Describe about the Marketing Management for Top Growing Industries.
La Trobe University has recently launched an online program for Master of Management with a core objective of equipping the students with the tools and skills necessary to develop ideas, to lead and manage business activities across government, corporate, NGOs and small and medium scale companies. The university is a multi-campus university based whose main campus located at Bundoora, Victoria, Australia. It offers world class study and teaching experience and academic research. Many of its courses are placements and projects centered, which are certified by professional association across Australia as well as internationally. (latrobe.edu.au 2016).
At present, there are 37 government universities, 3 private universities, 2 foreign universities and 129 non-university higher education providers. As of 2014, the student population stands at 1 million which has almost doubled since last two decades. Out of the 1 million, 350,000 are international students. Australian government is the major funding source for the higher education in the country. As of 2014, total fund infusion by the government into the education sector was $15.4 billion. It offers Higher Education Loan Program (HELP) for domestic students (education.gov.au 2016).
Analysts predicts that higher education sector will be among the top five growing industries in the year 2015-16, which will boost the earnings by 3.6% due to the increase in enrolments by foreign students due to depreciation in the Australian dollar (Theaustralian.com.au 2016).
Resources
Financial Resources: Currently, La Trobe University has a net assets standing at $ 1.153 billion net assets collected from students in the form of enrolment and tuition fees, operating revenue of $ 672,861 and income from research was $55,381. Thus, it is evident from the fact that the organization has very strong financial background so it can utilize the fund for further growth and expansion (latrobe.edu.au 2016).
Physical Assets: La Trobe has 8 campuses spread across in the states of Victoria and New South Wales with state of the art infrastructure and technology needed in current generation to have a competitive advantage over its competitors. It has consistently invested on developing its infrastructure which includes five storey building at Melbourne campus at a cost of $45 million which variety of services to its international students. Furthermore, it invested $288 for its Centre for AgriBioscience (latrobe.edu.au 2016).
Human Resources: The organization has a large workforce of highly talented and qualified professionals who are consistently engaged in imparting quality services in the field of teaching and research (latrobe.edu.au 2016).
Intangible Resources: La Trobe University has consistently invested in its intangible resources such as online support to students, intranet to find news and information, staff directory etc (Hollensen 2015).
“Qui cherche trouve” (French) which means “Whoever seeks shall find”.
La Trobe University aspires to where inclusiveness and universally recognized brilliance meet.
Articulation of the culture to create difference by being connected, accountable, innovative, and by being clear of that they care about what they do and why they do it.
Excellence Key World Issues: By 2017, the university intends to be known for its excellence, innovation and creativity in context to the issues prevalent in the current generation.
Creating Outstanding Students: Being a centre point of vital social, environmental, economic, technological, scientific and political developments, it aims to improve its brand attractiveness to attract students from all quarters irrespective of caste, creed, sex or culture and equip them with global quality of education.
Outstanding Staff: It aims to make its workforce highly motivated, ground- breaking, creative and willing to act and be held responsible for results. They will be the one will pursue new ideas and nurture young minds. They would be acknowledged for their performance and anticipate high performance from people around them.
Rankings: It aims to regain its position as one of the top universities in Australia and among the top 500 universities globally (latrobe.edu.au 2016).
Research Focus Areas: The university aims to be among the best globally in various research areas that focuses on major environmental and social issues.
Curriculum Development: It aims to develop a new curriculum and students experience to attract creative, diverse and independent thinkers who desires to bring about a difference to the world.
Growth and Diversity: It aims to increase its student populace from 26,000 to 33,000 students by reinforcing the course portfolio, enhance flexible learning and increase the number of international students. It further emphasizes on continued support towards students from economically weak background.
Strong Partnership: It aims to strengthen its partnership with various NGOs, industry, government, research institutes and philanthropists across the global to bring a turnaround in offering education and research.
Strength: It aims to grow stronger by developing its capability to attract and retain the best faculty; subsidize on the available infrastructure of global standards; making effective and efficient use of resources; and enhancing their commitments towards operating in ethical and sustainable way (latrobe.edu.au 2016).
Segmentation
The university has segmented its customers i.e. the students on the basis of:
Geography: It aims to target students from that particular locality as by encouraging them to take advantage of studying and working without going out of their locality. It further encourages students from different parts of Australia as well as international students to study online by offering courses where university degree can be earned fully online with real world experience. It aims to target students from each and every quarter irrespective of cities, states or country (Wedel and Kamakura 2012).
Demography: For the degree of Master of Management online program, the university aims to target students who have successfully completed their Australian bachelors’ degree or any international equivalent. It further narrows its target customers on international students by setting a requirement of IELTS score of 6.5.
Psychographics: In the current era, majority of youth have become tech-savvy who spend most of their time over the internet to find information related to politics, industries, government, education, employment and various other things. There it would be an additional advantage for La Trobe University to give the students the courses designed with primary objective of giving global quality education with convenience of studying in a virtual classroom with a real world experience.
Culture: La Trobe University is one of the university which has students coming from various parts of the world, with different cultural backgrounds.
Economic: La Trobe University aims to encourage students from economically weak backgrounds to take the advantage of their online courses and become a part of the change with their global quality of education.
There are many universities in Australia which offers Master in Management degree, but most of the universities emphasize on more of a classroom experience and little bit of online interaction for the students but La Trobe University is mainly focusing on completely virtual classroom to offer the students with the flexibility of learning by staying at home. The university is mainly focusing on the students who have completed their under graduate degrees and working graduates who wishes to continue their education further but do not get time to attend classes due to their busy office schedules. (Fisk Grove and John 2013).
The university has positioned its online management course as a product or service that is reliable as it is associated with a brand name of La Trobe University which is one of the renowned universities based in Australia. It has emphasized on encouraging the students to choose online as it is more convenient and accessible at very affordable cost with high quality
(Gbadamosi Bathgate and Nwankwo 2013).
Porter Five Forces
New Entrants: Changes in the government policies and less barriers to entry into the segment might affect its performance. With fast growth in the technology, the internet has become a battle ground for each and every organization irrespective of any field or industry. La Trobe University cannot completely neglect the fact that there would not be any new entrant in the online courses segment or the existing competitors would not enter the realm of online courses (Wilson et al 2012).
Threats of Substitutes: La Trobe University would be consistently facing the threat of substitutes from its competitors as customers have the tendency to substitute products or services based on price performance. To stay ahead in the competition, La Trobe University needs to consistently maintain its service quality (Kotler et al 2015)
Bargain Power of Buyers: Today’s customers have become very price sensitive due to availability of more alternatives.. Here, the customers i.e. the students have higher bargaining power due to availability of more alternatives being offered by the industry rivals. If La Trobe University could not offer its online course at a competitive or lower price than its competitor, then it might not be able to attract its customers (Lovelock and Patterson 2015).
Bargaining Power of Suppliers: In this case, the suppliers i.e. the service providers who are offering them the infrastructure for offering online course has greater bargaining power due to availability of very few companies who provides service of high quality and standards (Wirtz and Lovelock 2016).
Industry Rivalry: The education sector in Australia is very vast and growing at very fast pace. This sector has been witnessing very fast transformation supported by technological advancements. Therefore, in order to gain competitive advantage over its competitors, the university needs to emphasize on sustainable growth through continuous innovation, increase its spending in advertising about its online course, and maintain a high degree of transparency in its services (Bienstock Mentzer and Kahn 2015)
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Strengths It is one of the top ranked universities in Australia and globally. It has world class infrastructure and multiple campuses across 8 locations in Australia. Strong workforce comprising of highly qualified teachers and research team. High net assets give them an additional advantage of further expansion. Consistency in the field of research and development through continuous innovation. |
Weaknesses Since the course is completely online, there is limited amount of reliability over it. Though there have been a growth in technology in the recent times, people are not yet ready to replace the conventional mode of classroom study with the newer mode of online study. Students get attracted to better ranked universities. |
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Opportunities Analysts predicts that the Australian education sector would be one of the top 5 performing sector in the coming years, which gives La Trobe the opportunity to take advantage of the situation. Since it is an online course, geographical location is a matter of concern. Thus it has the opportunity to expand globally. There are not many universities in Australia that offers online courses, so it gives a competitive advantage over the competitors. Growing demand of quality education in Australia. |
Threats The government policies have been eased to encourage competition. The Australian education sector has been witnessing a boom, which has opened roads to new entrants thereby creating tougher competitive environment. Better ranked Australian universities and foreign universities coming up with more attractive and employment oriented courses. |
Source: latrobe.edu.au. (2016)
The aim of establishing marketing strategy is to achieve appropriate revenue for further growth. To achieve the desired revenue scale, an organization generally sets series of actions that cumulatively helps the organization to increase its market share, earn maximum profit and enhance its core competencies. One of the fundamental strategies of marketing is to target or concentrate on a proper audience to whom the product will seem desirable enough (Armstrong et al 2014).
Target Markets
Focusing on single segment, the institution does not need differentiated or undifferentiated marketing. Hence, La Trobe University requires the concentrated marketing mix strategy as the university has developed the course study for a very well defined and particular target segment of consumers. However, the institution offers different electives for the students, in that case La Trobe can customize upon the enrollment fees (Claycomb and Martin 2013).
Product
The University is introducing the course in the market; hence as per product life cycle the product or the course stays in the introduction period and will find sales growth in a slow phase. The course offers three specializations with different electives, thus it is understandable that the University has considered different requirements of undergraduate students regarding management course. Moreover, cost of the study package is different for international and domestic students
The University has set different cost for international and domestic students considering the fact that both domestic and international pupil desire to apply for the course. Additionally, the institution focused on competitive advantage as most of the Universities in Australia provides high cost online management course.
La Trobe is providing online management course for the post graduation level and has chosen online social Medias such as Facebook, twitter and google plus for promoting the course. Promotion through online social media is required when a University desires to attract international audience.
The management course which La Trobe is providing is applicable online as the University seeks international students too. La Trobe provides the application forms on their individual website page and there are no alternative options available for the domestic students. Along with giving facilities for online application, for the domestic students the University could have given options for offline application. It would also help students to get further information about the course in details (Mudie and Pirrie 2012).
Charles Sturt University
Charles Sturt University also offers Master of Management course for graduate diploma in management and graduate certificate in management in distance education mode for the full time duration of 1 and 2 years.
Pros: Distance Education course at an affordable cost of $3000 as a tuition fee for 8 point subjects.
Cons: The course has a limitation as it is available is only for the residents for Australia and New Zealand and permanent resident (csu.edu.au 2016)
Australia Institute of Business
The institute is offering course ideal for working managers for duration of 18 months which can be extended up to 3 years.
Pros: – Offering flexibility to student to complete their course within a duration of 18 months to 3 years.
Offers the course to students residing outside Australia.
Cons: It requires the student to come to Australia to attend the necessary workshops in Adelaide (aib.edu.au 2016).
University of Southern Queensland
The university was offering Master of Management course in the past, but as of now it has been discontinued and been replaced by some other program (Usq.edu.au 2016).
Recommendations
On the basis of assessment and analysis of the above facts and figures the following are the important recommendations for La Trobe University to take advantage of this boom in the education sector by utilizing its resources to its optimum level. Emphasis on the growth and development of its workforce is a mandate and investing more into research and innovation which will be the driving force of the future. It should market the product to its full potential with greater emphasis on advertising to maintain a product recall. It should further invest more to strengthen the infrastructure to support its online portal. The university has more the $1 billion of net assets that can be used to explore the unexplored territories, not only in Australia, but outside the country as well. It can set up its teaching centers in some developing countries to promote its online degree courses as well as the brand of La Trobe University.
Conclusion
From the report that is based on the marketing of a new launched product of La Trobe University’s course on Master of Management. It can be concluded that what are the factors that are very critical yet crucial which should be considered by a marketing manager before launching a product.
A marketing manager should make a situational analysis to analyze the internal factors that are very important to focus on before launching a product. Financial resources, human resources, physical assets are very important factors to be considered while doing a situational analysis.
Apart from the above factors, the marketing manager should keep in mind the core competencies of the organization, its vision, mission, strategies. After a situation analysis is done, the manager should do a customer analysis on the basis on segmentation, targeting and positioning. A market analysis is required to be followed after customer analysis is done using SWOT analysis and Porter’s five forces model. Following market analysis, market strategies to be developed by assessing the target market and focusing on the four Ps of marketing followed by competitors’ analysis.
References
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latrobe.edu.au. (2016). about/at-a-glance/facts-figures. [online] Available at: https://www.latrobe.edu.au/about/at-a-glance/facts-figures [Accessed 9 Sep. 2016].
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Theaustralian.com.au. (2016). Sector tipped for top five growth industries. [online] Available at: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/higher-education-to-make-top-five-growth-industries-ibisworld/news-story/651034ce22b47879bd58757dab51855e [Accessed 9 Sep. 2016].
Wedel, M. and Kamakura, W.A., 2012. Market segmentation: Conceptual and methodological foundations (Vol. 8). Springer Science & Business Media.
Wilson, A., Zeithaml, V.A., Bitner, M.J. and Gremler, D.D., 2012. Services marketing: Integrating customer focus across the firm. McGraw Hill.
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Usq.edu.au. (2016). Master of Project Management – University of Southern Queensland. [online] Available at: https://www.usq.edu.au/study/degrees/master-of-project-management [Accessed 10 Sep. 2016].
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