An Analysis of International Student Recruitment for UK Business Schools: A Chinese and Indian Cultural Perspective

This study aims to contribute to the knowledge of understanding international higher education services within the UK, which is underpinned by marketing theories and serves to provide managerial implications for education marketers. This is undertaken within the specific context of Chinese and Indian's decision making process of choosing to study a UK business degree. The purpose of this dissertation is to systematically examine and critically evaluate literature in international higher education services, the consumers decision making process and underlying characteristic of Chinese and Indian culture which influences their decisions. A proposed model was developed based on the existing literature derived from the decision making process of international students and Chinese and Indian cultural value systems. Furthermore, the researcher empirically tested these frameworks on Chinese and Indian students' choice of behaviour, which in turn supports revised models. These serve to provide managerial implications for both UK higher educational institutions in general and business school management and marketers. This study consists of three main sections. The 1st section (Chapters 2, 3 and 4) comprise the literature review which contains an outline of the service characteristics in the higher education sector. Chapter 2 begins by providing an overview of the main education exports, the USA, UK before then focusing on the increasing trend of internationalisation of education, including the preferred study of business and increasing demand from emerging markers, namely China and India. The 1st section then moves on to critically assess and evaluate existing decision-making models before the author proposes an new and extended model which hopes to identify gaps in the literature. This part of the study draws to a close by recognising culture as a significant influence on the decision making process of Chinese and Indian students. The second section of this study includes the research methodology (Chapter 5). Research paradigms are discussed, followed by an evaluation of the effectiveness of the qualitative in- depth interview as the main method of this study. Finally, the 2nd section examines the questionnaire design, its modification, sampling, and measurement procedures. The third section presents the analysis and interpretation of the data obtained in reference to the literature review and the model proposed by the author. The final sections also summarises the main research contributions and conclusions of this study, discusses the managerial implications and outlines the limitations and suggests future research directions