Australia is the place that owns a great higher education industry. This industry consists of all the colleges and the universities that cater their services to the students of Australia as well as students from outside Australia with the educational programs and courses. In accordance with the change in the environment and the requirement of the students in Australia, changes have been observed in the higher education industry as well (Durkin, McKenna & Cummins, 2012). These changes are related to the introduction of education program that focuses on job readiness knowledge. This industry has been observed to be very competitive because all the education providers are serving the students with as many programs as possible that focus on high quality learning and research. Research has also become the great part of education these days.
As the market of higher education industry in Australia is concerned, it seems to be very competitive these days. The main reason behind high competition persistence among the industry is large number of education providers. The higher education providers that involves the private and public universities of Australia accounts for around 173 in number that serves around 1.4 million students (Foxall, 2014).
PEST analysis:
PEST analysis is the tool that helps the company to evaluate the impact of the external factors on the internal functioning of the company. PEST analysis determines the factors related to political framework, social environment, economic environment and technological environment of the country or the industry. Below is the explanation of impact of all these factors on Australian National University.
Political factors:
In Australia, bureaucracy is followed at some extent in the processes. Due to this bureaucracy, the environment of higher education industry of Australia becomes complicated. In terms of government interference, the government of Australia is providing great support to the investors especially the private investor to start up their higher education firm in Australia (Gale & Parker, 2013). However, the government is focusing on the quality of the education these universities are serving. For this purpose, government asks for the proposal of the businesses that involves the advantages and benefits the country can get from the business processes. The higher education authority in Australia has released a consultation paper that provides the feedback of the people regarding the new reforms made by the government for the industry.
Economic factors:
Economy of the country affects all the industries operating in the country. This is because if the economy of the country fluctuates then the spending power of the investors as well as the customers also gets affected. As far as the Australian economy is concerned, it has observed to be gradually increasing with time (Gale & Tranter, 2011). This gradual increase supports the industries in the country to conduct their operations. As the economy of the country improves, the disposable income of the people increase and thus they tend to spend more in their education.
Social factors: Social factors can be defined as the beliefs and values of the local people living in the country (Grant, 2016). For a company, it is very important to analyze these factors and to make the products accordingly. I terms of education industry, the Australian people have been observed to be very much interested in getting higher education and thus it supports the business of education providers. The social beliefs of getting higher education in Australia also attract the international students to come and study here.
Technological factors: Advancement in the technology affects the education industry very much. This is because the education providers need to change their programs or the patterns of study according to the latest technology persisting in the market (Helms & Nixon, 2010). Being updated technologically is very important for all the universities of Australia to attract the students. The latest technology that has been used these days is Bring Your Own Device model. This model helps the students to bring their own devices to the university for study purposes.
Marketing mix is the tool that focuses on determining the 4 p’s associated with the firm. These 4p’s can be explained as product, price, place and promotion.
Product: Product can be defined as the goods or service a company is offering to the market. In term of education industry, the product can be the educational program offered by the universities. Australian National University is the university that caters the students by providing them range of educational programs in marketing, arts, science, business, management etc. (Hollensen, 2015). It not only serves the students with educational programs but also serves them with the research opportunities.
Price: As discussed that higher education industry is very competitive in nature, it is very important for the university like Australian National University to charge the fees according to the norms of the industry and according to the fees of the other competitor universities. In general the price of the products in this industry is based on the field of study and the program.
Place: The University owns many campuses but the main cause of the university is located at Canberra Australia. This is called as the head campus of the university because all the major operation such as Human resource, finance mad marketing are done from this campus only.
Promotion: As the company is into education business so it has to promote its services from different mediums. Sponsorship allows the company to create awareness about the brand among the students and web marketing help in making people know about the viability of courses at the university.
Due to involvement of government and its initiative in the higher education system of Australia, it is considered as very competitive. There are many universities that are on top of t either education industry and compete with each other.
The list above shows the competitors for the University of Melbourne in Australia. The competition is very close in University of Melbourne and Australian National University. The increase in number of students among other universities and the innovative strategies of universities to attract the students act as a driving force for University of Melbourne to come up with strategies like growing esteem.
University of Melbourne
The university focuses on the growing esteem strategy to position itself as the university that serves all the educational programs to the people. The university is engaged into serving the students with research programs, educational programs and external engagement activities (Jobber & Ellis-Chadwick, 2012). This allows the organization to segment its market or the students into two sections that is international and national. The university has different programs from its international and national students according to their interest. Target market of the university is its international students as it is very important for the university to increase its international student’s number so as to compete with the competitors.
Value and brand positioning of the company can be defined by its strategy to position itself in the minds of the customers. As discussed earlier that the company believes in the strategy of growing esteem. This strategy allows the company to position the brand in the market related to their aspects. The first one is the brand that serves the customers with international research opportunities, second is related to the provision of educational programs and courses and third one is external engagement activities. Through this strategy, company claims to be one of the finest universities in Australia (Kotler, Keller, Manceau & Hémonnet-Goujot, 2015).
Strength:
In accordance with the THE ranking of 2016-17, University of Melbourne is amongst the top universities in Australia s well as in world. It is one of the universities of the country that has made its place in top 50 universities of the world (Stromquist & Monkman, 2014). So, the world ranking of the university acts as strength of the same. Strength of the university is the number of international students. There are around 12000 are more international students who have been enrolled with the university.
This figure shows that University of Melbourne is ahead of Australian National University in terms of student’s revenue but still has to compete with university of Sydney.
Weakness:
The weakness of the university can be explains as its versatility. This is because; it is not possible for the university to concentrate on all the activities at the same time. Unlike Australian National University that focuses on research purposes more, University of Melbourne is not concentrating on one program and trying to acquire the market for all the fields (Theaustralian,2017).
Opportunities:
According to the analysis it has been identified that the company needs to maintain the balance between its activities in order to achieve objective of triple helix that is related to its growing esteem strategy. So, the first opportunity for the university is to integrate all its activities so that it can maintain the balance between its strategies. Another opportunity of the company is to engage more in research purpose as it has enormous number of students so the university has the chance to look for another program at this time.
Threats:
The biggest threat for the university is to maintain its internal program and activities in accordance with its strategies and other bug threat is its competitors, the biggest competitor for the university is Australian National University (Times Higher Education, 2017). Although, University of Melbourne is on the top of the universities list but the second number is of Australian National University. The efficient research programs of ANU give tough competition to University of Melbourne in this field.
Conclusion:
The report concludes that University of Melbourne is the university that falls under the top universities of Australia and world. the marketing analysis of the company suggest that it is doing a great job in its field but have to come up with new ideas to compete with its competitors. The company is committed with its strategy of growing esteem and trying to be the finest university in Australia by its efforts.
References:
Durkin, M., McKenna, S., & Cummins, D. (2012). Emotional connections in higher education marketing. International Journal of Educational Management, 26(2), 153-161.
Foxall, G. (2014). Strategic Marketing Management (RLE Marketing) (Vol. 3). Routledge.
Gale, T., & Parker, S. (2013). Widening participation in Australia in higher education.
Gale, T., & Tranter, D. (2011). Social justice in Australian higher education policy: An historical and conceptual account of student participation. Critical studies in education, 52(1), 29-46.
Grant, R. M. (2016). Contemporary strategy analysis: Text and cases edition. John Wiley & Sons.
Helms, M. M., & Nixon, J. (2010). Exploring SWOT analysis–where are we now? A review of academic research from the last decade. Journal of strategy and management, 3(3), 215-251.
Hollensen, S. (2015). Marketing management: A relationship approach. Pearson Education.
Jobber, D., & Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2012). Principles and practice of marketing (No. 7th). McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Kotler, P., Keller, K. L., Manceau, D., & Hémonnet-Goujot, A. (2015). Marketing management (Vol. 14). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Stromquist, N. P., & Monkman, K. (Eds.). (2014). Globalization and education: Integration and contestation across cultures. R&L Education.
Theaustralian (2017) Australia strong on modern languages. Theaustralian.com.au. Retrieved 31 March 2017, from https://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/australian-national-university-has-the-best-ranking-to-date-for-philosophy-according-to-new-rankings/news-story/0c1c414ee263ac30558f64c3b4586a61
Times Higher Education (THE) (2017) Australian National University. Retrieved 31 March 2017, from https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/australian-national-university#ranking-dataset/558261
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