BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF MARKET SEGMENTATION RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION

The purpose of the study is to conduct a bibliometric analysis of scientific literature in the field of segmentation of the higher education to determine the degree of relevance and study of the problem and identify the main trends.

Research methodology. The collection of relevant scientific articles with bibliometric method was carried out in the Scopus database with keywords "marketing in higher education", "consumers", "higher education", "market segmentation". The study of scientific publications containing the relationship between marketing in higher education and segmentation was conducted. Scopus database analytics was used to visualize the data, and the VOSviewer software was used to analyze keywords.

The originality of the research lies in the systematisation of main approaches in segmentation and is one of the first studies with contribution to strategic segmentation in higher education. This study identifies key areas, central authors, and gaps.

The results of the study. The bibliometric analysis was carried out on 90 scientific articles, of which 20 articles with a high citation level from 10 international scientific journals. The results show a significant increase in interest in segmentation in the higher education, which is reflected in increasing number of publications on education, marketing, and social sciences. Many studies pay attention to the segmentation of students, but the target audience considered as applicants, parents, employers, and graduates. For future research, the authors recommend focusing on the segmentation of international students, urban and rural segments of students, and the graduate segmentation and consider specifics of higher education segmentation in Kazakhstan.

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