Business School Branding:

The Case of SME SNU

MARKETING MANAGEMENT II (MKT - 502)

Batch: MBA 2020-2022
School of Management & Entrepreneurship
Instructor: Prof. Paromita Goswami

Group - 6 Members Date of Submission: 12-03-2021

1) Ripudaman Singh Gajawat (2010120028)

2) Rishi Thakur (2010120029)

3) Sambhav Chaturvedi (2010120031)

4) Shantanu Agnihotry (2010120034)

5) Shanu Gupt (2010120035)

6) Shatrudhan Kumar (2010120036)

Contents
INTRODUCTION 3
LITERATURE REVIEW 3
GAP 6
SCOPE OF THE RESEARCH 6
RESEARCH OBJECTIVE 7
SAMPLING METHOD 7
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 7
Qualitative Research 8
Qualitative Research 9
FINDINGS 9
Quantitative Analysis 9
TABLE 6 13
Qualitative Analysis 13
Theme 1 - Excellent Faculties and Curriculum 13
Theme 2 - Rising Brand 14
Theme 3 - Support of HCL Brand 14
Theme 4 - Placement Seeks Improvement 15
Theme 5 - Talented & Quality Students 16
RECOMMENDATIONS 16
DISCUSSION 17
CONCLUSION 17
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 18
TIMELINES 18
THE TEAM STRUCTURE 19
REFERENCES 19
APPENDIX 21
Appendix 1 21
Appendix 2 22
Appendix 3 24
Appendix 4 26
INTRODUCTION
School of Management and Entrepreneurship (SME) was established in the year 2014 at Shiv
Nadar University. The School of Management & Entrepreneurship aims to develop
organizational leaders that focus on values, attitudes, and skills and go beyond traditional
management learning.

SME has noticed that even after providing students with an understanding of best practices &
global trends, SME has not been able to establish itself successfully among the recruiters &
students.

It is a big problem for the University because, in spite of trying hard to put students ahead of the
curve, it is not able to do it successfully.

It is interesting to find that even after providing world-class faculty and ample resources to
students for their learning, why dream companies like Deloitte, Walmart, Amazon are not yet
placement partners of SME.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Brands play a pivotal role in differentiating among other players in the market which is required
for gaining a competitive edge over the others (Aaker, 1996). Education branding worldwide is
still at a growing phase largely, which is based on their own benefits and attributes set by
themselves. Currently, business schools are attributes focused which are basically highlighting
points rather than the differentiators but they need impalpable attributes to position themselves.
“Brand name” has become a prime differentiator tool as it shows promise of quality and value to
the customers among a wide variety of similar products and services in the global market
(Kartono and Rao, 2008).

Educational institutes have their own values and vision, so by keeping that goal in mind, a brand
building is done is to create recognition among the target audience in which their own values and
vision intersect with the expectation of the target audience. The equity of a brand gives them
value and allows them to charge a premium. It is brand awareness that increases the willingness
of the student to apply to the particular school. The figure portrayed by the institution or school
plays an important role in the attitude of the target audience and students towards that institution
(Sevier and Sickler, 2004).

Business schools have become big industries and are growing tremendously in the market.
According to Argenti and Forman business schools need to focus on building reputation and to
understand the importance of reputation management they looked into the history, PR and
marketing of the business school (Argenti and Forman, 1998).

According to Keller, branding is the important asset to communicate it to others and for that
marketing is required. Earlier marketing was easier but nowadays it became so difficult to
differentiate from competitors (Keller, 1998).

So, B-school needs to focus on a specific market segment by analyzing internal and external
constituencies to differentiate themselves from others. All these strategies will help to manage
the reputation for B-school brandings (Keller, 1998). To maintain the reputation of the B-school,
they need to maintain the quality of the service at a standard which is distinguishable and
presentable to the target audience.

Higher education is like a service which will always be different to a physical product. Service
quality involves a comparison of assumption with performance. Service quality is the
consumer’s expectations. The measure of how the service has been provided to the consumer’s
level of expectation. Service quality has been produced with a direct interplay between consumer
and provider. Education is a non-physical entity with no real substance and hence considered
perishable (Zeithaml et al., 1985).

While comparing academic and non-academic services, (Jalali et al., 2011) found that the non-
academic activities were not as important as academic activities in providing customer
satisfaction. Apart from classroom activities, academic activities incorporated honesty,
mentality, identity.
Education institutes are a part of the service industry. Heaney wrote a paper on how educational
institutes could use the concept of corporate branding for branding an institute. Corporate
branding is a strategy in which the brand is promoted as a single entity rather than promoting
each and every product. Hence, corporate branding considers only promoting the company rather
than the product (Gylling and Lindberg, 2006).

Corporate branding has three main components: the company's core values that include culture,
benchmarks, educational ethos, internal marketing done by employees which tell brand’s
reputation and communication, and external marketing is done by customers and other
stakeholders which tells brands image, brand’s perceived quality. (Heaney, et. al., 2006) wrote to
use the concept of corporate branding and applied it to an educational institute. The core values
of an education institute are its vision, mission, and purpose. Faculties, students, and other
stakeholders communicate about the institute in the market. This increases the customer base,
and a strong customer base means high brand equity for the institution (Heaney, 2008).

If the education institute at a stage to consider itself as a successfully branded institute then it
needs to provide ample evidence in order to claim this statement, paper (Chapleo, 2010) focuses
majorly on several sets of challenges that this education institute faces every single day and how
the faculties and staff works in order to face such challenges in order to claim themselves as a
“Successful Brand”. Every institute in its league faces several severe challenges in order to claim
themselves as successful, from having world-class faculties to top-notch industrial placement,
and various such factors. Education institutes compete with each other come from the league in
order to gain maximum brand recognition and maintain brand loyalty amongst its fellow students
majorly and rest stakeholders. Also, they need to compete not only in the domestic league but
also have to work very hard in order to gain international recognition.

In today’s world, a brand is a face value of a company and it is very important to use it in the
right manner by company. According to Aaker and Keller, companies differentiate themselves
by their brands and customers express feelings attached to it (Aaker, 1996, 1991; Keller, 2013,
1993). Branding strategies help to communicate in a better way in the market (Jevons, 2006).

The objective of this research is to find out the important factors, differentiate the measurement
scale for university branding and to identify university brand equity through review literature,
survey & measurement scale, sampling, data collection and analysis (Ng and Forbes, 2009; Pinar
et al., 2011). They also identified brand awareness, perceived equality, brand loyalty, brand
reputation and its importance (Gray et al., 2003; Gatfield et al., 1999).

So, according to Pinar and other researchers, it is very important to implicate core factors,
perceived quality, ecosystem model and brand equity dimensions to examine the brand equity
and university branding (Pinar et al., 2011).

GAP
Previous literature explained higher education as a service (Zeithaml et al., 1985) while another
literature mentioned the importance of the corporate strategy of branding at business institutes
(Heaney, J., 2008). Existing literature found the role of institute faculty in the branding process
and how they develop insights in the mind of stakeholder to enhance branding of business school
(Hemsley-Brown and Goonawardana, 2007) while similar extant literature found about specific
market segmentation by analyzing internal and external constituencies to increase the placement
of students at business school (Argenti and Forman, 1998). Prior literature also explains how
brands are important to grow in the market and how we can compare our brand with other
competitors in the market (Sevier and Sickler, 2004).

But extant articles do not address how to assess the brand equity of an institute, i.e., SME in our
study. So, we would try to assess the brand equity of SMEs through our research objective.

SCOPE OF THE RESEARCH

The scope of the project is to assess the brand equity of SME among the students and alumni of
SME and understand issues related with brand equity of SME. This will help us to understand
how SME-MBA brand is perceived by alumni and current MBA students and come up with
some suggestions to enhance the brand equity of SME.
RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
To understand how SME-MBA brand is perceived by alumni and current MBA students and
come up with some suggestions to enhance the brand equity of SME.

SAMPLING METHOD
● Type of research method - Descriptive research
○ Sampling Unit - The sampling unit of research includes current MBA students,
alumni and our batchmates.
○ Sampling technique - Quota Sampling was used to select the sample as the study
focus on only SME MBA students.
○ Data collection - online survey and qualitative interview.

■ Primary Research: -
● Initial online survey- A basic 28-Question survey was sent out to
the stratified current MBA batch students and alumni to know
about their perception of SME brand.
● A total of 12 Interviews of alumni & current MBA students to gain
more understanding about MBA SME as a brand.

■ Secondary Research: - 6 existing literatures are considered for the study

which were related to brand equity of education institutes.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The research methodology was designed to understand how the SME-MBA brand is perceived
by alumni and current MBA students and come up with some findings to enhance the brand
equity of SMEs. Our research includes quantitative and qualitative research.
Qualitative Research
In the quantitative research, we circulated a survey form to measure the SME`s reputation. The
questionnaire was taken from existing literature (Musa Pinar at el., 2014) as the research
measured brand equity of B-school and is valid for every B-school. There were 28 questions
(given in appendix 1) based on 6 constructs i.e., SME`s reputation, Career Development,
Perceived Quality of Faculty, Emotional environment, Brand loyalty and Brand awareness and 2
control variables i.e., gender and alumni or current student. Survey was on a 7-point Likert scale
and the sample was issued to 289 respondents of SME MBA batch of the year 2016 to 2022 (A
total 75 responses are received). Response rate was 25.95% The following table gives the details
of their demographics: -

TABLE 1

No. of Male 42 (56%)

No. of Female 33 (44%)

Total Responses 75

No. of alumni Total 43 (2016 batch - 3, 2017 batch - 10, 2018 batch - 9,
2019 batch - 13, 2020 batch - 8)

No of current students Total 32 (2021 batch - 11, 2022 batch - 21)

Factor analysis was done for the samples using SPSS software. The factor analysis method used
was principal components and Eigen value was set at greater than 1. Factors getting the
Eigenvalue greater than 1 were selected for making factors and the component matrix was
checked for them. Multiple regression was done to find the relation between dependent and
independent variable. The analysis and result of the survey provided a better understanding of
different constructs relation with the brand equity of SME and on which factors, SME needs to
work upon.
Qualitative Research
For the qualitative research, existing literature was referred and a discussion guide was made.
The sampling method was quota sampling. Different questions were designed for alumni and
current students. A total of 12 interviews will be conducted out of which 6 are of alumni, 4 are of
the second year who are going to pass in 2021, and 2 were of first-year students passing in 2022.
Questions asked are given in Appendix 2, sample data in Appendix 3 and links for interview
recordings are in Appendix 4.

Interviews were analyzed and quotes were extracted from them. Codes and themes will be
constructed from them. Following table gives the details of respondents for interview: -

TABLE 2

Alumni MBA SME Total 6 respondents

2nd year MBA students Total 4 respondents

1st year MBA students Total 2 respondents

FINDINGS

Quantitative Analysis
A total of 75 responses were received from the online survey form. Reliability test was done for
the data. The table below shows the values of the reliability test.

TABLE 3

Dependent Independent Variable

 Variable

Perceived Career
SME’s Emotional Brand Brand
Quality - Development
Reputation Environment loyalty Awareness
Faculty Centre

B1 to
S1 to S9 P1 to P5 E1 to E3 A1 to A3 C1 to C5
B3

Cronb
ach’s 0.92 0.95 0.94 0.90 0.90 0.90
Alpha

KMO
0.848 0.793 0.762 0.751 0.752 0.794
value

Bartle
tt 448.26 477.77 203.551 143.89 139.53 278.913
Value

Signif
icanc 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
e

Factor Analysis was done on the data for each variable. 2 factors came for the dependent variable
and the eigenvalues were 5.5 for the 1st factor and 1.09 for the second. 2nd value was not
considered as it was approximately equal to 0. The other variables had only one eigenvalue
greater than 1. Hence, only 1 factor was made for each independent variable. Factor names were
given to the factors as shown in the table 4. Regression analysis was done after that on the data to
get the model. Confidence level was set at 90%. Some values were not significant as sampling
rate was only 25.96%.

We found that SME`s reputation was dependent on brand loyalty, brand awareness and career
development Centre with a significance value of less than 10%. Others have values which were
not significant. The two control variables, Gender and Alumni or current student were also not
significant. Perceived quality of faculty has a negative relationship with the SMEs reputation
although it was not significant. The model has an R value of 0.87 and F change value as 29.67
with a significance of 0.00.

TABLE 4

Variable Identified Variables in Factor Name of

Factor Factor

SME graduates have good job offers before or

soon after graduation,
SME is well known academically,
SME graduates secure good job offers, Occupation
Dependent SME’s S1, S2, Related
S4, S6, Companies prefer recruiting SME graduates, Brand Equity
Variable Reputation
S7, S8, S9 SME is a well-known business school,
SME tag is well-recognized in respective
professions,
The graduates of SME earn more than average
industry pay.

Independent SME’s faculty are knowledgeable in their

Variables domain,
SME’s faculty are available to help students,
Perceived
Quality - P1 to P5 SME’s faculty are approachable for students' Mentorship
Faculty questions and concerns,
SME’s faculty think about students’ needs,
SME faculties are responsive to student needs.

Emotional E1 to E3 SME provides a friendly and cooperative Environment

Environmen & Culture
environment,
t
SME provides the students with a sense of
society,
The relationship between student and faculty
 are interactive.

SME graduates are proud to have other people

know that they will have a degree from SME,
Brand SME graduates are proud of the university, Graduates’
B1 to B3
Loyalty Perception
SME graduates recommend the university to
others.

SME is widely known, SME's logo is instantly

distinguishable, SME is among the first to
Brand Market
A1 to A3 come to mind when one thinks of all
Awareness Placement
universities in the country.

SMEs career Development center helps

students search for jobs, SMEs career
development center offers internship
opportunities, SME offers opportunities such
Corporate as projects, community work as a part of its Skills
Developme C1 to C5 Training and
educational program, SME offers a career
nt center Opportunities
development center with supportive resources
that help students to apply for job
opportunities, SME’s career development
center organizes alumni networking events.

REGRESSION MODEL

SME`S REPUTATION = - 0.051 + 0.112 * GENDER – 0.27 * ALUMNI OR CURRENT

STUDENT - 0.234 * PERCEIVED QUALITY FACULTY + 0.036 * EMOTIONAL
ENVIRONMENT + 0.47 * BRAND LOYALTY + 0.356 * BRAND AWARENESS + 0.21 *
CAREER DEVELOPMENT CENTRE

In the model SME`s reputation is highly dependent on brand loyalty, brand awareness and career
development centre. Other variable does not have much significance and are not much related
with the dependent variable as shown in table 6. Only brand loyalty, brand awareness and career
development centre has a high T value rest other construct have either less than 1 or negative T
value.

TABLE 5

MODEL R Value Adjust R F change Sig. F change

square

1 0.87 0.731 29.67 0.000

TABLE 6
Variables Gender Alumni Perceived Emotional Brand Brand Career
or quality Environment loyalty Awarenes Development
current faculty s centre
students
T value 0.881 -0.214 -1.545 0.225 4.737 3.635 1.967
Sig 0.382 0.831 0.127 0.822 0.000 0.001 0.05

Qualitative Analysis

Theme 1 - Excellent Faculties and Curriculum

All the students and alumni feel that faculty is best and so are facilities, college & hostel at SME.
Some of them found Marketing as a great course and some found Account’s course as helpful.
And it is something for which they really cherish that they got an opportunity to study from
world class faculties. They also felt that curriculum is updated on a regular basis, which helps
them to expand their knowledge. Also, faculty have adapted well in this new normal. We found
out that neither students nor alumni have any complaints from the faculty of SME.
"Talk to any of us. Be it anything- college, faculty, facility, hostel anything. Everything is
awesome." - Ayushi
“The faculty is the best. The level of teaching in SNU is extremely good. Their sessions are well
planned. You must be seeing it in your curriculum as well." - Tarun
"Faculties are elite, they explain complicated things very well on online mode even." - John
"I'll tell you something about the faculty. The faculty here are great. They have a lot of
experience." - Saurav

Theme 2 - Rising Brand

Most of the students & alumni feel that SME is new and an emerging brand and it doesn't have
great credentials among recruiters. Some people know about it as HCL founder- Shiv Nadar’s
University. Some alumni even said that their bosses and people outside do not know about SME.
We found out that SME is a lesser-known brand outside. People do not know about it which
makes people skeptical if they should come to campus to recruit students from here or not.

"SME is still an emerging brand, and will take some more years to establish itself." - Aditya
"My internship mentor don't know about SME; they only know Shiv Nadar that they have a
college" - Ravi
"SME is comparatively new, so it will take time to grow" - Chansy
"When you talk about the individual identity of the university people, I don't think people know
students of SME." - Saurav
"So, the University did not, they did not have such great credentials.”- Sahil

Theme 3 - Support of HCL Brand

Students & alumni from the graduating year of 2016 - 2021 mentioned that SME cherishes the
reputation of HCL Brand. SME has a large number of HCL candidates, who join back HCL after
the degree completion. As a result, it makes it difficult for non-HCL candidates to be placed. We
found out that non-HCL candidates suffer in terms of opportunities they get.

"SMEs reputation is based on HCL. Now, if anybody talks about SME or SNU in general, they're
talking about HCL. So, the reputation that HCL enjoys is being handed over to SME or SNU,
because it is a little bit newer." - Sahil
"SME is doing a lot, but somehow its reputation is very closely knit to HCL. So, it's treated like a
child of HCL." - Sahil
"Image in terms of placement is not really good in my mind. We had to struggle a lot because of
being a 10-batch student who are not from HCL. Nearly half of the students were placed from
the college. No. of opportunities a person gets are very-very less, very limited opportunity from
the college side." - Ayushi
"The only struggle I saw was, uh, there were very less people who were open candidates, just
seven of us. So, uh, whenever they tried to talk to a company and try to call them to campus, the
companies refused because they also wanted a bunch of people sitting in the interviews and then
they could select from the lot." - Tarun
"Our batch had a large no. HCL candidates, so try to find(companies) for them, probably didn't
seem profitable." - Chansy

Theme 4 - Placement Seeks Improvement

Students & alumni feel that SME lacks good opportunities. The internship and placement
opportunities can be improved. Job roles should be according to the requirements and
specializations of the student. We found out that CDC needs to broaden its horizons in terms of
marketing its students to the outside world. There is always some room for improvement. CDC
team needs to provide roles with differentiated job profiles and match placement packages at the
industry level.

"There was just one internship thing that came up, that was from Amul. That was a sales thing.
Those were 4 people who got selected but 3 of them opted out because they were asked to sit
behind the salesperson and go shop to shop and take orders." - Ayushi
"I arranged my paid internship with Havells India Ltd. College provided an unpaid internship. I
arranged my internship via LinkedIn." - Ayushi
"We, 10 students have no problem with the college. Talk to any of us. Be it anything- college,
faculty, facility, hostel anything. Everything is awesome. But when it comes to the outcome we
are here for, we really stand back for that." - Ayushi
"You need helping hand, mentor, some big name of sponsor, should approach big company
because they have lot of weightage in the market" - Ravi
"They should focus more on quality building that's something give them a good foundation going
to get some years ahead"-Ravi
"CDC team is lagging behind." - Aditya
"The roles that we were aspiring for, we were not placed in that we had to change our streams.
Despite being from a finance background, I had to go into an IT company." - Tarun

Theme 5 - Talented & Quality Students

Alumni as well as students feel that students at SME are good. They are appreciated at their
workplace. They are also doing good at their workplace and getting appreciation there. We found
out that graduates from SME are shining at the corporate offices with a wide set of skill sets and
managerial skills. Schools are hardworking and effective while working in teams.

"In terms of skills or knowledge. to be honest, we all are same."- Tarun

"Better in terms of presentation, speaking, confidence, creating the content, the research, all
those things, taken as a bundle, folks from SNU are better" - Tarun
“Company used to say that, uh, the people from Shiv Nadar University are really hardworking
and they devote a good time to the work that they do and their work is of A level quality.”-
Tarun
"I didn't see a lot of, you know, difference in the terms of skillset between me and my manager."-
Saurav

RECOMMENDATIONS
● SME should showcase their events and culture on their social media platforms widely.
● SME should present students’ talent in the public domain.
● The university can have more seats for non HCL students.
● SME can take advantage of Atal Incubation Centre in a better way to enhance a student's
entrepreneurial idea.
● They should focus on better quality of internship (paid) early and who can give Pre-
Placement offers.
● Placements and internship opportunities need to be worked upon.
● Marketing team should look for more market exploration and campaigns.
● Marketing team should play on SME strengths and promote that first.
● Number of admissions should be increased to attract more recruiters.
 ● CDC should connect with alumni who were placed outside of campus and reach their
companies through them.
● Separate recruitment process should be done for undergraduate and MBA students.
● Alumni network should be robust and wide.
● Alumni can motivate their company to visit for placement.
● Students who do internships outside should present SME in a better way.
● SME should not only market their faculties and facilities but their own student itself.

DISCUSSION
Branding of business schools has become the major aspect in maintaining and increasing the
brand equity, so as to attract high quality students and maintain their current students. It is a good
measure for every business school to check their brand equity from time to time. From our
qualitative and quantitative study, we found that it is important to work on brand loyalty, brand
awareness and CDC at a high standard as expected from their current students and alumni. SME
needs to work on the CDC, increase the placement partners and work on marketing strategies.

CONCLUSION
The study gives the results and analysis of how SME-MBA brand is perceived by alumni and
current MBA students. Though many researches have focused on how to measure the brand
equity of an education institute and how education institutes can increase the brand awareness
and brand reputation in the market but none of the research have done this for School of
management and entrepreneurship. This study looks at SME as a brand, what factors influence
its credibility, and where SME needs to boost its brand equity.

The research used a quantitative as well as qualitative approach to assess the brand equity of
SME. Alumni and current students were included in the research and analysis was done on the
data collected through surveys and in-depth interviews.
The result of the survey showed that brand loyalty, brand awareness and career development
centre were important factors for increasing the SME`s reputation. This would improve the brand
equity of the school.

The result of qualitative interviews show that SME has world class faculties accompanied by
excellent facilities & infrastructure. SME is a new emerging brand and till now its running with
the name of HCL founder. Students at SME are equally talented as that of any other B-school.
But the problem lies in terms of placement. Students are made to sit with UG students for their
recruitment process.

So, by working on above mentioned parameters, SME can successfully establish itself as a strong
brand in the market of universities.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We would like to express our gratitude to Prof. Paromita Goswami, Department of Marketing
Management (SME), for guiding us and giving us such an interesting project to work upon. We
would like to thank Prof. Jaideep Ghosh, DSAB Program Chair (SME), for helping us in
quantitative analysis for this project. We would also like to thank Prof. Deepak Sinha, for sharing
his research paper to help us for better understanding. We want to thank Divya Gogia for helping
us in the analysis of study. We would also like to thank Alumni’s` and current students for
supporting and giving us insights about SME`s brand equity.

TIMELINES
● Sample Proposal Submitted - 31st Jan
● Circulated the Questionnaire - 17th Feb
● Conduct In-depth Interviews -17th Feb
● Analyze the Interview Responses and Information – 18th Feb
● Interim Submission - 20th Feb
● Final Presentation Submission - 27th Feb
● Final Report - 12th March
THE TEAM STRUCTURE
● Ripudaman Singh Gajawat - Interview Panel, Reviewing Feedback
● Rishi Thakur - Interview Panel, Project Coordinator
● Sambhav Chaturvedi - Interview Panel, Content Designer
● Shantanu Agnihotry - Interview Panel, Project Coordinator, Quantitative data Analyst
● Shanu Gupt - Interview Panel, Content Writer, Qualitative data analyst
● Shatrudhan Kumar - Interview Panel, Data Sorting

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APPENDIX

Appendix 1
SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE

1. SME graduates have good job offers before or soon after graduation.
2. SME is well known academically.
3. SME has high academic standards.
4. SME graduates secure good job offers.
5. Based on the cost of tuition, SME offers an excellent educational value.
6. Companies prefer recruiting SME graduates.
7. SME is a well-known business school.
8. SME tag is well-recognized in respective professions.
9. The graduates of SME earn more than average industry pay.
10. SMEs career Development center helps students search for jobs.
11. SMEs career development center offers internship opportunities.
12. SME offers opportunities such as projects, community work as a part of its educational
program.
13. SME offers a career development center with supportive resources that help students to
apply for job opportunities.
14. SME’s career development center organizes alumni networking events.
15. SME’s faculty are knowledgeable in their domain.
16. SME’s faculty are available to help students.
17. SME’s faculty are approachable for students' questions and concerns.
18. SME’s faculty think about students’ needs.
19. SME faculties are responsive to student needs.
20. SME provides a friendly and cooperative environment
21. SME provides the students with a sense of society.
22. The relationship between student and faculty are interactive.
23. SME graduates are proud to have other people know that they will have a degree from
SME.
24. SME graduates are proud of the university.
25. SME graduates recommend the university to others.
26. SME is widely known.
27. SME's logo is instantly distinguishable.
28. SME is among the first to come to mind when one thinks of all universities in the
country.
Appendix 2
ALUMNI

1. Where are you working right now?

2. What’s your role in that organization?
3. How long have you been working with your company?
4. Do you have colleagues from other business schools?
5. What do you think differentiates you from them in terms of the skill set that a company
requires?
6. What image comes to your mind when you hear about SNU’s School of Management &
Entrepreneurship?
7. Did you pursue any other certification courses after graduating from SNU?
8. Is there any aspect of your training in SME that is helping in your job right now?
9. Did you work somewhere before joining SNU?
10. Now that you handle different types of situations in your organization, how do you
handle them?
11. How did you feel before joining SNU and how are you feeling now after graduating?
12. What is the image that is coming to your mind of SNU after all this?
13. What was the image of SME for recruiters?
14. What do you think about SMEs branding?
15. Do your colleagues know about SNU?
16. What should SNU do to improve its branding?

CURRENT MBA STUDENTS 2019-21

1. What is your specialization?

2. What is your area of interest? Which kind of job are you looking for?
3. What did you do before coming to SNU?
4. What did SNU do?
5. What did you learn at SNU?
6. Now that you handled situations before, how do you handle them now?
7. Did you get an internship from SNU?
 8. Were your class learnings helpful during the internship?
9. Did you have students from other business schools during your internship?
10. What difference do you find between you and them?
11. What was the image of SME for recruiters?
12. What did it give you?
13. If you have friends in other business schools, what do you get there and what are your
friends learning, is it that they are learning something other than you have?
14. How did you think about how others performed vs your performance?
15. Have you ever participated in competitions other than SME, SNU?
16. Was there any difference you felt that what your training was here and what your friends’
training was there?
17. What challenges are you facing in terms of placements?
18. Comparable schools - same kind fees, branding - how is it different from SME?

CURRENT MBA STUDENTS 2020-22

1. How is your quarter going?

2. What specialization are you looking for?
3. What is your area of interest?
4. What were you doing before coming to SME? Have you worked before?
5. In what ways SME is enhancing your skills?
6. What are your new learnings at SME?
7. Now that you have handled situations before, how different will be your approach now?
8. Have you applied for any internship so far?
9. Do you have friends from other business schools?
10. What difference do you find between you and them?
11. What type of training are they getting?
12. In what ways are they different from yours?
13. What challenges are you facing during your course curriculum?
Appendix 3
SAMPLE DATA

Name (Anonymized) Graduation Year Roles Interview

Duration

Sahil 2020 Pre-Sales 00:35:16

Consultant at HCL

Chansy 2020 Pre-Sales at HCL 00:31:06

Tarun 2019 Associate 00:26:04

Consultant at
KPMG Global
Services

Mansa 2019 Entrepreneur in 00:22:01

Residence at India
Accelerator

Ayushi 2020 Sales Trainer at 00:23:27

India Infrastructure
Training
 Vicky 2021 Non-HCL 00:31:45
Candidate

Saurav 2021 Non-HCL 00:23:59

Candidate

Ravi 2021 Non-HCL 00:35:57

Candidate

Aditya 2022 HCL Candidate 00:18:18

John 2022 Non-HCL 00:33:46

Candidate

Total Interview Hours 04:40:19

Appendix 4
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ne_UEFTG4NKEav8-QNA4KQJyf-zHgCM1?
usp=sharing

Link includes - Quantitative Raw Data, Qualitative Raw Data, Interview Data.