Faced with increased competition, business schools seem to have realized that having the strongest brands, hence, a distinct image, is vital to strengthening their presence in the education market. It is in this context that the presented paper focuses on assessing the dimensions of brand equity of business schools from the MBA-enrolled student’s perspective, with a specific reference to the Peruvian market. In this regard, it builds an instrument around five dimensions of brand equity, namely, brand loyalty, brand association, brand awareness, perceived quality, and overall brand perception. Additionally, it furnishes a snapshot of the Peruvian business schools sector by means of providing the order of dimensions pertaining to each business school. The analysis suggests that perceived quality seems to be the most important dimension of brand equity, while the overall brand perception is almost always ranked last. Conceptualizing brand equity from the MBA-enrolled student’s perspective can prove to be useful as this framework could assist business schools in designing marketing strategies to improve their brand equity and gain a higher student share.

The presented study is a primary initiative in the Peruvian literature for understanding the factors which influence undergraduate students´ choice of a B-school offering a Master´s Degree in Business Administration. A self-administered questionnaire and focus group discussions were used in order to collect data from 700 respondents, with a usable response rate of 92%. Analysis of the data was carried on through exploratory factor analysis. The seven revealed factors which accounted for 63.2082% of the total variance were: Corporate Social Responsibility, Essentials of an MBA Program, Quality Yardsticks, Entrepreneurship, Location, MBA Technical Specifications, and Physical Facilities. Entrepreneurship education should be addressed primarily, as entrepreneurship is vital for economic growth in Peru. In order to raise their value proposition, B-schools are expected to take true initiatives in the CSR area and promote entrepreneurship education in their curricula, through both business-skills training and practical support given by the B-school.