Governance Strategy for the Social Relationships Between Alumni and Their Alma Mater

Although prior studies in relationship marketing have greatly enhanced our understanding of alumni-university relationships, there has been considerably little empirical investigation of three managerial problems. The first problem is that while the economic benefits (e.g., profits or costs) of conventional business relationships receive much research attention, the noneconomic benefits or social benefits are not specifically studied (e.g., pride, enjoyment, networking, and friendship). The second problem is that we largely do not know the specific mechanism about how the social benefits created by a university can be converted into the resources that the university wants to obtain. For example, a university may want to know how the alumni homecoming event, the most popular alumni program offered by many universities, will result in alumni participation or monetary support. The last problem is that alumni can easily exit the relationship with their former university whenever the costs required to remain in the relationship with the university are greater than the benefits.