Influencia de los factores del marketing de servicio en la elección de Estudios Superiores de Turismo en Instituciones PúblicasLos casos de España y Portugal

Abstract

Choosing a higher education Course is a highly complex process since it involves a number of factors and steps which need to be taken by the potential student, and it is a very important life-changing decision. A literature review on the concept of marketing and its evolution, as well as some of the fundamental models of the choice of a public higher education Course in general and specifically in the area of tourism, allows us to identify and analyze the most decisive factors for the choice of a course/institution within the services Marketing Mix which is one of the central objectives of this research work. This study also discusses the evolution of HEI in general and training in tourism, in particular, in Portugal and in Spain. In addition, this study aims to identify the internal characteristics and the importance of outside influences on the market segment of young candidates for higher education, according to the Marketing Mix of services factors and in order to determine any differences in internal characteristics and the level of external influence, between Spain and Portugal. The literature highlights the existence of two models of choosing an academic career by students - one American and one European. In the American case, at the moment of choice, the student begins to search for his institution and then chooses his course. In Europe at the moment of choice, the student begins by choosing the course in a field of study that he wants to follow and then chooses the institution that suits to him best. A questionnaire was distributed among two samples of students who entered as freshmen in HEI in Spain and in Portugal in the tourism sector in the 2014/2015 academic year, the numbers being 770 and 538 respectively. Data were collected from various Spanish and Portuguese HEIs that have public higher education courses in tourism. The survey´s questions were designed in order to identify the variables that were necessary and useful for the study according to the literature. An ordinal Likert scale from 1-5 was applied in order to measure the importance of the Marketing Mix variables in choosing the course and a nominal scale for sociodemographic variables. On one hand, the results show that the factor �product� of the service Marketing Mix is the most important choice factor for a course in Tourism in Portugal, as well as in Spain. On the other hand, we can conclude that the students� personal data, that is, their social demographic profile has different relations with the service Marketing Mix. We can highlight the fact that the factors �people� and �process� plays a minor role in choosing a course in the area of Tourism. Also, we can state that �family and friends� are more influential in Portugal than in Spain, as far as the choice of a course in the area of Tourism is concerned.