Internal Marketing Practices of Higher Education Institutions: Application of the Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) Grid

Abstract

The primary goal of the study is to determine the students’ perceived importance of internal marketing practices practiced by higher education institutions vis-à-vis actual their performance, and to determine which practices, based on the importance-performance analysis approach, are worthy of actions (i.e., the decisions in the IPA quadrants). A total of 714 college students responded to the online survey. To establish the key importance area clusters of internal marketing, exploratory factor analysis was used, while all items are plotted in IPA grid for the appropriate decisions for each. Analyses revealed very high importance and satisfaction on internal marketing practices of HEIs as perceived by its students. The difference between students’ perception of importance and their satisfaction was also seen to be significantly different via paired-sample t-test. The study was able to cluster the five domains of internal marketing into two overarching themes: administrative support services and personal student assistance. While we do not define internal marketing practices with these two domains alone, we were able to get the picture of how HEIs in Davao City leaves an impression to its college students.