A re-evaluation of the relevance to key account management to the UK higher education sector

This research set out to explore the nature of business-to-business (B2B) relationships in the UK higher education postgraduate sector. More specifically, it sought to address the strategic issue of how relationships between a UK business school (in this case, Nottingham Business School) and its corporate clients could be organised and managed effectively over the longer-term in order to provide, maintain or, where appropriate, enhance the mutual satisfaction of all parties concerned. It is argued that such research is relevant and timely given that revenue generated from commercial activity (third stream income) is considered increasingly vital to UK business schools as they attempt to remain financially solvent in a toughening market that is faced with the additional threat of longer-term reductions in Higher Education Funding Council grants (Watling et al., 2003; Prince, 2004; Prince, 2007). It is not only commercial activity that would appear to be a relatively underdeveloped activity in most new universities (Prince, 2004). B2B literature shows little or no research into business relationships within the UK corporate education sector (Murray and Underhill, 2002). Additionally, Ellis and Mayer (2001) and Wright (2004) are typical of those calling for more research across different B2B sectors. Having scoped the research problem (Document 1) and undertaken a critical review of the B2B relationship marketing literature (Document 2), exploratory qualitative research in Document 3 focused on NBS lecturers with responsibility for managing both open and client-specific postgraduate programmes.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

dba

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Nottingham Trent University

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Harden, GR

Language dc:language

en