Branding from the Inside: A Qualitative Study of How Marketing and Admissions Officials Construct and implement Brand strategy in Bangladeshi Private Universities

Abstract Bangladesh’s private university sector has grown from a handful of institution in the 1990s to 117 today but most research on university branding looks only at students how they choose a university. This study fills that gap by interviewing the people who do the branding: Marketing Officers, Admissions Head and Senior Managers. Using a qualitative, multi case study it draws on 15 semi structured interviews across 10 private universities chosen to represent different institution types (Elite, Entrepreneurial, Accessible/Affordable, Regional, Rural) and locations. The interviews were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis, producing four themes mapped to the study research questions. Officials of every type of university described ‘brand’ as a promise to the students, but what that promise contained depended on the university resources: inherited reputation at established universities, affordability at mid-tier universities, and basic credibility at regional and rural ones. Two problems recurred; departments publishing outdated materials without central approval, reported at eight of ten universities and a delay between leadership decisions and those decisions reaching frontline staff, reported at seven of ten. Together these patterns point to one underlying mechanism- centralized, cautious decision-making that is not reliably communicated downward whose cause differs by institution types from excess caution at elite universities to plain lack of budget at regional and rural ones. This study extends institutional branding theory into Bangladesh’s private university sector not previously studied this way and suggests that an institution’s resource level should be treated as a factor shaping how branding happens, not just a background variable.