Digging Deeper: Exploring Mental Models of University Choice

Universities should understand students’ decision-making processes so they can attract the right pool of applicants and select those that best fit their strategies. Previous research focused on identifying and ranking choice criteria used by students. However, these criteria tell us little about how students actually make sense in complex decision-making processes. To have an impact on student choices, though, university marketing communication needs to be interpreted as being meaningful by students. Unlike previous research, we present an alternative approach to understanding the choice of prospective students based on exploring their mental models that serve as representations of their sense making activities. By employing the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique in in-depth-interviews with 27 first-year bachelor students in Germany, we identified four ideal types of decision-makers with their respective mental models: the relational, the adventurer, the idler, and the utilitarian. The mental models we found help us to gain a more profound understanding of the relevant rational and emotional issues engaged in the sense making process of marketing signals when choosing a university. A mental models approach has further implications for reassessing previous research and suggesting a new type of market segmentation.