Abstract:
The literature emphasizes students as prominent ambassadors representing Higher Education
Institutions (HEIs) to prospective students and other key stakeholders. The survival and growth
of HEIs depend on students as university assets. Therefore, special attention should be invested
to investigate how HEIs can engage them to gain preferable benefits, including
ambassadorship. However, little is known about the predictors of the university brand
ambassadorship behaviour to students of HEIs. This is an attempt to examine how university
brand ambassadorship behaviour can be cultivated in students of HEIs. The model was
developed and tested using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to 309 students of two
colleges of the Higher education sector in Tanzania. The findings show that Internal Market
Orientation (IMO) cultivates university brand ambassadorship to students of HEIs. Additionally,
university brand knowledge and university brand identification mediate the relationship
between IMO and university brand ambassadorship behaviour. The findings suggest that brand
ambassadorship behaviour is relationship-based behaviuor, and hence relational investment
should be considered a driver of such behavior. Therefore, HEIs should invest in IMO as an
internal branding tool to build university brand ambassadorship behaviour to their students.
