Social Media As A Destination Marketing Tool – A Study On De Montfort University

Cutting the Distance in Distance Education

1. The reputation of the University: The De Montfort University is one of the most recognized universities in England. The university has been awarded a ‘Gold rating’ in the year 2017 by the UK Department of Education under the ‘Teaching Excellence Framework’ for providing consistently outstanding performance in the field of teaching. Not only that, in 2014, the Research Excellence framework announced more than 60 percent of the research activities of the De Montfort University’s ‘internationally excellent’ research activities (ac.uk. 2018).
2. Resources of the University: The University has more than 27000 full and part-time students, 3240 teaching and non-teaching staffs. The campus of the university is comprised of ten residential halls that offer approximately 3000 university sourced room. The location of the university is highly beneficial since it is just a ten minute’s walk from the Leicester City centre. The four library sites on campus comprised of the three ancillaries and Kimberlin Library.
3. The course currently offered by the university: The University offers numerous numbers of undergraduate and postgraduate study courses along with several part-time study courses. The subjects offered by the mentioned university include Art, Humanities, Design, Business, Law, Health science, Life science, Technology and Creative technologies (University 2018). Considering the fact that very few international universities offer this vast ranges of course as offered by the mentioned university, this factor can be considered as the strength of the university.

The course fee of the University: Being a highly popular university, the admission fees of De Montfort University is 7000 pound for the students residing in the United Kingdom and European Union (Dmu.ac.uk. 2018).

Students need to pay additional costs: Apart from that, students require additional investment for buying study materials, travel to work placements and print documents. While all the core textbooks are available in the library of the university, students are also allowed to access the only library of the University for free.

For international students, the admission fees of the mentioned university for undergraduate student ranges from 12,750 pounds to 13,250 pounds depending on the subject. For B.Sc. nursing course, however, the fees are 14,950 pounds. The admission fees of the Postgraduate degree ranges from 13,000 to 13,600 pounds. Considering the high amount of course fees, the university has implemented two instalment plans. While the 1^stinstallment plan includes payment of 50 percent of the fees within 4^th week of enrolment and pays the remaining fees in three instalments. In the second instalment plan, 50 percent of the entry fees need to be paid within the 4^th week and the remaining money should be paid in 7 instalments still the month of May in the next year (University 2018).

1. Expanding the business through distance learning modes: Considering the fact that DMU has gained an immense amount of popularity both in the UK and among international students, the university should implement distance education system in order to expand its business in the global market.
2. The utilisation of brand value: DMU University is awarded multiple for their valuable activities within the education field. Therefore, The University can use their honourable reputation and valuable portfolio in order to achieve extended consumer segment across the world through various online and offline based promotional activities.

1. Competition: Some of the major competitors of this university include University of Central Lancashire and the University of East London (Rothaermel 2015). The number of distance courses offered by these universities are vast enough to attract international students for distance education
2. Focus on the Blue collar jobs: Due to high availability and payment in the blue-collar careers, college education in the international market is becoming less crucial.

The high reputation of DMU University is one of its major strength. Not only among the students of UK and US, a huge number of students across the world, get admitted to the university every year. Considering the fact that the De Montfort University is one of the largest universities in the UK, the resources of the universities can be considered as one of its major strengths. However, the mentioned university provides a vast range of bursaries along with effective library resources to support the learning activities. The high admission fees of the University can be considered as one of its major weaknesses. Since the fees of De Montfort University are pretty high compared to that of its local and global competitors, several students may select the competitor universities for their distance education. Apart from that, students’ needs to pay additional costs along with optional extras associated with the courses.

DMU University can use their honourable reputation and valuable portfolio in order to achieve extended consumer segment across the world. They can provide additional accommodation and residential facilities for foreign students to keep them motivated (Hays, Page and Buhalis 2013). The University also formulate their admission fees by incorporating the price of study materials and other additional expenditure through offering the package based course.  De Montfort University can also use online marketing and online promotional activities as advanced promotional tools. DMU University can also improvise online admission and test-based scholarship system through which they can penetrate the global market of the higher education industry. The university can also articulate their various fees structure by providing extra facilities to international scholar students. Apart from that, De Montfort University can recruit more efficient and professional teaching and non-teaching staffs in order to uplift their overall quality of service.

Course Fee of De Montfort University

Part 2

Porter’ five forces analysis of DMU

According to the researchers, the global higher education sector is facing a perfect storm across its competitive landscape since the last 5 years (Rothaermel 2015). Therefore before extending its market in the global educational sector, DMU should analyze the market trends of higher education prevailing across the world as well as in the UK. In order to analyze the external market of DMU, Porters five forces analysis has been performed.

The intensity of competition in the higher education market of UK as well as across the world is high. The reason behind this is the availability of a large number of institutes with similar market shares. This factor has increased the competition between the universities both for the academic market of UK as well as for overseas market. According to a survey, the number of Higher education Institute funded by Higher Education Funding Council of England is 130, out of which 122 higher education institutes receives direct funding from HEFCE (Trainor et al. 2014). Moreover, the government of England is focusing on enhancing the number of universities and as a result, the intensity of competition is expected to be higher in the upcoming years. Some of the major competitors of DMU include the University of Central Lancashire and the University of East London.

Threat from substitute

Considering the fact that DMU is planning to expand its business through distance learning, the threat from a substitute for the mentioned university is moderate. The two possible substitutes for distance learning is traditional HE model and alternative degree routs (Schaper 2016). In spite of the fact that the demand for perusing full-time course with the help of traditional business model is high, several students are found to be proffering distance education as their course of study due to the massive availability of internet and trustworthy delivery and supply of information.

 Power of the suppliers

In the UK, the power of the suppliers is high. The power of the suppliers is highly dependent on the government policy as well as the funding model. According to the government, the reforms of UK are designed to deliver a highly responsive higher education sector. The funding is supposed to follow the success of the institute and the decision of the learners (Dobbs 2014).

Considering the fact that the numbers of universities along with other higher education sectors are increasing globally, the strength of suppliers when it comes to distance learning mode is high. Besides that, tuition fees can be considered as another reason for the increased strength of buyers. Since the students are now directly a part of Higher education income, the consumerist approach over the year has increased. Students have numerous options to choose from while considering going for distance learning (Sung and Mayer, 2012). Not only the students, in recent years, employees are also getting increasingly vocal about demanding their requirements from the universities.

Additional Costs Associated with the University

The threat of new entrants

The threat of new entrance is all about the barriers to entry in a specific market as well as the attractiveness of the market. When the question comes about the attractiveness of the Higher education sector, it can be clearly understood that the market is highly attractive. According to a recent survey, more than 2 million students are getting benefited from the Higher education in England (Hays, Page and Buhalis 2013). Not only that, when it comes to international students, UK stands in the second position, the first being the USA. The total income of higher secondary educations in the UK is more than 30 billion pounds. However, the chief barrier faced by new providers who want to enter the market of higher education is the student number controls along with the slow and complicated processes designed for obtaining university title. Taking the above discussion into account, it can be stated that the threat of new entrance for the DE Montfort University is moderate.  

After going through the above Porter’s five forces analysis of global Higher education market, it can be understood that the mentioned university needs to develop a set of objects so that it can acquire success in the global market associated with distance education. A set of 5 objectives that should be fulfilled by the university in near future have been mentioned below:

Objectives	Key Performance Indicator
1. In spite of the fact that DMU is highly popular in England, the University needs to strengthen its brand positioning in order to attract international students (Schaper 2016).	The university will rank within the top 30 universities in the world by 2020
2. Secondly, the university needs to raise the level of understanding the requirement of consumers that is the students and the global market trends.	The communications, Virtual environment and IT will meet accessibility by 2020.
3. The University needs to develop targeted communication campaigns	The application for admission of the international students will increase by20 percent till the end of 2020.

For achieving the above-mentioned objectives, the Critical Success Factors for DMU are as follows:

• Effective support from top management that includes leadership, the creation of award system an incentive policy, allocation of sufficient resources and adequate trading provisions.
• Stake holder’s investments that include good communication among stakeholder and proper understanding of the vision and goal of the project.

Link to 2 online documents: 1. https://www.dmu.ac.uk/     2. https://www.hotcoursesabroad.com/india/uk/school-college-university/de-montfort-university/3516/international.html

Part 3

Considering the fact that the two most dominant issues that act as a demotivation for students who want to go for distance education are culture and trust issues, DMU must promote and address their cultural and trust policies in order to encourage more and more students to take admission for their online distance learning courses (Rothaermel 2015). In order to address both cultural and trust issues of student reported online, DMU should investigate on the matter within 24 hours and for any type of cross-cultural issues, the accused if found guilty should be warned and highly fined. In case of any trust issues related to the payment of fees, the university should refund the money to the student in the complaints are found to be justified.  

Methods of using online communication tools to reach potential target consumers

One of the most effective ways that can be used by DMU to reach out to its potential consumers is to use popular social media platforms for promotional and communicational purposes. Considering the fact that in this era of modernization, the youths are highly inclined to the usage of social media platform for official and personal purposes, promotion through social media can attract a huge number of students. In addition to that, usage of social media platforms as a promotional and communication tool is highly cost-effective (Schaper 2016). Some of the most popular social media platforms that can be used by DMU are Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. These platforms will enable the university to directly communicate with the students, understand their requirement and answer their queries. This, in turn, will enhance their consumer loyalty and brands equity.

Reference List

Boling, E.C., Hough, M., Krinsky, H., Saleem, H. and Stevens, M., 2012. Cutting the distance in distance education: Perspectives on what promotes positive, online learning experiences. The Internet and Higher Education, 15(2), pp.118-126.

Dmu.ac.uk. (2018). De Montfort University – Leicester, UK. [online] Available at: https://www.dmu.ac.uk/ [Accessed 29 Mar. 2018].

Dobbs, M., 2014. Guidelines for applying Porter’s five forces framework: a set of industry analysis templates. Competitiveness Review, 24(1), pp.32-45.

Hays, S., Page, S.J. and Buhalis, D., 2013. Social media as a destination marketing tool: its use by national tourism organisations. Current issues in Tourism, 16(3), pp.211-239.

Rothaermel, F.T., 2015. Strategic management. McGraw-Hill Education, pp. 234-237.

Schaper, M. ed., 2016. Making ecopreneurs: developing sustainable entrepreneurship. CRC Press, pp. 123-126

Sung, E. and Mayer, R.E., 2012. Five facets of social presence in online distance education. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(5), pp.1738-1747.

Trainor, K.J., Andzulis, J.M., Rapp, A. and Agnihotri, R., 2014. Social media technology usage and customer relationship performance: A capabilities-based examination of social CRM. Journal of Business Research, 67(6), pp.1201-1208.

University, D. (2018). De Montfort University, UK – Ranking, Reviews, Courses, Tuition Fees. [online] Hotcoursesabroad.com. Available at: https://www.hotcoursesabroad.com/india/uk/school-college-university/de-montfort-university/3516/international.html [Accessed 29 Mar. 2018].