AUTHOR
Berglund, Linn; Nyström, Erika

DEPARTMENT
Business Administration and Social Sciences / Industrial marketing and e-commerce

SUMMARY
There has been a significant trend that international studies of higher education have increased in the late 20th and early 21st century. This expansion has taken place since developing countries had the urge to educate their population and had a need for well educated citizens, but also since certain, less developed countries did not have the possibility to offer their own citizens the same educational opportunities. This can also be seen in accordance with increased traveling. A fast growing segment is international master students, which from universities point of view might be interesting to attract. But is this acknowledged by universities, and if so: what image is portrayed and how is it communicated to the target audience? With those considerations in mind the purpose of this thesis was to gain a deeper understanding about how Swedish universities position themselves towards international master students.

The results show that positioning toward international master students is a somewhat neglected area. The undertaken case study implicates that there are uncertainties regarding responsibility and organization structure. Universities might also need to increase the knowledge regarding different segments so that the needs of the students’ best can be matched with what the university offers since the present overall positioning strategy might be too general. Therefore, a recommendation is to develop a strategy for positioning toward international master students.

ISSN 1404-5508 / ISRN LTU-SHU-EX--05/132--SE / NR 2005:132