Exploring Millennials’ Decision-Making Behavior of Higher Education Institution: The Implication of University Social Media Marketing

As the technology usage by teenagers increase, prospective students going to look on the Web and involve with social media to obtain information and perform business with tertiary education institutions. The increasing usage of social media by students allows universities to communicate with them as a millennial generation in a voice that they familiar with. In terms of university admission, a few research has thoroughly researched the prominence of using internet as a strategic choice. In order to compete for qualified students, university needs to understand their student choice process and the information source used. This study reports an exploration and evaluation of Indonesian students’ experiences regarding the power of social media on their choice of university. By using the same cohort of first-year undergraduate students, semi-structured and focus-groups interviews were employed in five Indonesian public universities. The findings indicate the use of social media amongst students is growing in importance, especially for university search and selection. This research also found that the common social media platform used by students, the valuable information for them, the influential person during the college search process via social media, the reason for using social media before making a decision to choose particular university as well as the impact of social media on students’ choice of university. Overall, this research contributes to the understanding university decision-making amongst students using social media. It also provides ideas for universities to formulate strategies for social media participation and students’ recruitment.