Educational Marketing And Academic Engagement: Integrating Aba Principles And Flow Into A Strategic Student-Centered Model

The contemporary educational system is confronted with accelerated digitalisation, attention deficits, and a steadily declining level of student motivation. This study proposes an innovative framework for educational marketing, built upon the integration of Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) principles and Flow Theory. The paper aims to highlight educational strategies capable of fostering intrinsic motivation and active student participation, thereby transforming the learning process into an experience perceived as both relevant and valuable for their personal and professional development. Accordingly, the research seeks to examine how six behavioural dimensions - adaptive learning, gamification, immediate feedback, educational storytelling, belonging to the academic community, and institutional communication - may relate to student engagement, alongside the state of Flow, regarded as an additional emotional predictor. To the best of current knowledge, this is the first study to propose an integrated framework that unites the six ABA strategic dimensions with Flow Theory, applied specifically to Romanian higher education, to analyse their impact on students' academic engagement. Statistical analysis, conducted on a sample of 182 students, confirmed the validity of the proposed model (R² = 0.617), demonstrating that academic engagement is primarily explained by institutional communication, gamification, and Flow. The study advances educational marketing through an integrated vision that combines experiential pedagogy, behavioural psychology, and educational communication. By adapting ABA to higher education, the research also generates practical benefits, providing educational managers with an applicable tool for designing meaningful academic experiences that support both the teaching process and institution-level strategies aimed at enhancing student engagement and performance.