KNOWING OUR "CLIENTS" FOR A BETTER MANAGEMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION SERVICES

Market segmentation and the knowledge of customer organization profile is a well-known requirment for any manager hoping to success in a competitive environment. On the other hand, nobody denies that nowadays, higher education became a mass phenomenon and the universities acting more and more like market-oriented organizations. Facing the two statements becomes obvious that any manager and any employee of a higher education institution must know "who are our students? ", "how think our students? ", "what our students do? ", "where are our students?" – all these in order to be able to more effectively recruit and retain the students. The purpose of this article is to identify factors which are relevant in higher education market segmentation and to present the results and the implications, for the management of higher education institutions, of a study about the elaboration of the student profile.