Identifying patterns of alumni commitment in key strategic relationship programmes
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Identifying patterns of alumni commitment in key strategic relationship programmes Ilda Maria Pedro 1
& Júlio
da Costa Mendes 2 & Luís Nobre Pereira 3
Received: 17 January 2020 / Accepted: 6 August 2020/ # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Higher education institutions (HEIs) need to understand their alumni when drawing strategic relationship programmes. This paper aims to identify clusters of alumni based on their commitment relationship and to analyse factors influencing their intention to collaborate with the HEI. The study took place at a Portuguese university, considering a dataset of 1075 of alumni asserting intention to collaborate. First, a cluster analysis was conducted to identify patterns of commitment relationship. Secondly, a logistic regression was run to identify determinants of intention to collaborate. Both techniques revealed the decisive role of HEI commitment in the process. Relationship advantages and positive feelings towards the HEI were also pointed out as important. Alumni asserted recommendations, further training, sharing experiences and giving help as ways to collaborate with HEI. Regression results suggest that sociodemographic variables such as gender, marital status and volunteering are significantly associated with a probability to collaborate. Results also show that affiliation in sororities/ fraternities and participation in extracurricular activities are significantly associated with that collaborative intention. The findings provide clues to support strategic relationship programmes based on consistent marketing campaigns, while bringing value to the literature in the European context, where alumni culture requires real insights to evolve. Keywords Relationship marketing . HEI . Alumni . Commitment-relationship . Clustering . Binomial logit
* Ilda Maria Pedro [email protected]; https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilda–pedro/ Júlio da Costa Mendes [email protected] Luís Nobre Pereira [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
I. M. Pedro et al.
1 Introduction The alumni–alma mater relationship represents a challenging paradigm for higher education institutions (HEIs), particularly in the European context where alumni culture is now taking its first steps (Pérez-Esparrells and Torre 2012; Snijders et al. 2019). HEIs have already realised what this long-term relationship represents and that a deeper understanding of their alumni is critical for its success. Under the scope of relationship marketing, initiatives have been developed to enhance relationships to meet the expectations of alumni, but when HEIs face scarce resources and tight budgets, which is the case of the majority of Portuguese HEIs, effective clustering strategies are needed to achieve successful measures (DurangoCohen and Balasubramanian 2015; Le Blanc and Rucks 2009). Clustering thus allows optimisation of resources and greater effectiveness of activities such as solicitation and communication campaigns. Moreover, leads to a better understanding o
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