Doctoral thesis of Philosophy: Word-of-mouth processing and higher education choice factors

This thesis is presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the College of Business, RMIT University. It includes five scientific papers which have been submitted and are currently under review or accepted for publication in targeted journals. These papers comprise one conceptual paper and four empirical papers. The five papers report studies on two related themes: (1) wordof-mouth processing, examined in the higher education context; and (2) higher education choice factors, and the delivery of the choice factor information in word-ofmouth communication.