GILMAR Enrollment Acceleration Model and Student Application Intention in Higher Education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35870/ijmsit.v6i2.8692Keywords:
GILMAR, Campus Attractiveness, Social Media Exposure, Higher Education Marketing, Stimulus–Organism–Response, PLS-SEMAbstract
Private higher education institutions increasingly compete through institutional values, perceived attractiveness, and digital visibility rather than through promotion alone. Drawing on the stimulus–organism–response (S–O–R) paradigm, this study develops and tests the GILMAR Enrollment Acceleration Model, which positions five value-based institutional marketing dimensions (resilience, adaptability, communicativeness, total commitment, and innovativeness) as antecedents of campus attractiveness, campus attractiveness as the mechanism driving prospective students' behavioral intention to apply, and social media exposure as a moderator of that relationship. A quantitative explanatory design was applied to 300 senior high school students and graduates in Surabaya, Indonesia, who had actively searched for campus information and were selected through purposive sampling. The data were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling in SmartPLS 4 with 5,000 bootstrap subsamples. Adaptability (β = 0.337), innovativeness (β = 0.306), total commitment (β = 0.279), and resilience (β = 0.163) significantly increase campus attractiveness, whereas communicativeness does not (β = 0.055; p = 0.133). Campus attractiveness strongly increases behavioral intention to apply (β = 0.468), and social media exposure positively moderates this relationship (β = 0.255; p < 0.001), raising the simple slope from 0.212 at low exposure to 0.723 at high exposure. The model explains 56.3% of the variance in campus attractiveness and 57.0% of the variance in behavioral intention to apply. Enrollment intention is therefore driven by visible institutional substance rather than by communication alone, with social media exposure operating as a boundary condition that amplifies campus attractiveness rather than as a direct driver of enrollment. Universities should prioritize adaptive programs, innovation, and service commitment, supported by consistent and evidence-based social media content.
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