Abstract

The current article represents a cautionary tale in continuing emerging marketization practices as the dominant form of marketing with higher education. Specifically, a review of three important emerging literature streams (i.e., quality-of-life, service-dominant logic, and stakeholder orientation) all appear to support calls for moving beyond typical (short-term, hedonistic) measures of consumer satisfaction associated with the delivery of higher education toward satisfaction judgments based on higher-order forms of happiness (i.e., prudential and perfectionist forms of happiness such as eudaimonia). This conclusion suggests that the nature of long-term value co-creation associated with higher education should focus on quality of life and well-being. Critical to the success of moving marketing strategy of institutions of higher education in the direction asserted herein will be embracing a primary strategic marketing objective of convincing stakeholders to value long-term, eudaimonic forms of happiness and satisfaction over the current psychological, short-term, hedonistic satisfaction forms assessing today’s marketization practices. A series of propositions are offered to help guide marketers in embracing this perspective.

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