THE INFLUENCE OF CUSTOMER-BASED SERVICES VIEWED FROM POPULARITY, PRICE, ASSOCIATION AND STUDENT LOYALTY ANALYSIS OF HIGH DISTANCE LEARNING SERVICEING

Tight college rivalry is getting tougher. This can be proven from the opening of the implementation of Distance Education (PJJ). Now there are six who do PJJ, among others: Bina Nusantara University, University of Indonesia (UI), Universitas Gajah Mada (UGM), Institute of Technology Surabaya (ITS), Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) and AMIKOM Jogjakarta (Paulina in republika.co.id 2015). This reality requires the Open University (UT) to improve its quality and services. In marketing management there are various strategies that can be applied to maintain the survival of an organization in the face of competitors including the Open University, one of them is to pay attention to brand association and brand loyalty to the organization. The purpose of this research is 1) to know the level of significance of each element of the brand equity variable in building the brand equity of the Open University, 2) to know the series of promotional programs that have been run, the strengths and weaknesses and whether the effort has formed the desired image of management and 3) To find out if UT's promotional efforts can improve customer loyalty. Methodology in this research is qualitative and qualitative descriptive to strengthen data and facts in field and measurement tools with approach of Structure Equation Modeling (SEM) with. The sample in this study is 150 UT students from UPBJJ-UT representative in West, Central and Eastern part of Indonesia for Basic Education and Non-Basic Education program. The scale is done with the four Likert scale. From the results of this study found that H1. Popularity positively affects brand UT An additional price of a brand. H2 Has no effect on the UT Brand association and UT brand because there is a match between the service and the amount of money the student pays. H3. the loyalty of students has a positive influence on the UT Brand Association (students still do re-purchase /re-registration). The conclusions and suggestions in this research Brand UT is not well known proven Top Of mind is still occupied by conventional colleges so influential on the popularity Contribution of customer satisfaction over the service given the UPBJJ-UT / UT / Pokjar partners positively affects the loyalty of students and positive consideration for repurchase The gradual and significant increase of prices has no effect on the re-purchase / re-registration of students provided that supported by the optimal and balanced student service between the amount paid with the services provided