Abstract

Purpose: Brand community in higher education institutions comes up as an important topic to be discussed because the relationships among consumers can support the institutional brand and ultimately give meaning and vitality to the market-oriented strategy. This study aims to investigate how the literature on brand community in higher education have been distributed in research trends, theoretical frameworks, and methods. Research design, data and methodology: A total of 24 articles were organized from four reputable international databases. Content analysis were performed followed by synthesis toward potential directions and suggestions. Results: The researches in this area have increasingly focused on online interaction. Social identity theory and relationship theory were the two most prevalent theories used. Since the internet provides any social relationship with a specific relationship to form the brand community, its contextualization in higher education resulted in new concept implementation. Conclusions: The relationship within online participati on has impacted the market-oriented strategy of higher education in searching for ways toward a long-term and enduring bond among students, alumni, institutions and brands. As there is a plenteous prospect of data availability combined with big data analysis technology, the online participation will pique the interest of scholars to conduct further research on it.