comes in many forms: blogs, microblogs
(Twitter), social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn), media-
sharing sites(YouTube, Flicker), social bookmarking and
voting sites (Digg, Reddit), review sites (Yelp), forums,
virtual worlds (Second Life) [29]. Together with the evolution
of social media, social media have become a part of everyday
life for a majority of internet users. Research from the
University of New Hampshire finds that Facebook and
YouTube are the most popular social media platforms with
college students. An astounding 96 % of students said they use
Facebook on a typical day and 84% use YouTube. Only 20 %
said they use blogs, 14% use Twitter, 12% use MySpace and
10% use LinkedIn [4].
As this phenomenon continues to grow, this indicates a
potentially effective new platform for Higher education
promotion to attract students and excellent employees.
Recently, significant longitudinal studies on the usage of
social media admissions offices are conducted by the
university of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing
Research. The study shows a significant increase in usage of
social media technologies from 2007 to 2008 and uncovered
that over 60% of admission offices are using social
networking double that of the 29% found in 2007 [3]. There
was also significant usage increases with 48% utilizing video
blogging compared to 19% one year ago, 36% utilizing
message boards formerly 27%, and the usage of wikis jumped
threefold from 3% to 10%. In regards to blogs, higher
education is actually outpacing Fortune 500 companies 41% to
39% as far as the number of institutions with public blogs.
Reference [3] asserts that this is an evidence of enthusiasm
and eagerness to embrace these new communications tools. A
study done by Forrester Research, in May 2009, estimated that
of all online tactics Social Media Marketing will show the
greatest percentage increase (34%) in the next five years.
SMM is set to beat e-mail (11% growth), search marketing
(15%), display advertising (17%), and even mobile marketing
(27%). [26]. Reference [15] has developed a model for a new
communication paradigm instead of the integrated marketing
communication. This paradigm explained that the internet has
become the main media for communication with target
consumers, since they are going away from traditional media.
Reference [15] revealed that social media enables
organizations to communicate with their customers,
additionally; it enables customers to communicate with each
other. The new communication paradigm aims to show the
marketers the rising power and critical nature of discussions
between consumers using social media, which will influence
the development on promotional strategies for the
organizations. The following points can illustrate the impact of
consumers’ interactions in the social media space:
• The internet has become a mass media vehicle for
consumer-sponsored communications.
• Consumers are turning away from the traditional
sources of advertising. They also consistently demand
more control over their media consumption. They
require on-demand and immediate access to
information at their own convenience.
• Consumers are turning more frequently to various types
of social media to conduct their information searches
and to make their decisions.
• Consumers perceive social media as a more trustworthy
source of information regarding products and services
than corporate-sponsored communications transmitted
via traditional elements of the promotion mix.
By taking into consideration the new communication
paradigm and its benefits in using the social media networks
for promotional purposes, we can gain a better understanding
of how HEIs are using social media as a promotional tool.
V. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
According to [22], there are three types of research
purposes: exploratory research, descriptive research, and
explanatory research. Exploratory research is used to clarify
understanding of a problem with unclear nature. Explanatory
research is conducted to identify relationships between
variables. Descriptive research is used to picture the
phenomena prerequisite or continuation of exploratory or
explanatory research. The research purpose and research
questions show that this study will use the three types of
research purposes. According to [22], deductive or inductive
approaches can be used. Deductive approach will be used on
the existing theory about using social media as a promotional
tool in higher education, which will be used for analyzing
collected data. Inductive approach will be used to build a new
theory that is adequately grounded in the collected data about
social media and it’s affect on prospective students’
enrollment and potential employees’ applications. According
to [22], Different strategies are available for researchers like
case study, action research, survey, experiment, ethnography,
archival research or grounded theory. Survey and archival
resources answers who, what, where, how many, and how
much questions [28]. Hence, survey will be used to collect
data from students. Likewise, secondary data collection will
be used to collect data from an online analysis about the
Malaysian HEIs, which use social media. In addition, a
semiconductor interviews will be used to collect data which
answers why and how questions. A qualitative approach will
be used with the interviews; conversely, with the survey we
will use a quantitative approach. The model to be tested is
shown in Fig. 1.
 H1

Social Media as an
Promotional Tools Information Platform Successful Promotional Program

Social Media: Information

• Blogs(institute Prospective Students’
sponsored, user • Personal factors Enrollment
sponsored) • Academic H2
• Social network quality and
• Video sharing sites facilities
• Etc. • Campus H3
• Socialization
Traditional
Promotional Mix: • Financial aid
and procedures Potential Employees’
• Advertising
Application
• Direct Marketing
• Public Relations H4
• publicity Social Media as an
• Sales Promotion Interactive Platform H5
efforts
• Internet
Interaction
• Sponsorships
Students/Alumni/Staff

Students/Alumni/Staff

Figure 1. Proposed Model.

Specifically, the following hypotheses are to be tested:
H1: HEI which use social media as a promotional tool will
have a significant impact on its promotional program.
H2: Social media which include all the HEI information will
positively affect prospective students’ enrollment to the HEIs.
H3: Social media which include all the HEI information will
positively affect potential employees’ application to the HEIs.
H4: The students who interact with HEIs on social media
outlets are more likely to enroll on it.
H5: The potential employers who interact with HEIs on social
media outlets are more likely to apply for the jobs with it.
For the data analysis, there are three stages in the data
analysis process: data reduction, data display, drawing and
verifying conclusions [22]. These three steps would be
followed to analyze the collected data from interviews using a
single case study strategy. The analysis of the questionnaires
collected data will be carried out using the common Statistical
Package for Social Sciences (SPSS for windows). The first
part of the questionnaires data analysis for this study is the
descriptive analysis of the survey findings. In this part,
responses will be screened based on the demographic
characteristics and the distributions of their responses to
individual questions. Frequency distribution will be used to
summarize the distribution of values, which will be taken from
the main characteristics of the respondents and their answers
to individual questions. Then, assessing the reliability of the
scale used to measure the variables of interest will be
calculated. The reliability coefficient ‘Cronbach’s alpha’ will
be used. It is based on the average correlation of items within
a test if the items are standardized. To establish an
understanding of the underlying structure of the variables
Factor analysis will be presented in the third part of data
analysis for this study. According to [7], Factor analysis is a
data reduction technique used to reduce a large number of
variables to a smaller set of underlying factors that summary
the essential information contained in the variables. More
frequently factor analysis can be used as an exploratory
technique when that the researcher wishes to summaries the
structure of a set of variables [7]. The final stage of data
analysis is tests of the research hypotheses using correlation
and regression analysis. The data analysis plan is
demonstrated in Fig. 2. For the secondary data collection, an
online analysis will be used for Malaysian HEIs social media
usage. As a result, we will choose five public and private
Malaysian universities and colleges which use social media to
conduct the questionnaires and the interviews. A questionnaire
and an interview questions will be designed for this research.
When deciding a sample selection, the researcher has two
possibilities: probability or non-probability.

Descriptive Statistics
Reliability Test
Factor Analysis
Testing Hypotheses
Figure 2. Stages of Data Analysis adapted for this study.
Probability is a random sampling mostly used with surveys
[22]. In our research, Probability sampling will be used.
Before sending the questionnaires to the mass, it will be pre
and pilot tested. In the survey, the target group of respondents
will be the local and international students as well as the new
employees who are working in HEIs in Malaysia. Roughly
250 plus questionnaires will be distributed upon personal
contact with the respondents and they will be requested to
return the completed questionnaires later. The interviews will
be with the institutions’ public relation or admission
employees who are responsible for using social media in the
institution. Also an interview will be with the marketing
division manager of the Malaysian MOHE.
VI. CONCLUSIN
This research provides a better understanding of how social
media can be used as a promotional tool in higher education in
Malaysia. It is mainly descriptive and explanatory, and
partially exploratory in nature. The collected data will be
qualitative and quantitative based on survey questionnaires
and semi-structured interviews on the application of social
media in promoting Malaysian higher education. Beside these
methods, secondary data collection from an analysis of
Malaysian HEIs’ online social communities will be conducted.
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