Page 74 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SCIENCES: THEORY AND PRACTICE, V.75, # 2, 2018, pp. 64-78

Co collaboration and predicting enrollment decision is in line with previous WOM
research. Senecal and Nantel (2004) found that products are selected more often
than previous cases and customer’s decisions are affected by online
recommendation sources when someone recommends a product. The source of the
recommendation in this research is a new phenomenon to our knowledge and has
not yet been tested. Previous research typically differentiates user generated
content from brand communicated content, or in this case university created
content. However, with the increased noise on social media and brand’s paying
brand ambassadors, brand advocates, and influencers to create content on social
media could account for one of the reasons that there is a change on the emphasis
of differentiating UGC and UCC. Perceived trustworthiness of consumers could
also play a role in the non-differentiation of UGC and UCC. Today, only 41% of
people globally trust social media (Edelman, 2019). In the network co-production
model marketers included product reviews and information to the consumers as
they encouraged people to talk about products (Kozinets, Valck, Wojnicki &
Vilner, 2010). Naturally formed conversations can be created by WOM as
individuals share experience about a product, however, today the trust towards
social media has changed.

University created communication and user generated content have the same effect on
international students’ enrollment intention. International students pay attention to the
content shared on social media about the university and their ideas are shaped by that
information. As a result, whether the international student enrolls in the specific
university is dependent on the content on social media. Previous literature supported
our findings that eWOM affects purchase intention (See-to & Ho, 2013). Once content
is shared on social media, the source of the information, whether UGC or UCC, is not
as important, however the content itself could be effective in enrollment intention.

Based on our findings, people’s brand attitude towards a brand is not differentiated by the
brand image. Brand attitude and brand image both have a strong relationship with
international student enrollment intentions. The perception of the brand attitude might be
created by different social media posts or comments by a combination of university
content and other user content. Keller (1993) defined brand attitude as overall perceptions
of consumers about the product. As previously mentioned, brand image could be
judgements, feelings, performance, images (Keller, 2001). Today, overall perceptions of
consumers and feelings, play into the role of brand image with the increase usage of user
generated content on social media. As a result, the brand image is as powerful as brand
attitude to influence international students’ intentions before they enter university.

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