Marketing Management Assignment help on : Chinese Higher Education System
Introduction
1.1 Research Justification and Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between marketing communications and customer acquisition in the private education sector in Urumqi of China. This research aims to identify and establish the role that marketing communications play in Chinese private education provider sector.
1.2 Chinese Higher Education System
Marketing communications has long been considered to be vital to any business which has been focusing more on how to communicate with customers in order to increase either sales or customer awareness. How to set up a market communications strategy to achieve the mission of a company successfully has widely been researched and explored.
Since 1978, China opened its door to the world; it began its reform and opening up policy. Education is one of the most significant parts of the reform; the education restructuring has been undertaken to be kind of marketization, privatization and decentralization. (Kaiming, 1994)
The higher education segment of the Chinese education system carries mix aspects US and the UK systems with a stronger affiliation to the US system. Two and three year colleges which are also referred to as short-cycle colleges, typically awarding associated degrees, exist next to typical four years colleges and universities which offer academic as well as vocational courses that award bachelor degrees or higher. (Education China, 2007)
The types of Chinese higher education institutions have their own characteristics. In general, Higher education institutions are as diverse as in most European or North-American countries: regular universities, technical universities, specialized higher education institutions for agriculture, foreign languages or medicine, vocational colleges ( Uwe and Jiani, 2007)
For higher education system in China, there are four layers: research institutions, research and teaching institutions, teaching institutions and application oriented institutions (Cheng, 2004, P. 207-208).
Research institutions are under the project ‘958’, which is instituted by the Chinese government, aiming at launching world-class universities in the 21st century, 39 universities are in this project currently. There is another project called ‘211’, which is also undertaken by the Chinese government to strengthen about 100 universities in the 21st century. The 39 universities from the project ’958’ belong to the ‘211’ project, there are another 73 institutions considered under the research and teaching. In the teaching institutions, there are nearly 600 higher education institutions, almost of them are regional. The last layer accounts for over 1000 higher education institutions, most of them are tertiary vocational colleges. (Yuzhuo, 2011)
Figure 1 Pyramid of Chinese higher education institutions
1.3 Private Higher Education
Majority of private higher education institutions belongs to the application oriented institutions, only a few of them are teaching oriented institutions. The private higher education institutions can be divided into three types, the first sort are the institutions that only and can grant associate or bachelor’s degree by private organizations. ‘Dependent colleges’ refer to the second type. They offer bachelor’s degree. The last type owned by private actors cannot award degree or diplomas. (Yuzhuo, 2011) Institutions provide service to students to pass examinations and give advice can be categorized into the third type of private higher education institutions.
With the rapid economic growth and development, people are more willing to invest money in education than ever before; many parents want to send their children abroad to continue higher education. (UK trade and investment, 2009) Companies, which can give advice and provide support, are emerging as unique features.
1.4 Sample Organization
Xinjiang Northwest Yinglun is a small business belonging to the third type of private institutions, which has agreed to take part in this study, as given a short name as XNY. The company is an educational training and consulting company which runs in Urumqi, Xinjiang province of China since 2003. It collaborates with two other universities introduces the British HND program. At the same time, it provides face to face education consulting service and study abroad application to students who want to go abroad. Moreover, it offers English training courses to those students.
It is difficult to calculate how many competitors among the market, as there are some local and regional companies. The key competitors of XNY include Aoji, Yuanyang and Xinjiang education service center in Urumqi. They are all regional companies, as Xinjiang is in the remote area of China, national and international companies do not pay close attention to this area, currently.
1.5 Research Aim and Objectives
The main aim of this research is to investigate the relationship between marketing communications strategy and customer acquisition in the private education sector in Urumqi of China.
Based on the background information and the research aim, the proposed consultancy based dissertation will attempt to achieve three objectives.
l To explore the role of marketing communications strategy in the Chinese private education provider.
l To analyze the impacts of marketing communications to attract customers
l To make recommendations on the usage of the most effective marketing communications tools in the context of future marketing communications strategy
1.6 Structure of the Dissertation
This research is structured into five chapters. The purpose of Chapter one is to establish the context in which the research project was chosen. It also presents the research aim and objectives.
Chapter two demonstrates an extensive review of the current literature surrounding the principle areas of interest. This shall focus mainly on the concept of marketing communications strategy and marketing communications tools. The chapter will shall discuss these two concepts in an inverted pyramid from three aspects:
1. Explain the concepts in general
2. Examine the concepts in the service sector
3. Demonstrate the concepts in the private higher education sector
Following the literature view, the study move onto the main methodology where the researcher of the research project will state the methodology and rationale behind the chosen research approach in relation to the research aim and objectives. The latter chapters of the study shall focus on the results and analysis obtained from the study, also linking these findings back to theoretical frameworks from the literature. The final chapter conducts recommendations for the XNY company when implement future marketing communications strategy. Moreover, the limitations and consideration for the future research are presented.
Chapter 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The purpose of this chapter is to show the key findings, which examines the qualitative data that emerged from the six semi-structured interviews, with a view to achieving the declared objectives of this research. A transcription of one interview can be found in Appendix 1 as an example.
4.1 Strategy
The private education institutions are different from the public education institutions, they must support themselves thoroughly in terms of infrastructure and other aspects to demonstrate a clear understanding of the benefits of marketing and why it is a high priority for the private education institutions.
When questioned about how the participants responded to the importance of marketing communications, all of them provided similar answers to the questionnaire in the research. They consider marketing communications is very crucial and stands as a priority for the company in respect of all their other functions.
‘We need to use the marketing communication tools to let people know us.’ (Ruijia Xie)
‘In my opinion, not only for use, but also all other companies, marketing communication is the most important function, it is the premise of all others can operate properly. ‘ (Shaohua Hong)
This is in line with the research in the field as Horrigan and Rut (2009), pointed out that in order to be chosen by customers, higher education institutions need to become better with the coordination of their marketing communications strategy under the ferocious competition and complex consumer in the higher education market as experienced in other western countries like the US and the UK.
Only the two senior managers (Shaohua Hong and Huixiang Zhou) knew the mission of the company as to provide the convenient channels of studying abroad for local students in Xinjiang province. The other four participants know there is a mission, but they do not remember what it is.
In terms of positioning, the responses show that the company has absolute advantage against the study abroad program because of the HND program that the company runs. But, in the area of English training, the company only occupies a small market share.
‘We are the only company which can recruit students independent to the HND program among the three Northwest provinces China, so we are the best of study abroad program. However, speaking to the English training, lots of efforts are needed in order to compete with the other three big English training companies in Xinjiang province. ‘ (Huixiang Zhou)
There are four departments, except the financial department, the marketing department, the teaching department and the executive department. They always need to work in collaboration and would have to constantly communicate with other departments while they are working. According to the responses of the questionnaires, the needs of the market and the consumers are identified and all the strategies are made accordingly to ensure a smooth working and better performance. The findings of this study have shown that the company does not have an overall advertising strategy , means that funds and resources cannot be put in full of use, which makes the effectiveness and efficiency of advertising campaign declined.
4.2 Advertising
Huge amounts of research are devoted to the question of what makes advertising effective and to the role of advertising on its effectiveness. The key areas that the participants were asked their views on were;
l The characteristics of advertising
l Five major decisions on advertising program
4.2.1 Characteristics of advertising
General speaking, all the six participants consider advertising play an important role in marketing communication campaign, several advantages of advertising have been pointed out. All six participants stated advertising can reach a large amount of audiences, and there are lots of advertising forms can be used. At the same time, four of them state advertising is a quick method to let the audiences know the message want to be presented. Weiguo Hong, the marketing manager, emphasizes that:
‘We could not operate without advertising for all our business as it is the main channel to let the customer know us. Meanwhile, advertising, as a tool, is easy to control. ‘
When probed as the disadvantages of advertising, participants said that the cost of this tool is very high. Shaohua Hong also indicates the truth and the usage of paid marketing communications tool is decreasing:
‘Lots of private education organizations prefer to use advertising as the main marketing communications tool which leads audiences doubt the truth and authority of the advertising message. ‘
Evidently, participants consider advertising as a mass audience tool over other tools of marketing. This is in line with research in this field as Pickton (2006) identifies advertising can reach a mass audience.
The company has used a number of marketing tools, the finding of this study shows that advertising is considered to be the most important one. At the same time, the company spent most of their marketing budget on advertising in order to acquire customers.
4.2.3 Advertising objectives
The company has set advertising objectives, the objectives can be divided into two forms–short-time and long-time. Short-time objectives means the advertising is for a particular product line, to provide information about a specific program or event, and the company wants the audiences contact to the company immediately, such as
‘If we will hold a conference in several days later, we will run advertisements on newspapers, and we want the audiences give us a call or come to our office to make a appointment in the following days. ‘(Kun Luo)
Advertising objectives also be set for long-time image and reputation of the company.
‘We also run advertisements for education consulting service on magazines for 12th grade students, we do not expect the students or their parents contact us right away, we just want they have an image of our company, when they would like to go abroad, they will remember us. ‘ (Kun Luo)
It is good to have several objectives for different program, which is in line with Kotler (2007), he identifies advertising can serve many purposes. However, the objectives of XNY are just based on the performance of previous advertising campaign, which is inconsistent with research in this field as Kotler and Fox (1985) state that advertising objectives must flow from the institutions’ target market, marketing positioning or the marketing mix.
Target audience are also defined by XNY, due to the specific characteristic of education sector and the product line of XNY, all participants agree that their service aim communications primarily at the senior students and their parents. The responses towards target response of advertising are various, the top three are awareness, preference and action, which are included in the six responses by Kotler and Fox (1985). Meanwhile, from the interviewees, it can be found that the target reach and frequency of one specific XNY advertising campaign are decided by the budget .
4.2.4 Advertising budget
According to Belch (1998), it is difficult to decide the budget as a number of factors may influence the budgeting decision. The company sets the total size of the advertising budget firstly based on the advertising objectives and the advertising program, then how to allocate the budget over different market segments, geographical areas and time period will be included in a market plan.
‘The budget of advertising campaigns are based on the program essentials, we usually spent 80% of the overall marketing budget on advertising campaigns ‘. (Pengjun Wang)
4.2.5 Advertising message
The company does not have a clear advertising message strategy which is a very important element of advertising strategy. The main content message of the adverting campaign are the same no matter on what media .
‘The core advertising message is the same every time, the change is how we demonstrate it based on the different media. ‘ (Shaohua Hong)
This is inconsistent with the research in this field as Gibbs and Knapp (2002), support that the format of advertising message including ad size, color, and illustration should make a difference from one medium to another.
The market environment and the advertising’ message of competitors are also seen as issues affect the message of the company advertising campaign.
‘When we start to set the advertising campaign, we will decide whether to use positive competition or the cut throat competition. At the same time, we will pay attention to the advertising message of our competitors, we want to differentiate ourselves from others.’ (Huixiang Zhou)
This is in line with argument from Pelsmacker et al. (2005, p:110), who identified twelve elements affect the advertising message, which include the market and competition.
The responses also show the company usually use factual information in order to give the audiences a more tangible understanding and evaluation of their service, which corresponds to the study by Danko (1986) and Day (1992). They point out educational institutions need to emphasize their positive qualities in order to enhance the differentiation of the service offering.
‘The advertising message for the English training courses always mentions how many students got more than 6 marks for the IELTS exam, the purpose is to give customers a intuitive feelings .’ (Ruijia Xie)
4.2.6 Advertising Media
The responses show that the cost, the geographic factor and the circulation are the key consideration, selecting the advertising media in order to achieve the objectives of advertising campaign. This view is shared by Pelsmacker et al (2002) who categorized the advertising media from three aspect: quantitative, qualitative and technical.
It can be argued that the advertising campaigns of educational institutions have a strong influence of seasonal timing, there is a natural variation in the intensity of interest at different times of the year. The utilization of XNY’s advertising media also influenced by seasonal timing.
‘We used to utilize magazine from March to May, aiming to increase brand image. From July to September, we would like to spent lots budget in newspaper, because it is a busy student enrollment period.’ (Weiguo Hong)
The company did not make a good use of their finance and resource because of the wrong decision on advertising media. From the participants, it has been found that the company do not like digital forms of communications, they have used many traditional types of advertising media, such as newspaper, magazine, radio, television, outdoor displays, direct mail and cards. However, some media is not suitable for them to deliver the advertising message, the company do not have a clear idea of choosing the correct media.
‘We spent 30,000 RMB on the in-bus cards advertisements of the English training course, but only two customers give phone call to the company, and neither of them choose our service. ‘ (Weiguo Hong)
4.2.7 Evaluate advertising
The results from the interviews carried out revealed that the company ignored the importance of pre-evaluating, they only did the post-evaluating. In the post-evaluating process, they only evaluated the communication effectiveness of the specific advertising campaign, they did not test the expenditure-level testing, which is inconsistent with research in this field as Mortimer (2000). He identified evaluating advertising both from pre-testing and post-testing results to determine the cost-effectiveness of the advertising and to suggest changes in future advertising.
The company want acquire customers as much as possible through the adverting campaigns, however, there are some constraints on the small company’s advertising campaigns like the financial and resources limitation.
When they want to set up a new advertising campaign every time , they just did a little bit change based on the previous experience, not try to deliver the right message to the target group with the creative idea.
4.3 Sales promotion
4.3.1 Pricing strategy
As a small company, the pricing strategy of the company is based on its competitors. The responses have shown that the company used two types of pricing strategies, one is on the basis of what competitors are charging and one is on the basis of the costs that are incurred. They charge a lower price than the competitors. The literature supports this method, Monroe (1970) defined this approach as the competitor-oriented pricing, it represented the relationship between itself and the competitor.
‘For some types of training courses, we set our the price 10%-15% less than our competitor. ‘ (Weiguo Hong)
Another pricing strategy XNY adopted was cost-oriented pricing.
‘When offer some courses which require a high interactivity, we usually use the cost-oriented pricing, the breakeven volume is around 5 students. ‘
4.3.2 Attitude towards sales promotion
During the interviews, the participants were asked whether they consider sales promotion as an effective marketing communications tool, attitudes towards this tool were divided on this point.
‘I am personally not a great devotee of sales promotion. I do not think customers will select our company only because the sales promotion campaign we offer, the main driving is the quality of our course. In addition, sales promotion will weaken the our brand strength, as the customers may consider our training courses do not have competitive advantage, we can only compete with the big companies by price, they may doubt the quality of our service. ‘ (Ruijia Xie)
This notion is consistent with Shapiro (1973), he identified the relationship between price and quality, he argued consumers often use the price of a product or service as an indicator of its quality, and research has found that people would like to choose the higher-priced brand when the price difference between brands are large, the short-term effects may result in negative effects on the reputation in the long run.
In contrast to the above point of view, two participants considered sales promotion as an effective way to attract new customers and making existing customers loyal in the short run, which is supported by John (2007), he stated that although sales promotions are sometimes used to influence business results in the long run, a sales promotion campaign is a category of instrument that is primarily used to increase sales in a short time period.
‘Sales promotion can be seen as a free advertising for our training courses, one type of sales promotion we offer is the quantity discounts sales promotion, if people more than five come together, we will give them a special discount together. Therefore, customers will try to introduce our course to their friends or family, who belongs to our potential customer, on their own initiative in order to get this kind of sales promotion. ‘ (Kun Luo)
‘Sales promotion help relieve customers’ worries, some training courses offer the scaled pricing sales promotion, customers can pay a smaller charge for additional courses, this may encourage customer, anxious that they may fail the IELTS examination, to take the course.’ (Pengjun Wang)
4.3.3 Sales promotion objectives
Currently, the company has set sales objectives, but they did not require the completeness, there is no linking between the achievement of sales promotion objectives to the performance appraisal of consultants, the company does not evaluate the sales promotion objectives.
‘The nature between advertising objectives and sales promotion objective are total different, sales promotion objectives are seen as psychological expectations. We will have bonus if we achieve sales promotion objectives, there is no docking if the objectives do not achieve. ‘ (Kun Luo)
The aim of setting objectives is to encourage staff try their best to achieve, it is necessary to measure the effectiveness of sales promotion campaign. The company cannot know the profitability of sales promotion campaign if they do not measure the objectives.
4.3.4 Time period of sales promotion
All of the participants interviewed admitted sales promotion as a short term marketing communication tool. Even though their attitudes towards sales promotion diverse, they agreed that sales promotion is a short-term campaign, it should use for a long term period.
‘The sales promotion campaign always set during the summer vacation, as there are lots of students would like take training in this period. ‘ (Pengjun Wang)
4.4 Public relations
Education company need effective communications with their markets and publics. The findings from this part have been shown public relations have been seen as an effective tool for customer acquisition.
4.4.1 Relevant Publics
It can be found from the research that even though the participants cannot identify all their publics, they have noticed the main relevant publics–students, parents of student, government, competitors and staff. This is supported by Kotler and Fox (1988). The relationship between the relevant publics has also been pointed out.
‘The public are not only related to our company, but also to each other, such as if the students are satisfied with our company, they may have positive impact on their parents and friends, who might be our potential customer.’ (Shaohua Hong)
The company has a good understanding of publics relations, all the six participants consider public relation as a specific marketing communications tool. They also identified it was a long term investment. The advantages of public relations can be summarized as public relation enhances the company’s reputation and image.
However the disadvantages of public relation have also been pointed out.
‘Public relations is a long term returns tool, therefore, it requires the financial and resource in order to keep this kind of relationship among various publics. And a bad public relation may have negative impact on company’s reputation and image. ‘ (Shaohua Hong)
The company does not know how to measure images and attitudes of the relevant publics accurately.
‘Lots of factors would influence our images and attitudes of the relevant publics, it is difficult to measure. ‘ (Weiguo Hong)
4.4.2 Establishing Goals
The company did not have a clear plan in order to establish image and attitude goals for the key publics.
‘We know public relation is very important, and we would like to private good public relation in order to gain positive comments, but we do not have hard data on how these publics viewed us.’ (Kun Luo)
4.4.3 PR strategy
As a small company, XNY did not hire a special agency to deal with the company’s public, but they know how to improve the attitudes of a particular public. Several public relations tools have been used in order to achieve the general public relation goal.
‘We submitted annual reports to the Government; we created events in senior high school that attract favorable attention from students and their parents. We also have personal contact referred to the Ministry of Education, those have all been used as a public relation strategy.’
Thus, the communications program of XNJ is effective, as an educational communications program involves both public relations and advertising. (Kotler and Fox, 1988)
CHAPTER FIVE
Conclusion
The last chapter contains four sections. The first section provides reflections on the experience as a consultant. In the second section, recommendations for a marketing communications strategy for the XNY Company are proposed in consideration of the research findings. The third section addresses reflections against the research objectives. In the final section, limitations and considerations for future research are discussed.
5.1 Reflections on the consultancy Experience
According to Greiner and Metzger (1983), consultancy is defined as ”the temporary infusion of outside and credible talent to provide new ideas and additional personnel to the client organization (p.9)”. The client was involved and welcomed the consultant, the client and the author exchanged ideas on the topic of marketing communications.
The consultancy experience has been one that the researcher has thoroughly enjoyed and she intends to continue her work with the Xinjiang Northwest Yinglun company after the study has been completed. It was established during the research process that the there have been many similarities of the Chinese education system with the western systems. The higher education system needs to be more organized and also the marketing budgets have to be utilized more carefully. The campaign has to be designed carefully and more effectively. Also, the research establishes that all the departments including the finance department, the marketing and the operations department have to work in full collaboration to achieve the targets.
5.2 Recommendations to the Client
Drawing on the findings made in the previous chapter, there are several recommendations to the client. It is important that the marketing strategy is suitable for the company to implement, manage and monitor, but comprehensive in a way that gains valid results and insights that help to contribute to their overall knowledge of their strengths and their consumers.
1. The first recommendation proposed is for the company to inform the mission statement to all their staff members, as a mission statement can help to clarify the company’s purpose, objectives, audience and future strategy. At the same time, the mission can motivate those who work for or receive services from the company to feel they are part of a worthwhile institution.
2. While it has been evident that the company’s staff have different opinions on their competitive situation. It is necessary for the company to analyze their industry and business competitive intensity and also reap the benefits of attractiveness of the market.
3. The company should undertake the pre-evaluating of advertising in order to make the advertising campaign more effective, as some improvements of advertising message may be found through the evaluating and the budget can be used better to avoid waste.
4. The company should have an overall plan about their marketing communications strategy so that they can measure whether to use sales promotion to increase sales as it may affect the company’s reputation. The promotions can also go a long way in creating the brand image and also establish the public relations that the campaign wants to achieve.
5. Although the company know how to implement the public relation campaign, the theoretical knowledge should be learned in order to make the campaign more successful as they do not have the budget to hire the public relation agency.
5.3 Reflections Against the Research Objectives
This research study has met all of the objectives initially set at the beginning of the study. The literature review critically analyzed marketing communications strategy theory to service and private higher education, discussed the most appropriate tools. The marketing activities undertaken by XNY were examined through qualitative interviews.
From this research, the author was able to recommend a marketing communication strategy that intuitively responds to the needs of the organization. The author believes that the recommendations in this study will be useful to XNY when they want to develop further marketing communications campaign.
5.4 Limitations and considerations for Future Research
While the findings of the study reveals of some interesting outcomes from those who took part, it is important to be aware of the study’s limitation. The researcher of the study recognizes that as case study research was applied to investigate to the topic area, the ability to make generalizations as a result of the outcomes would be impractical (Fisher, 2007). It may have been beneficial to alter the research that the participants of the study were selected purposively as from three levels of the consumers based on their age and education requirements.
Future investigation would need to be carried out in order to examine the industry from the government aspect as the research methodology only focus on the company’s perspective. Although the findings of the study shed light on some interesting issues, due to time and distance limitation, the research did not work in the company for a while, which may lead to the unfamiliarization of the company’s current situation.
This study aims to investigate the relationship between marketing communications strategy and customers acquisition in the private education sector in Urumqi of China, it focus on a single organization– Xinjiang Northwest Yinglun. The researcher firmly assures that the recommendations made would be suitable for other similar education organizations.
However, for case study research you need to introduce the company more thoroughly – how long have they been working in the field? How many students do they have per year? How much do they turn over/ are their profits (some of this you may not know as it is sensitive information, you need to mention this, however).
You also need to go beyond the 6 interviews; have you looked at their brochures, advertising and promotion? The interviews need to be discussed in the light of this.
What is also missing is a more detailed summary and discussion of the findings. In the Conclusion, summarize what the company does and does not, what they are good at and what not – and how all of this relates to the literature.
Then make your recommendations for improvements.
As you have already done, briefly discuss if and how you achieved your objectives, limitations, a reflection on your relationship with the company and further research.
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