Analysis of the profile of a student of a higher education institution ( HEI ) : marketing as a tool for higher education institutions

Private higher education institutions (HEI) face a crisis that mostly derives from the stabilization of demand and the drop in incomes, which represent challenges affecting their management. Marketing tries to offer answers to some of the companies’ most important aspects, while combining consumers’ needs with company capacities and targets. One of the approaches in the educational market consists of target marketing, in which the market is divided into segments and specific assistance offers are developed. The present research resulted from the interest to get a better understanding of individual behavior in choosing services in education, with a psychographic segmentation being accomplished. A case study in a private HEI was carried out to find out who their clients are. Two hundred and eight students of different courses were selected by means of sampling by (researcher) convenience. They all replied to an instrument composed of questionnaires covering personality traits, basic human values and need for cognition. It was observed that the human values and the personality values are adequate variables in which to segment this public, while the need for cognition does not possess discriminating capacity among the students of different courses. These results are expected to contribute to the development of specific actions in educational marketing.


INTRODUCTION
The expansion of high school at the end of the 1990s favored the growth and spread of private higher education institutions (HEIs) in Brazil, with a market share of practically 70%.
Currently however, private higher education institutions face a crisis due in large part to the stabilization of demand and declining revenues.These pressures pose challenges affecting the institutions' management, including the management of the marketing activity (NUNES; LANZER; SERRA; FERREIRA, 2008).Marketing, in its original sense, determines the trade relations of an institution with its clients.It comprises a set of planning, design and implementation, which aim to satisfy the present and future needs of customers through new or existing products and services (SANTOS, 2004).Speaking of marketing and education may seem jarring, because education is seen as one of the basic values of society, while marketing is governed by laws of supply and demand, based on a logic of consumer capitalism.(LOPES, 2006) Nevertheless, with the extension of the supply of seats in higher education due to the higher number of private institutions in the country, these organizations are seeking a differentiating factor to offer to their customers.(SILVA;ESPEJO;SANTIN;CANSUSSU, 2003).Thus arises the importance of marketing, recognizing it as a tool for attracting to and keeping students in private HEIs.By combining customer needs with the capabilities and goals of the business, marketing seeks to provide answers to some important aspects of the business.The opportunities are found through market analysis, which is divided into groups (segmentation) and selecting the segment that best suits the organization.(BRITO, 1998;SILVA;ESPEJO;SANTIN;CANSUSSU, 2003).
To segment is to identify a "group of customers based on their preferences, their purchasing power, geographical location, similar shopping habits, among others."(NUNES; LANZER; SERRA; FERREIRA, 2008, p. 13).The separation of consumers in social classes or socioeconomic status is the most traditionally way used in segmentation, especially in Brazil.(VEIGA NETO, 2007).Conducting research on segmentation is justified because the studies in this area are still scarce in Brazil.(VEIGA NETO, 2007;VIEIRA, 1999).More so when it comes to the reality of the Northeast, where there is a lack of information about marketing, especially marketing targeted on education.Vieira (1999)  Administration courses showed that the main priority in marketing studies and research in Brazil should be the study of Consumer Behavior.
To Kotler and Fox (1994), the most correct approach to the education market is to use target marketing.In it, the HEI divides the market into different segments, selects one (or more) as its focus and develops specific offers to the segment(s).Obtaining new information in an era of extraordinary competitiveness can be the difference between a high and a low level of sales.Understanding how this process occurs is extremely useful for an organization, as it may seek new market trends, or new opportunities for future products.
Consumer behavior is defined as the activities directly involved in obtaining and consuming products and services, disposing of them, including the decision processes that precede and follow these actions.It is of particular interest to those who for various reasons, wish to influence such behavior.The study of personality, values and attitudes of individuals falls within the spectrum of consumer behavior, as these factors form a whole in changing the behavior of each.(TOLEDO et al. 2008).Life habits of consumers are related to factors such as income, career, housing style, leisure, etc.The importance of trying to understand how the buying behavior of consumers takes place, rests in the fact that a relationship exists between customer satisfaction, quality of product / service and company profitability.This approach to the external client must be part of a company's strategic planning that seeks to improve the quality of its products, and should always define its position in relation to its market and society (SANTOS, 2004).
The same is true with respect to the provision of services, similarly to what happens in education.In general, a service organization should seek to meet the needs and interests of its target audience in order to maximize its actions and satisfy its customers.Knowing the client base also helps in developing the organization's marketing strategies and advertising.In this sense, organizations are investing in knowledge about consumer behavior.This research originated from the interest in better understanding the behavior of individuals in the choice of services in education.Since the approach on the client's behavior when consuming services and the factors that influence this behavior is very comprehensive, we chose to evaluate some factors that may influence the choice of a specific graduate course or of an HEI.
We intend to study the personality, attitudes and values of students in order to better understand the clients of an HEI.With this purpose a students' psychographic segmentation was conducted which also considered their choice of a particular course.

METHODOLOGICAL PROCEDURES
We conducted a case study of a private HEI in João Pessoa, in which we sought to know its clients.This study consisted of a non-probabilistic sample by convenience of 208 students of Advertising, Tourism, Administration, Law, Accounting and Information Systems.
Students answered a form made up of three questionnaires, besides demographic questions.
The application was conducted by the authors of this research in the students' classroom, after an explanation of the research purpose.The average time for completing the questionnaires was 20 minutes.Emphasis was placed on the confidentiality of responses, explaining that there were no right or wrong answers and that all questions should be answered individually, and students were asked to try not to leave any question blank.The The respondent is supposed to point out the degree of importance of each value, using a Likert scale, ranging from 1 as "totally unimportant" to 7, "extremely important".In the end, he/she

ANALYSIS OF RESULTS
The most common way to target an audience is to label it by socio-demographic description.Thus, we initially drew the demographic profile of students in the surveyed HEI.
For this purpose, we performed an analysis of frequency of this class of variables for each course, as shown in Table 1.Overall, we found that students' ages ranged from 17 to 46 years with a mean of 23.89 (SD = 5.71).Family income was gauged on a scale of minimum wage values, ranging from a multiplier of 2 to a multiplier of 40,000, with an average of 584.86 minimum wages (DP=297,3).Source: Field research.
As can be seen in  2007;VIEIRA, 1999) the tendency to segment the audience by psychographic profile.Thus, in order to continue to research the students' profile, we moved to the analysis of the other questionnaires, which determine the psychographic profile of the surveyed HEI students.
That is, the next analyses intend to draw the attitudinal, evaluative and personality profile of the students participating in the research, which is its main objective.

Students' attitudinal, value and personality profile
Initially, we performed a re-coding of the response scales of the Need for Cognition and of Personality (Big Five) questionnaires in order to standardize the scores of the 3 questionnaires, facilitating their analysis and comparison.The response scale of the Need for Cognition instrument was nine points, and it was brought down to seven.Likewise, the response scale of the Personality questionnaire was five points, being expanded to seven as well.The survey of Human Values was already answered on a seven-point scale, thus remaining unchanged.To characterize the students with respect to the attitudinal, value and personality profile, we performed an analysis of the distribution of the scores of students in the questionnaire on Need for Cognition, in the questionnaire on Human Values and in the one on the Big Five.We recorded the students' average scores, minimum scores, maximum scores and the scores of students by distribution of frequency (represented by the percentile).
The results for these tests are shown in Table 2.As can be seen in Table 2, the average of student on Need for Cognition was 4.12, with a standard deviation of 0.60.The minimum score was 2.50, and the highest, 5.75.
Finally, we also notice that 75% of the sample shows scores up to 4.50, a reasonable value in were those which had the highest scores (X = 6.14, SD = 0.98), ranging from 1.67 to 7.00, and 75% of participants scored up to 6.67.This result confirms the argument made by Chaves ( 2003) that the higher score in these values by college kids probably occurs due to their concerns with stability and survival.
As for the scores on personality factors, one notices in Table 2, that openness to change is the predominant feature in the student sample.Its average was high on a sevenpoint scale (X = 5.36, SD = 0.84), varying from 3.50 to 7.00, whereby 75% of students had scores of up to 6.00, and 25% had scores of up to 4.80.

Students' attitudinal, value and personality profile
In order to continue to find out about the students' profile in more detail, we chose to describe average trends of students per course.This analysis will allow us to observe whether students show a different psychographic profile for each chosen course.In this sense, we performed a test of differences between means for various groups (analysis of variance -ANOVA).The results for these tests are displayed in Tables 3, 4 and 5.By observing Table 3, it appears that, with respect to the standard of Need for Cognition, there is no significant difference among the courses' attitudinal profile (F = 0.78, p = 0.57).That is, although there are differences between the means of Needs for Cognition, this difference is not significant.
As can be seen in Table 4, with respect to the factors of extroversion (F = 0.49, p = 0.78) and neuroticism (F = 1.02, p = 0.41), there are no significant difference between the averages of students per course.However, with regard to conscientiousness (F = 2.94, p <0.05), pleasantness (F = 5.21, p <0.001) and openness to change (F = 3.65, p <0.01) there are differences between the averages per course.In order to achieve a competitive advantage, the HEI should consider the external and internal environment, identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the organization, the threats and opportunities in its market.In this sense, targeting its products, directing them to the needs of customers, becomes an important strategy in the HEI's marketing activity.This segmentation depends directly on the knowledge of the target audience.Thus, the main objective of this research was to understand the psychographic profile of the students of an HEI in João Pessoa.
In general, the results indicated that students scored low in Need for Cognition and high in human values (where existence value was the number one priority in the sample).In addition, the students had high scores on personality traits related to openness to change.
Comparing the courses, one notices that there is no typical profile by course in the Need for Cognition variable.That is, this factor would not be a good indicator for segmentation of this audience in trying to define the strategies of the marketing mix by course.
With regard to personality, it was found that the traits of conscientiousness, pleasantness and openness to change show significant differences between the averages for each course, showing a profile of characteristics for each one.The same occurs with human values.Except for the values of existence, it was found that there is a different value profile for each course.In other words, these indicators are suitable for analysis of psychographic segmentation of the market for the HEIs Although this article presents basic research, it is expected that the outcomes and discussions arising from it may bring significant contributions to the application of knowledge relating to consumer behavior in the delivery of service in higher education, as well as for the use of this knowledge in the marketing strategies of the HEIs.
questionnaires wereQuestionnaire on the Need for Cognition -NFC.Instrument designed byCaccioppo, Petty, Kao (1984), translated into Portuguese by Delizia,Rosenthal and Costa (2003).It comprises 18 items, all of which represent the tendency of individuals to engage in and enjoy an activity that requires analytical effort.This instrument is used in market research in order to know the effect of persuasive messages through advertising, labeling or information on consumer behavior.Each item is answered on a scale ranging from one (very strong agreement) to nine (very strong disagreement).Inventory of the Big Five Personality Factors.Prepared byCosta and McCrae   (1986, cited by CAPRARA;BARBARANELLI;BORGOGNI, 1995).It comprises 44 items grouped into five major factors, which express the characteristic traits of personality.The extracted factors are: extraversion, neuroticism, friendliness, conscientiousness and openness to change.The items were answered on a five-point scale, with 1 corresponding to "strongly disagree" and 5 corresponding to "totally agree".Basic Human Values Survey.Questionnaire prepared byGouveia (1998).It consists of a list of 24 basic values, which are grouped into six psychosocial functions: experimentation, development, existence, super-personal, normative and interactive.These values are organized into three guiding criteria, namely: personal (experimentation and realization), central (suprapersonal and existence) and social (normative and interactional).

Finally,
Students of Administration (X = 5.59, SD = 0.85) are those most open to change, while the Students of Information Systems (X = 4.95, SD = 0.73) are those who score confirms this need, especially with regard to segmentation based on consumer behavior.His study with researchers working in the marketing of Postgraduate BBR, Braz.Bus.Rev. (Engl.ed., Online), Vitória, v. 8, n. 1, Art. 4, p. 60-72, jan -mar.2011 www.bbronline.com.br

Table 1
COSTA, 2003;socio-demogrVEIGA NETO,cterization being the most common, it is observed in literature (for example DELIZA; ROSENTHAL;COSTA, 2003; NIEF, 2002;VEIGA NETO, , there is a predominance of females in all courses at the HEI.Most participants are single, Catholic, have no children and live with their parents.Analysis of the profile of a student of a higher education institution HEI BBR, Braz.Bus.Rev.(Engl.ed., Online),Vitória, v. 8, n. 1, Art. 4, p. 60-72, jan -mar.2011  www.bbronline.com.br

Table 2 : Students' attitudinal (need for cognition), value and personality profiles.
response scale of seven points.In other words, we found no high scores on Need of Cognition in most of the sample.With respect to human values, one notices in Table2, that all respondents show a high average.Existence values(survival, health, personal stability) BBR, Braz.Bus.Rev. (Engl.ed., Online), Vitória, v. 8, n. 1, Art. 4, p. 60-72, jan -mar.2011 www.bbronline.com.br a

Table 4 : Profile of personality of students per course.
the highest scores on pleasantness, while the Students of Advertising (X = 4.53, SD-0, 74) are those who score least in this factor.