Decision Support Framework for Educational Institution Brand Positioning and Competitive Advantage
Annotatsiya
Research has shown that educational institutions with distinctive branding strategies outperform the competition more consistently, and there is also growing evidence that they depend less on traditional information sources like the institutional reputation index. In this study, we focus on the analytical hierarchy of brand positioning and model the relationship between competitive dimensions and the perception of strategic advantage of higher education institutions. This framework illustrates how the decision support model has evolved to bring about the measurable differentiation by providing multi-criteria analyses of the following critical parameters: the academic quality, the institutional visibility, the innovation capacity, the stakeholder perception, and the market orientation. To validate our empirical framework, we link pairwise comparison matrices by applying AHP–TOPSIS in combination with regression techniques to their outcomes in an integrated model. This approach allows us to derive insights more systematically than conventional evaluations while connecting these dimensions to institutional performance and market competitiveness of universities. The results show that brand-driven institutions leave stronger impressions in stakeholder perception, but the correlation is dynamic and highly dependent on the contextual attributes of a specific institution. Despite these variations, the analytical findings show that decision-based frameworks still enhance their capacity from data- driven evaluations. As Uzbekistan's higher education sector has witnessed rapid transformation in the domain of brand identity and institutional competition, this deviation from the original assumptions and design is both significant and relevant in the context. As such, the study contributes empirical validation and conceptual innovation in educational branding research.