Discuss About The Positioning Collage Of Business In Al Ain University.
This assignment will highlight about the marketing activity of Al Ain University of Science and Technology. The college provides its students with several important and quality courses in different fields that will help them in building a strong and successful future. They try to incorporate technological advancements for enhancing the studying experience of their students. The college is dedicated to work on its services so that it is able to increase its brand image, to be the best in the field of education. The report also provides details about the strengths and weaknesses of other leading collage such as Khawarizmi International College and Abu Dhabi, which enables the learner to gain knowledge about the policies and strategies that are being used by leading educational institutes in UAE. The marketing strategies of AAU will be defined that will help in understanding how the university is better than other business colleges of the country. The analysis will highlight about the strengths and weaknesses of the University and will elaborate about the ways they use their strength in order to gain competitive advantage from other competing institutes. The management of the university works on their weaknesses in order to improve them and enhance the experience of their students.
The learner will gain knowledge about the inherent attributes of the services. The business market of AAU can be analyzed with the help of perceptual map that will elaborate about the business environment of UAE and the strategic position of AAU as per the business environment. The assignment will allow the learner to understand the factors that contribute towards making AAU University better then rest of the business institute operating in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain.
This report evaluates the strengths and weakness of the Al Ain University. The University is popular for its business college program, where it helps students getting MBA degree. The University has a strong faculty base that is dedicated at imparting knowledge to the students. The management of the college keep enhancing the services of the institute and introduces latest facilities and service that will help in increasing the efficacy of the educational institute. The SWOT analysis conducted for Al Ain University, Abu Dhabi University and Khawarizmi International College helps in understanding that the due to the high fee structure Al Ain university is facing a shortage of a students, in order to handle the situation the faculties have introduced scholarship facilities for their students. The organization must analyze the strategic positioning of their competitors so that they are able to enhance their operational strategies. The perceptual map developed in this report help in understanding the position of AAU as compared to Abu Dhabi University and Khawarizmi International College. The analysis reveals that as per the monetary value the services provided by Abu Dhabi University is more efficient and provides value for money.
Al Ain University of Science and Technology is one of the most rapidly growing higher educational institutes of UAE that was established in the year 2005. The Ministry of Education in the Higher Education Affairs had given license to this college. This college has played a major role in enhancing the education of UAE and helped in the development of the country.
The University is very popular for its business studies and has two campuses that are located in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain. AAU provides 21 undergraduate programme courses; they have five graduate programs, and one professional diploma that the students can choose institute. The college provides education to 4,862 students coming from different parts of the world (Al Ain University of Science and Technology, 2018, A). The vision of the college is to be one of the leading learning institutes of the region by establishing international quality standards in their research, teaching, and community engagement. The mission of AAU is to be the best learning institute by responding to the market requirements and prepare qualified students that possess the technological and scientific competencies that are required for their careers. In order to improve the quality of their services, the university focuses on creating partnership with organizations and institutions through a commitment to the technological, educational and economical development of the region and the country.
The University has a separate Business college that provides the learners facilities for learning business management by indulging the courses that are offered by the business college of the University. The Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree course available at Al Ain University of Science and Technology is ideal for students interested in business studies. After completing the MBA course, the students will gain adequate knowledge to proceed in the business community and will be able to achieve their long-term goals in order to occupy managerial positions. This program is one of the most popular aspect of the University as it has a gained a lot of acknowledgement due to its business course. The University is also recognised for the well-educated and qualified faculties that help in teaching the students. The University is well updated and tries to implement latest technologies that will allow them to increase the efficiency of their services. The management of the University follows all the current trends and tries to maintain international academic standards in AAU. As all the major courses are available in the college and the college has all the advanced facilities available at the campus, most of the students of UAE are inclined to take admission in AAU. Moreover, increase in the number of students helps in increasing the market share of the company.
The fee structure of the University is high as the services quality of the University is required to be maintained as per the international standards. The management of the college has developed some scholarship program that helps the students in reducing the fee amount. There are certain criteria that are required to be met so that the student is eligible to get the services and facilities of scholarship.
SWOT analysis will help in understanding the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of Al Ain University. The information gained with the help of SWOT analysis will help the organization in utilising its resources in an efficient manner that will allow it to gain competitive advantage and increase its market share by positioning itself effectively.
Strengths: The capability of the institute to use their resources in an efficient manner contributes towards the strength of the organization. The organization is focused on producing responsible learners by improving their services. The college provides its learners the opportunity to study business studies in the business college that has become popular in UAE because of increase in the number of business organisations and higher requirement of management positions. The college has a good brand name due to the strong faculty and international academic standards available at Business College.
Weaknesses: The fee of this University is quite high as compared to other universities in UAE, due to which majority of students are unable to take admission in this university They are unable to pay the fees of the college because of their economical conditions.
Opportunities: Improve the retention, recruitment and graduation rate within the student body that will help them in increasing well skilled students that are capable of entering a nurturing environment. Recruit qualified staffs and faculty members that help in improving the knowledge of the students of the university. They should keep interacting with the community to understand the opinion of community members that will assist them in increasing their services (Wheelen et al., 2017).
Threats: There are a number of educational organizations such as Khawarizmi International College and Abu Dhabi University that increases the competition level for Al Ain University. Competitors that are able to keep pace with the current market trends and improve their services and courses consistently are also considered as threat for AAU. Increasing interest of individuals to continue education from well-known foreign universities are also major factors that acts as a threat for AAU.
Strengths: The Abu Dhabi University have a positive reputation in UAE, due the services and courses that are offered by them. The management of the college uses internet in order to interact with their existing students and create awareness about their courses and services. The college has been strategically placed and provides education to diverse student body. The university has received the Bizz award for three years of successful running (Adu.ac.ae, 2018). This award indicates that the college is maintaining the standards of education provided by them.
Weaknesses: The bureaucracy structure is a problem for the university. The college is weak at retaining their faculties; continuous change in faculty may hamper the studies of the students. One of the major weaknesses of the institute is that it is unable to manage the high workload, which is distributed unequally among staffs and faculty.
Opportunity: The College can establish partnership with other university initiatives, that will help them in increasing their courses and allow them to enhance the experiences of their students. They should try to expand their academic program and cultural activity. They can take initiative in order to expand their services on a global level by providing tuitions and courses to students with the help of online medium. Technological advancements will increase the efficiency and business of the organization and enhance the market share of the institute.
Threat: the competition in educational sector of UAE is increasing at a rapid rate, Abu Dhabi University faces major threat from competitors such as Al Ain University of Science and Technology and Khawarizmi International College, which provide similar courses to the students of the regions. These Universities are well reputed and uses various policies that help them in attracting students towards their institute; thus, competitors are major thereat for Abu Dhabi University.
Strengths: Khawarizmi International College is first private institute of UAE and thus is one of the oldest and most trusted universities that help in providing a number graduate program to the students of UAE. The University endorses as well as advocates UAE’s social system, cultural and human rights of country while maintaining teamwork, equality, transparency and a progressive learning approach. These approaches help the college in attracting students to the university. The college recruits well-qualified and talented faculties that are hard working and help the students with their academic issues (Kic.ac.ae, 2018). The fee structure of this University is quiet reasonable that helps in attracting a huge crowd of students.
Weaknesses: The University is only focused on endorsing the culture of UAE; students are required to understand the business culture prevailing on a global scale. As the students are from diverse backgrounds, the University should address group diverse culture. The internal communication and coordination of the University is not up to the mark. The organization does not have a post-graduate program
Opportunities: The organization can include more courses that will help them in increasing the number of courses that will be offered by the university. More courses will allow the university in increasing the student base of the institute. The college can use social media and other effective marketing strategy in order to enhance their brand image. It can also increase its branches by expanding across UAE (Luxton et al., 2017).
Threat: The increasing popularity of Business college of AAU is one of the rising concerns of Khawarizmi International College. The students are more inclined towards colleges that offer them international courses and maintain international standards. The college also faces major threats from Abu Dhabi University as it has been able to grab the attention of foreign university due to its excellent services and dedicated faculties.
The SWOT analysis conducted reveals the strengths, weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats of Al Ain University of Science, and Technology, Abu Dhabi University and Khawarizmi International College. By comparing the analysis of the Universities, it can be said that the business college of Al Ain University is very popular in UAE due to its MBA course and skilled faculties that assist the students throughout the course program. The MBA course helps the students in gaining knowledge about the business strategies that are based on global standards. Thus, students interested in business studies are inclined towards Al Ain University as compared to Abu Dhabi and Khawarizmi International College.
The analysis helps in revealing that due to high fee structure of Al Ain University majority of students are unable to afford the services of the college. The fee structure is a major issue for immigrants that are coming from developing countries for educational purpose. Thus, the University loses students to Khawarizmi International College, which has a very reasonable fee structure that is affordable by people from various economical statuses (College, 2018). The management of the organization must take initiative of managing their fee structure it is one of the major reason due to which the business of the institute is hampered. If the management can maintain the fee then the organization will be able to increase its business and increase its market share as compared to the other two competitors.
The competition in the education sector of UAE is increasing at a very rapid rate, as the government of the country is also taking initiative in order to improve the educational standards of the country (Ashour and Fatima, 2016). The technological advancement and the faculties of the universities play a major role in enhancing the experience of the students of the university. The management and faculties of Al Ain University ensures that they are implementing all the latest facilities and technologies that will assist their students with the educational courses. The management of the organization is responsible to recruit well-qualified faculties that can deal with the queries and difficulties that are faced by the students of the university. One of the unique features of the university is its business courses that help them kin grabbing the attention of the students that are interested in learning about business. The organization has a very systematic website that helps the students in gaining details about the courses that are available at the university.
It can be concluded that the facilities, courses and services of Al Ain University is better as compared to the other two Universities. However, due to the high fee structure, the university is facing a shortage of students and Khawarizmi International College is able to give tough competition to the institute. The organization can also consider expanding in different part of UAE so that students living in any part of UAE can access it. This will increase the business of the University.
The fee structure of Al Ain University of Science and Technology is quite high, as the University offers a number of facilities to their student as per the international standards. The University accepts the fee in Cash, Post-dated cheque and Cash. This flexibility allows the students to pay the fee in the medium that is suitable for them. The students are required to pay a fee of 1000 Dirham for admission application; this fee is non-refundable. The registration fee of the university is comparatively high; the university charges their students a registration fee of 300 Dirham for each semesters. The tuition fee is 1100 per credit hour for undergraduate, and 2500 per credit hour for the MBA program. A fee of 100 Dirham is refundable once the candidate graduates from the University (Al Ain University of Science and Technology, 2018, C).
The organization has certain policies that help the students in getting scholarship facilities from the college so that they can get education from Al Ain University. The top five students of UAE are provided a full grant from the University, while the students who were able to achieve a grade of 95% in their General Secondary School are offered a grant of 40% discount on the fee for the credit hours. Similarly, the University offers a number of scholarships based on the merits of the students. The scholarship program helps the students in reducing their fee structure and they are able to avail the services of one of the best college of the country (Al Ain University of Science and Technology, 2018).
Communication is one of the most important criteria that helps in the development and growth of an organisation. Al Ain is a well established University that is popular for its business course, in order to maintain and enhance the brand image the management of the University ensures to maintain their communication system. The management of the institute conduct proper interview to ensure that well qualified faculty members are recruited. As English is considered as a universal language, the faculty members of the university interact with students in English so that those coming from diverse nations and countries are able to understand them and can follow the course without any issues or problems. The management of the organization maintain a systematic website that provides information in English so that students visiting the website from any nation can understand about the services and courses that are offered by them. They interact with their students on a number of social platforms such as Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook etc (Powell and Oberg, 2017). The interactions allow the institute to gain the opinion of their students regarding the quality of education and facilities that assist them in enhancing their services for the students. The interactions on social platforms also assist in increasing the awareness about the college. The University uses the medium of email in their admission procedures, students can apply for courses with the help of their website while the rest of the procedure is conducted with the help of email. The students receive their coninstituteation letters on emails, while any query regarding the admission procedure is answered with the help of email services (Blakeman, 2018).
AAU sets its mission and vision to be one of the leading learning centres of excellence. According to this mission, they have designed their distribution process. Their distribution process includes a strong commitment to the deliverance of quality graduate and undergraduate programs, which are characterized by rigorous disciplinary profundity and breadth along with effective, direct communication between staff and students. Design of their distribution channel is divided under two main sub categories named as Degree Programs and distribution of staff and faculty members (aau.ac.ae, 2018-B). This college provides different kinds of degree programs to the students that are cited below.
AAU also initiates new programs and National Accreditation programs for the interested students. Under their new programs, “College of Law” has received the final official approval for the “Master in Public Law and Master in Private Law programs”, by the Commission for Academic Accreditation (CAA) (aau.ac.ae, 2018-B). Under the National Accreditation programs, “College of Engineering” has received the official recognition of Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) and accreditation for 2 programs. The “College of Pharmacy” has also obtained global certification from the American-based Universities.
All these above mentioned degree programs are distributed to the students through the staff and faculty members who strive to play a vital role in making of knowledge through quality research and teaching. During the 2016-17 educational years, this university had managed to retain and recruit skilled faculty members as well as administrative workers required to pursue the university quest for excellence (aau.ac.ae, 2018-B). Most of the 162 administrative staff has Doctorate degree from globally designated institutions especially in UK and USA and have proper teaching knowledge and research capabilities in various other universities. Through this kind of strong and experienced faculty members, this university distribute and deliver all kinds of educational programs for students in their university.
Al Ain University of Science and Technology provides several workshops and internships to the students along with several degree programs mentioned in the above portion in this study. All these certified programs are helpful for students to build a great career in future. As required all the marketing and promotional activities of this University are described below.
The names of the colleges act as brands in the modern days and attract the students, for studying in there. In terms of Brand name and recognition, KIC has the most stable position in the market, since it is the oldest private college founded in UAE while the others have been founded in recent times; ADU in 2003 and AAU in 2005. The business colleges have been founded later and thus, the time of association with the clients and their families are actually low for AAU and ADU. KIC and AAU possesses two campuses each, one in Alain and one in Abu Dhabi while ADU possesses a campus in Dubai as well. The global positioning of ADU is better as compared to other two competitors since Dubai is a famous and big city and the presence of the college there improves its brand image. The educational councils and bodies grant accreditations to the business colleges, and the courses offered by ADU possesses most of the accreditations from famous educational councils that further adds to its likeability.
The KIC college does not offer any Master’s program which acts as an inhibitor to its attraction and the minimal availability of amenities for usage by the students further discourages the students to join this college. In this case, ADU offers the maximum benefits and amenities to the students, closely followed by AAU. ADU and AAU also offers scholarships to its students, both deserving and meritorious students, while KIC gives away scholarships to selected percentage of students only. The social media presence of AAU and ADU is better as they are present on all social media sites, and it makes it easier for them to reach out to the students while KIC is present on limited sites only. AAU also has a website that is compatible with the Apple operating system, which increases its ability in reaching out to the elite group of customers, who are abound in UAE. Transportation facilities are available for the students studying in AAU and ADU, while students studying at KIC are not granted any such facilities. 72% of the undergraduate students and 27% of the post graduate students in UAE prefer going to ADU. From the year 2011 to 2017, 7138 students have passed out from AAU while 13,207 students have passed out from ADU. 30% of the international students travelling to UAE prefer availing education from ADU, as compared to other universities (aau.ac.ae, 2018 B).
The perceptual maps are utilized for studying the positioning of the organizations in the market, for analysis of the strategies and the features offered by other organizations and assisting in executing a complete study of the strengths and weakness of the same (Daabes and Kharbat, 2017). The pictures are the most effective ways of appealing the viewers and helping them understand the concepts, hence the perceptual maps are resorted to, in order to understand the concept of positioning of the concerned organization in the market and to formulate strategies effectively, in order to become more successful in the market and win over its immediate competitors.
In this project, the organizations that have been studied are Business College in Al Ain University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi College and Khawarizmi International College (KIC) in Alain City. While Masters courses are awarded in AAU and ADC, only Bachelor’s courses in business are offered at KIC. The standards of the colleges are quite high and the students are required to meet numerous criteria in order to graduate from the colleges. ADU offers doctorate studies to the students as well. Scholarships are granted to the students based on merits as well as significant achievements exhibited by the students, in the co-curricular activities (Saad, 2015). The availability of the scholarships at KIC is restricted and only family of martyrs, students above the age of 40 and 40% of the newly admitted students are given the access to scholarships. Numerous facilities are offered to the students at ADU Business College and to AAU, but the facilities made available to the students studying at KYC are limited to library and Moodle only.
The perceptual map used in this case will compare the cost and the performance of the three colleges in order to understand the position of AAU, with respect to two other colleges, ADU and KIC. The perceptual map is constructed as under, in fig.1. As per the perceptual map, AAU exhibits high costs while the services that are provided by the business college of AAU is good but not as good as that provided by ADU. The amenities provided to the students of ADU are far better and the fess structure is easy on the pocket. The fee structure of AAU is high, the students are required to pay as per the credit hours for which the lessons are delivered, and the courses are scheduled while the fees for the courses delivered at ADU are fixed. Hence, they come under the quadrant depicting high cost but high performance as well (Ibrahim and Ibrahim, 2018). KIC, on the other hand, does not offers any masters program and the amenities provided to the students are also minimal. Though the cost of the courses is also cheap as compared to those of the other two universities, the performance is also not of very high level (Posey et al., 2013). Therefore, it comes in the quadrant depicting low performance and low cost.
After the analysis of the perceptual map, it can be effectively concluded that the education services provided by AAU are good and worth the money, however the fees is too much for the students hailing from the middle-class of the society. Almost equal amenities are provided to the students at ADU, while the fee is a bit lower. This makes the position of AAU prone to market competition and thus, AAU needs to formulate effective strategies in order to establish its position in the market institutely and perform better.
Competitive advantage is the condition, which allows an organization or institution to provide services at equivalent value but at a lower cost and at a more enviable fashion. Competitive advantages produce better value for an organization along with its shareholders owing to certain conditions or strengths. The more perpetual the competitive advantage, the more difficult it is for the contenders to counteract the benefits (Al Ain University of Science and Technology, 2018). The Al Ain University of Science and Technology also possesses a number of competitive advantages that differentiates it from the rest of the universities of UAE. The following are the competitive advantages of AAU:
The University ensures to hire efficient and highly qualified teaching staff for the different education programs that it provides. The university focuses on a number of criteria such as, research potential, academic records and effective teaching performance while recruiting the faculty members. AAU has a non-discriminatory policy with respect to an applicant’s race, gender, physical disabilities, religion and so forth. The applicants applying for a job in the university need to fulfil vast selection criteria in order to avail the job. The selection criteria are:
The above criteria are set in order to recruit the best professors and lecturers for the students studying in the university. This has proved to be a strong competitive advantage for the university (Ryan and Beck, 2018).
The university offers the best and latest technologies for its students and faculty members in order to ensure that the education being provided by the university is of top most quality. AAU provides a strong and secure media and information technology services in order to maintain both the administrative and academic operations of the university. The university provides predictable and adequate mechanism for funding institutional and informational theologies in order to satisfy the technology requirements of the staff and students. AAU also ensures to upgrade the information technology facilities, infrastructure and hardware on a regular basis. In addition, the university also initiates in supporting and promoting the effective and efficient use of administrative and academic technologies, which satisfies the curricular and faculty needs (AAU, 2018). The university especially provides different technologies and methods for the business college in order to improve the efficiency of the students.
AAU has a well-designed and informative website, which provides all the necessary information concerning the university. The website being highly informative helps people to get all the information concerning the university at a single platform. The fees structure, faculty description, polices concerning academics and admission is all mentioned in details in the website of the university. The website also provides online admission facilities, thus helping people to enrol themselves without any difficulty.
AAU is centrally located in both Al Ain and Abu Dhabi and is reachable from every part of the cities. This has become one of the most significant competitive advantages for the university. The transportation facilities are quite good in both the cities therefore making it easy for the students, faculty members and other individuals to reach the destination.
Al Ain University of Science and Technology provides 21 undergraduate programs, 1 professional diploma and 5 graduate programs through the institutions of pharmacy, engineering, education, law, social sciences and humanities business and media and communication. The College of Engineering of AAU has the international accreditation from the Accreditation Board. The university also provides a special business administration program, which is exclusively designed, for the professionals or experts who look for future promotions or mobility in the occupation environment jointly with those individuals who aim to carry on with their post-graduate studies (AAU overview, 2018). The College of Business is considered the second largest college of the university.
Positioning being an important element of market segmentation has a number of physical and perceptual elements. It refers to the identification of the position of a brand or organization in the market in comparison with its competitors and for the customers. Therefore, positioning is important in order to sustain the brand name and to maintain a competitive advantage. In the present scenario, the two biggest competitive advantages for AAU are its efficient faculty members and diversified educational programs. The university is mainly focusing on these two aspects in order to develop its current positioning in the market. The university claims to provide better teaching facilities as compared to its rival universities namely, ADU and KIC, as it hires only the best professional and experts in specialized areas. The university has a number of criteria set for the applicants that needs to be fulfilled in order to be recruited. This facilitates the organization to get hold of the best faculty members for its different educational programs (Slack, 2015).
At present, the main concern of the university is its business college and they are taking initiatives in order to sustain and develop its market position. The business college of AAU provides a number of bachelor and master educational programs such as accounting, management, marketing, banking and finance, management information system and human resource management. It is the second largest college of AAU and it completely accredited by the ministry of education. The university provides the students with high-quality education at an internationally approved standard, in order to facilitate them to make thriving managerial decisions at necessary levels of the managerial proficiencies. They aim at preparing extremely skilled graduates in order to fulfil the market demand for the specialized managers in all the business operations. It further takes initiatives in order to help the students to expand their professional advancements in the direction of social responsibility of the business organizations.
The university focuses on the three basic elements while positioning its College of Business in the market, namely, its key strengths, market demand and competition. In this context, the key strength of the university at this point is the administrative business courses that it is providing through the business college. It is considered one of the top most business colleges in the UAE. In the present time, the demand for the administrative business courses is growing with the time. Students are highly interested in opting for business programs, therefore, it is essential for the university to improve and develop its business educational programs to maintain its position in the market. With the growing competition in the business of education, every university including KIC and ADU are continuously thriving to improve its performance in order to improve its market position and attract more students (Slack, 2015). Therefore, in order to beat the competition AAU ensures to come up with latest technologies and better education facilities. In addition, the university arranges for open workshops, training programs and so forth as a marketing strategy in order to draw attention of more number of students.
The University has a healthier chance to attain a strong position in the market when they contain a strategy and then construct a brand around it. The key objective is to set up a single idea or notion for the students to know. AAU, in order to maintain its market position can adopt the following positioning strategies:
The fees structure of a college is one of the most crucial factors that one takes under consideration while deciding for which college to opt for. Generally, people do not prefer taking admissions in colleges whose fees structure is too high or may perhaps their financial status does not allow them to do so. In that case, the colleges lose out a lot of students every year. Despite the fact that the college of business of AAU is providing a lot of facilities against the fees that they are taking, the students opt for different institutes who have a lower fee structure but do not provide as much facilities as AAU does. The university must therefore, try to decrease some of its expenses in order to reduce the fees structure of the business college (Hoque and James, 2012). This will help the college to attract more number of students per year, thus improving its income. Increase in the rate of admission will result in advertisement of the university.
The rival Universities of AAU namely, ADU and KIC has also adopted a number of strategies to remain in the market and maintain its positioning. For instance, ADU has launched new e-learning branches in different parts of UAE such as, Al Ain, Dubai and so forth. This has immensely benefitted the university to attract more number of students as now students can avail the facilities from any part of UAE and other countries. In addition, the university has introduced concurrent and joint degrees with top worldwide universities. Owing to this, the faculty and students have a better exposure to exchange learning experiences, opportunities, and improved academic contributions. The College of Business of Al Ain University can adopt the above-mentioned strategies of ADU or consider them as a base for designing their own strategies in order to maintain and develop its positioning of the University. Designing the positioning strategy depending on the competitors will help the university to analyze its drawbacks and therefore work accordingly in order to sustain its market standing (Solomon et al., 2014).
The College of Business of Al Ain University can communicate its chosen position to the market in the following ways:
Social media being the most popular form of present marketing techniques is the best option for the university to communicate its position in the market. Since the target segment of the university is teenagers or students, it will be beneficial for the university to promote its positioning with the help of social media marketing as it is mostly popular among the teenagers. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram, Android platforms, iPhone platforms, and so forth can be used by the university to communicate with its target audience. The use of social media among the youth has increased immensely over the past years. Individuals these days refer to social media in order to avail any sort of information that they require (Tuten and Solomon, 2017). Therefore, social media posts can be used in order to drive the target customers.
The university can also make use of the traditional techniques such as newspapers, journals, leaflets, pamphlets, television, radio and so forth for communicating its position to its target market. Traditional techniques have a soaring success rate and are coninstituteed at various stages. With the help of the traditional methods, individuals will be able to learn about the market position of the university (Srinivasan et al., 2016). Even though the present world considers the digital methods to be more relevant and appealing, the traditional techniques still have a number of benefits, which can help the university to successfully communicate with its target customers.
The university can also send promotional emails and messages to different individuals in order to communicate its position in the market. It is a great tool for customer acquisition and as per reposts it is more effective in comparison to social media. In addition, it is a very cost effective and economic medium, therefore is easily accessible for every individual. Promotional e-mails are measurable and action oriented as the university can easily track how many individuals has actually opened the mail with the help of different software concerning e-mail marketing. In the present times, individuals especially teenagers are highly involved with mobile phones which permits the individuals to check their emails and messages frequently (Wheeler and Chintagunta, 2016). Therefore, it can be stated that promotional e-mails and messages can be the best communication technique for the College of Business of AAU
How AAU’s business collage can be a benchmark among other business schools, your suggestion, recommendation, what they have to change, what’s the best marketing plan to gain competitive advantage.
Academic institutions have the responsibility of providing an excellent education to all their students. This equitable distribution of high quality sets some of the best universities apart from the rest. As Al Ain University’s Business School sets the standard for such an equitable distribution, they can be heralded as the benchmark for other business schools in the area. By adopting a strategy that reinforces the quality of teaching and learning, AAU’s Business School provides some of the most qualified faculty to the students who study at this institution. AAU is also set apart in terms of internal governance as management systems are handled in the most effective manner to ensure that expenditures are balanced while planning is done in regards to current capabilities and future aspirations.
AAU are also insistent on carrying our cutting edge research in various fields, while collaborating with some of the brightest minds to provide for a good mix of applied research and innovation. This ensures that the environment in the institution fosters comprehensive knowledge building and disbursement. However, the tuition fees in the institution are still rather high. This indicates that even though AAU openly accepts all applicants, not all of these candidates are able to enrol in the institution due to fee discrepancies. To be a comprehensive example to all the universities in the land, it is recommended that the tuition fee structure at the university is changed. By changing this fee structure, accessibility is truly spread very evenly across society.
The above SWOT analysis provides this as one of the greatest weaknesses of the institution, while indentifying the need to improve retention and graduation rates of the students. To succeed in this endeavour, it is essential that the following recommendations are executed by AAU:
The above recommendations are very effective in improving the recognition of the institution. This recognition would help with intakes and marketing initiatives of the company. The students and staff of the organization must always be a reflection of all the positives of an institution, thus launching a university blog would help AAU gain a competitive advantage over its competitors (Pucciarelli and Kaplan, 2016). This institutional blog would be a reflection of the experiences of the staff and the students and increase engagement with prospective applicants. This marketing strategy can be even more effective if the institution launches a YouTube channel, where student experiences are chronicled in an even more effective manner.
Marketing, at the end is about engaging with the customer and the client. A blog and a social media outlet, such as YouTube would allow AAU to improve their name and image amongst the educational community in Saudi Arabia and ensures that student intakes increase in the most effective manner (Tomlinson, 2017).
Conclusion.
In the above report, the position of Business College in Al Ain University’s position in the local market among the other business colleges in UAE has been identified. The project has provided a description of AAU in context to its Business College. A SWOT analysis of AAU along with its rival universities namely, ADU and KIC has also been provided. From the SWOT analysis it has been determined that the biggest strength of AAU is that its college of business is the second largest college of the university and is one of the top most business colleges in UAE. In addition, the university provides international level education to its students thus helping them to design a better future for themselves. It also holds a strong brand image as compared to its competitors. Furthermore, the project has shed light upon the intrinsic characteristics of the service that the university provides such as, communications, pricing, distribution policies and other applicable marketing activities. A perceptual map has been constructed in order to determine the position of the business of AAU in comparison to its rival universities. Besides, the project has identified the competitive advantages of the university. Furthermore, the overall strategy of positioning of the university has been identified and explained based on which the best communication technique for communicating the position of the university to the market has been suggested in the above section. Finally, the project has provided a number of recommendations and suggestions that AAU can undergo in order to overcome the weaknesses that has been identified in the SWOT analysis. The recommendation that have been suggested for AAU is very effective in order to improve the recognition of the college. This recognition would facilitate with intakes and marketing inventiveness of the institution. Ain
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