Стратегије позиционирања високошколских установа у Републици Србији
Positioning Strategies Of Higher Education Institutions In The Republic Of Serbia

Summary/Abstract: Contemporary higher education institutions act as agents on a highly competitive market. Therefore, they have been obliged to modify their management approaches to attract and retain students, in order to ensure survival and development on such a market. These new management approaches include more explicit use of marketing principles and activities. Research presented in this paper is focused on positioning strategies of higher education institutions in the Republic of Serbia. The paper analyzes the content of accredited higher education institutions’ Internet presentations (websites) in order to identify the bases of strategies used for differentiation from other institutions. More specifically, it searches for characteristics that higher education institutions highlight to show their superiority over other institutions to the general public, and most importantly – to prospective students. Those characteristics are treated as implicit/explicit competitive advantages, on which positioning strategies are based. The aim of this paper is to identify different elements used as bases for the positioning strategies of Serbian higher education institutions. Additional objective is to identify the most frequently used competitive advantages and the ones that are theoretically conceptualized, but not sufficiently used in the practice of Serbian higher education institutions. The paper includes three parts. The first part overviews the theoretical background related to positioning strategies in the higher education context. The research related to the bases of Serbian higher education institutions’ positioning strategies is described in the second part of the paper, together with the obtained results. The main finding of this empirical research shows that conclusions from previously conducted studies are valid for Serbia, as well – positioning strategies of higher education institutions are mostly based on the same characteristics, while explicit implications of specific, unique, competitive advantages are missing. The majority of higher education institutions in Serbia tend to position themselves based on institutional reputation as well as on opportunities for students to find employment after graduating from those institutions. The final part of the paper includes conclusions and directions for further research.

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