Study-abroad decision-making – Combining marketing and behavioral economics perspectives

Student mobility has grown substantially in the past decades. Study abroad opportunities provide long-lasting advantages for students but, at the same time, represent complex decisions for applicants, usually involving a high degree of uncertainty. This paper aims to obtain a deeper understanding of study-abroad decision-making in higher education by combining marketing and behavioral economics perspectives. The authors conducted in-depth interviews with North African scholarship holders and adapted the customer journey framework to a study abroad decision context. Three stages of the customer journey were considered: the pre-application stage, the application stage, and the post-admittance stage. Loss aversion, group identification, social norms, endowment effects, and priming, as core concepts from behavioral economics, were identified and enriched the practical implications of the customer journey framework. Higher education institutions may benefit from our findings when designing their communication and recruiting strategies.