University Marketing: A Professional Service Organization Perspective

The structure of a university marketing organization is examined in light of its market environment and marketing strategy. Research from marketing strategy and professional service organization literature provide a framework to examine how the university's marketing environment affects the marketing strategy and resulting marketing structure of the university. Our research suggests that (1) environments that do not have unique market segments result in circular, multi-layered, marketing organization structures; (2) the amount of autonomy afforded a marketing layer relates directly to the resources it controls; (3) the amount of communication and cooperation among layers is inversely related to the resources it controls; (4) the number of autonomous layers in the marketing organization is directly related to the amount of duplication of marketing effort in the organization; and (5) autonomous, multi-layered marketing organizations are less effective communicating with customers than are traditionally structured marketing organizations.