Discuss about the Marketing and Competitive Environment Analysis.
Deakin University was established in 1974. Deakin was among the first universities to be established and offer distance learning in the region of Victoria. It has five branches distributed in the areas of Eastern suburbs, Geelong and Warrnambool regions. Deakin is among the fast growing university offering cloud courses and is ranked fifth in cloud education. Also, the university also has international offices in Indonesia, India, and China among other regions. Deakin has four faculties offering a range of courses to its many students of over fifty-three thousand population. More than twenty-four percent of this population learns in the cloud. The university is ranked as number eight in Australian universities (Philip, 2010).
On the other hand, La Trobe University as a competitor to Deakin was established in 1967 in Victoria. It has many campuses distributed in Mildura, Shepparton, Sydney, Bendigo, Albury-Wodonga among many others (La Trobe University, 2015). The university is mostly seen by many to be strong in arts and humanities. The university has a population of about thirty-six thousand students, of which seven thousand are international students coming from over one hundred and ten different countries (Steve, 2010).
Deakin University enjoys its market in Victoria Region. It has students enrolling for various courses from Geelong regions, Eastern suburb regions and many other parts in the Warrnambool regions. It receives many students coming from these areas to enroll for the various courses in the university. The University also has a big market from all over the world through its online programs. It has students coming from all over the world who are enrolling for various courses online. The university has been growing fast for the few years; this, therefore, shows that the demand for the courses has increased because the enrollments are coming from over 110 countries.
Deakin University needs to enlarge its target market. There is, therefore, need to identify the target market and do market segmentation. The university still has a potential underexploited market, especially for the online programs. There is need to make further efforts to gain more market for the courses by the university. Given that most people who are working at various workplaces prefer online learning, there is the need for the school to target these people. This will significantly increase the market for the school (Blocker & Flint, 2007).
The University employs various marketing mix in its operation. Firstly, on the product/ service, the university currently offers distance learning to students from all over the world. This has increased the market size of the school to a large extent. In addition to this, the university still offers full-time programs, school-based programs among others. The diversification in the various programs for the courses used as a marketing mix has helped the school to get more students.
Deakin University also has employed promotion as a marketing mix. The university has promoted its programs and courses through media advertisement. The various media publication used include social media such as facebook, twitter among others. The University website has also played a critical role in promotion because it reaches everyone in the world. In addition to this, other advertisement media have been employed such as TVs and Radio, mail marketing and newspapers among others (Ivyn & Jonathan, 2008). Promotion as a marketing mix has boosted the university’s market size to a large extent.
Price has also been employed by the university as a marketing mix. Price is determined by various factors such as competition, service quality, course enrolled and the mode of learning, the branch enrolled to among other factors. These factors have helped the university to come up with various fair prices for the courses offered, where the customers do not feel exploited nor the university operate at a loss. A reasonable cost as a marketing mix has played a significant role in improving the enrollments to the University (Kotler & Philip, 2012, p. 25).
Distribution is also a marketing mix that the university has employed in its operation. This entails the school making sure that its services or courses reach the potential clients to the university. It has worked to ensure that it creates more of its campuses so that it reaches more people. The university has branches in various parts including Geelong region, Eastern suburb region and the Warrnambool area. It also has international offices. This has helped to reach many potential students thus growth.
In addition to this, the university has also employed people as a marketing mix. It has employed lecturers with the right and relevant qualification to the courses they offer. This has help built the confidence in the market and therefore gets more market share. Moreover, process as a marketing mix halos helped the university to grow. The university has smoothened its process through technological integration. This also has significantly contributed to the university’s market share increase (Sair, 2014).
PEST stands for Political, Economical, Social and Economic issues. Firstly, the Deakin University experiences matters arising from politics. These problems include government policy changes such as changes to public funding. The government can decide to give more incentives to the institution or even decide to withdraw incentive offer. A tax rate change has also affected the university because the government tends to increase or reduce tax levied on various aspects of the school. In some cases, the general public pressure also affects the school. On the other hand, there also exists some economic factors that affect the university (Shimizu & Koichi, 2016). These include changes in the economic climate which affect the sustainable investments of the University, legislation changes, availability of funding and the energy cost changes.
Social factors also affect Deakin University in many ways. These include cultural trends, stakeholder’s expectations who expect too much for the university to do corporate social responsibilities. The media is also another factor that has affected the school. Also, impacts of climate change have also affected the school in many ways. Lastly, effects of technology have also had an impact on the school. These technological effects have mostly arisen from costs, advances in technology, implementation and adoption of new technology among other factors (Kotler et al., 2009).
La Trobe University is one of the Deakin’s University competitors. La Trobe has many branches in Australia, but Melbourne branch stands to be its flagship campus. La Trobe University enjoys a lot of student admission ranging from the regional city of Bendigo to the twin border city of Albury-Wodonga (La Trobe University, 2014). The university also offers online programs, but the online student population is smaller. It was ranked third in the Victoria state and the twelve in the entire Australia. La Trobe is, therefore, a competitor to the Deakin University.
SWOT stands for Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Deakin University has its strengths. This includes its positive reputation from the outside community, its main branch and other campuses location, successful partnership with other universities, good past performance whereby the school has managed to have its courses accredited and also had successful graduations. The university also has good student support in many ways. On the other hand, the university also has its weaknesses. These shortcomings include its operational structure which has bureaucracy, limited resources to other faculties, fiscal uncertainty, not enough undergraduate programs among others (Ommani, 2011).
The university also has some opportunities on its side. These include chances of more partnership with external community and other universities, student diversity, the potential for growth, new construction, societal trends such as increase demand for graduates among others. On the other hand, the university also experiences the threats from outside (Kotler, 2014). These include competition from other universities such as La Trobe University. Also there is reduced public funding which has a potential to affect the university.
In the process of value and brand positioning, Deakin University needs to establish how the public perceives the university services and compare them with the needs of the target market. In brand positioning, the university needs to design and implement marketing programs and actions to build and manage brand equity. It should also consider value proposition by ensuring that students and the public derive satisfaction from its services and the courses offered (Arens et al., 2012). The university also needs to conduct customer based brand equity through awareness, uniqueness and other factors of brand associations. This will greatly impact on the value and brand positioning of Deakin University.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is important for Deakin University to understand its marketing and competitive environment. The university should, therefore, understand the current marketing techniques employed and come up with strategies on how to improve on them to increase student enrolments and the general value and brand position. Also, the university should understand its environment of operation through SWOT and PEST analysis. The university should also understand its competitors and its operation such La Trobe University. This will help it gain competitive advantage and also increase its market share.
References
Arens, William, and Michael Weigold. (2012) Contemporary Advertising: And Integrated Marketing Communications
Blocker, C. P., and Flint, D. J., (2007) “Customer Segments as Moving Targets: Integrating Customer Value Dynamism into Segment Instability Logic,” Industrial Market Management, vol. 36.
Ivy, Jonathan (2008) A new higher education marketing mix: The 7 Ps for MBA Marketing, International Journal of Educational Management, 22(4) pp 288-299
Kotler, Keller, and Burton (2009). Marketing Management, Pearson Education Australia: Frenchs Forest
Kotler, Philip (2012). Marketing Management. Pearson Education, p.25
Kotler.P, Amstrong G.(2014). Principles of Marketing Pearson Education Limited 2014
La Trobe University, La Trobe in top three for Research, La Trobe University, (2015) https://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/articles/2015/release/la-trobe-third-in-victoria-in-era-survey, accessed 08 April 2017.
La Trobe University, ‘La Trobe MBA rankings,’ La Trobe University, (2014), www.latrobe.edu.au/ accessed 08 April 2017.
Ommani, Ahmad (2011).SWOT analysis for business management
Philip G. Altbach (2010). “The State of the Rankings.” Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved 07 April 2017. The major international rankings have appeared in recent months — the Academic Ranking of World Universities, the QS World University Rankings, and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE)
Sair, S.A (2014).”Consumer Psyche and Positioning Strategies”. Pakistan Journal of Commerce & Social Sciences
Shimizu, Koichi (2016) “Co-marketing (Symbiotic Marketing) Strategist,”(Japanese) 5th edition, Souseisha Book Company
Steve Smith (2010). “Pride before the fall?”. Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
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