‘All together now’: the role of co-creation in student recruitment

With the nature of the Higher Education environment becoming increasingly competitive, this paper considers the marketing of HE from a service-dominant logic perspective and argues that universities should be striving to provide opportunities for value co-creation not just among existing students but more importantly, with prospective students.

With this in mind, the paper aims to explore co-creation opportunities at university open days through a series of qualitative, semi structured interviews with both prospective students and open day organisers.

This study is beneficial for both academics and practitioners as the objectives are twofold: to add to the academic debate by providing a valuable insight into the beginnings of the student/university relationship which is currently underexplored; and to offer practitioners some understanding of how potential students perceive co-creation and ultimately how this might affect university choice.