Background
The Australian Education University is huge for the international students as well as the domestic students and it comprises around AU$ 20 billion. The Australian education industry is the third largest earner in the country and is the highest export service in the country. More than 1, 00, 000 staffs are employed in various universities of Australia throughout the country and the number of students that studies in the Australian university is more than 1 million (Altbach et al., 2007). The universities of Australia constantly tries to innovate themselves with the help of the technologies and tries to provide the best kind of education to the students of country and also to the students that are studying in the universities from abroad countries.
There are both international and national students studying in the Australian Universities and they can chose for a variety of courses offered by a diverse range of universities. A total of more than 12000 universities are there in the country and more than 22, 000 courses that are offered by them to the international as well as the national students. Among various other countries, most of the students that are there in the Australian Universities are from the countries like China and India which contributes of about 13.3% and 10.8% respectively in the year 2016. Moreover, the Chinese students that are there in Australia consist of about 27.3% of the total international students studying in the Australian Universities.
In the country, the students that will be studying their under graduation has grown by 1.5% in the year 2105 while the previous growth rate was 9.6% in the year 2012. The students that are from the regional areas have increased by 1.8% while students from low economy background in the Australian Universities have increased by 3.2% than the previous time.
University of Southern Queensland is a university which is of medium size and it is located in Toowoomba in Queensland in Australia and there are three campuses that the university have which consist of Ipswich, Toowoomba and Springfield (Usq.edu.au, 2017). There are a variety of courses that are offered in the university and some of them are law, engineering, business management, arts and so on. USQ was first introduced in the year 1967 and there is a total of 27, 653 students that are enrolled in the university (Ibisworld.com.au, 2017). The vision statement of the university states that the university wants to be the leader in the research and development sector in the market and also focuses upon agricultural technology in the market. They also try to provide their stakeholders with maximum significance and value to the partners of the joint ventures.
Summary of Education Market
Another university form Australia is Monash University and it was incorporated in the year 1958 and there are more than 68, 000 students that are enrolled in the undergraduate and post graduate courses. There are also more than 7, 000 academic staffs that are present in the university and the university is located in Melbourne. The value of the Monash University is that they are dedicated to the highest learning quality along with providing best quality teaching and research facilities (Monash University, 2017). The students of the university are always ready to participate in every matter and are ready to take the initiative.
The economic growth of the country is driven by the Australian Universities as the education sector provides the third highest income of the country. Australia being one of the most beautiful destinations of the world, it attracts a lot of students as the universities of Australia provide superior quality of education to the students. Many students are also offered with a variety of scholarships and also grants are provided to the students regarding the research. Apart from the international students, there are also domestic students who studies in the University of Queensland in Australia and same is the case for the Monash University. While the University of Queensland is ranked in number 51 in the world, the Monash University is ranked in 65 in the top universities of the world (Network, 2017).
Apart from the international students in both the university, the number of national students is more and thus, most of the market share of the national students is more than that of the international students in both the universities.
Of about 1573 total number of staffs works in the University of Southern Queensland and compared to that, there are a lot more staffs in the Monash University as of 2017. In undergraduate courses, the number of female students that have enrolled for the courses in the year 2017 in University of Southern Queensland is 55.4% while the rest are male. The total ratio of female students in Southern Queensland University that have enrolled in the year 2107 is 56% and when compared to that of the Monash University, it was found that it was 55.4%. A total number of students studying in the University of Southern Queensland in the undergraduate courses are 17, 160 and in Monash University are 46, 264. The post graduation students in University of Southern Queensland and Monash University are around 6, 849 and 17, 613 respectively (Universityrankings.com.au, 2017).
Segmentation of Market
The market segmentation of both the university states that both the universities segments their market according to geographical segmentation as there are both international and national students studying in both the universities and their a variety of segment of students that are targeted by the university with the help of their marketing policies (Jain et al., 2009).
While the number of international students in Monash University is 22, 140, the number of international students in University of Southern Queensland is 5, 183. As the number of international students is less than the domestic students of both the universities, the targeting and positioning strategy is done accordingly which lays more emphasis on the domestic student enrolment than that of the international student enrolment.
Apart from the international and domestic students, the students are also there form the aboriginal background and rural part of Australia (Wedel et al., 2012). As most of the courses of Southern Queensland University are based upon agriculture, the rural students are more targeted b y the marketing strategy of the company than the students from the cities and towns. But the Monash University course focus upon the management, business studies and thus attracts more students based in the cities and towns.
The marketing mix different universities are diverse in nature and this is the subject matter which distinguishes one university form their competitors. The marketing mix comprises of seven key elements which are discussed below:
Product
The University of Southern Queensland offers a lot of diverse courses in the field of business management, arts, agriculture, and science, technical and environmental (Usq.edu.au, 2017). While the Monash University offers both undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the field of education, information technology, law, medical, nursing, design and culture and so on. There are a variety of programmes in education which is based upon the needs of each student in both the universities.
Place
There are three total campuses of University of Southern Queensland and they are located in Springfield, Toowoomba and Ipswich while the presence of Monash University is throughout Australia and many parts of Australia has campuses of Monash University which are Clayton, Caulfield at Melbourne, Peninsula Campus, Parkville Campus, Law Chambers and so on. Monash University is also located internationally in South Africa, Malaysia, China, and India and so on.
Price
The courses that are offered in the Southern Queensland University vary in terms of enrolment fee but the fee for the courses is reasonable while the Monash University courses fees are a bit high. Both the University offers scholarship and grants for the research facility but Southern Queensland University offers a lot of grants for the research facility which makes their course fee a bit less than that of the Monash University (Sheil, 2010).
Analysis of Marketing Mix
Promotion
While there are differences among both the Universities in terms of pricing, the promotion strategy is almost the same and both the companies follow online marketing promotion for the university. The pay per click and pay per view ads are used by both the universities in order to promote their universities with the help of the social media sites like facebook, instagram and so on. Both the universities also use benchmark system to register their university with the best benchmark for university websites. While mainly online promotion is used for both the university, they also use media like television, newspapers to promote their university brand.
Physical Evidence
University of Southern Queensland and Monash University both have excellent facility of infrastructure in all the campuses and the classrooms are supported with tables, chairs, projectors and so on. There are also huge computer lab in Southern Queensland University and large laboratory. Also the research facilities provided by University of Southern Queensland are of high quality and support the students to deal with the research they are carrying on (Usq.edu.au, 2017).
The staffs that are working in the university refer to the people and the employees of the University of Southern Queensland as well as Monash University. Among the people there are faculty members and the professors who provide quality education to the students of University of Southern Queensland and also there are other administrative members of the university who looks after the finance departments and various other decision making members of the university all falls under the category of people.
The process refers to the administration forms and instructions that are provided to the students of the university over the internet or through the company website (Ivy, 2008). The main objective of the university should be to make the instructions in a way, which will be friendly to the students and also based upon the technology. Students nowadays prefer reading the instructions over the websites of the university and thus the processes of the university should be based on online delivery of the directions regarding the admission. University of Southern Queensland provides the instructions regarding the admissions over their website and thus attracts the domestic as well as international students which are same as Monash University.
The PEST analysis of the university provides a background for the external environment analysis of the organization (Rothaermel, 2015). Thus forming the PEST analysis of the organization will help to provide University of Southern Queensland design a strategy with the help of which they will be able to gain popularity among the students of the country and also among the international students.
Political
There is more emphasis that has been put down by the Government of Australia in the education system of the country and the education system has been collaborated with the industries which gained a better path to the improvement of the education system of the country. There are also a variety of laws that has been amended by the Government of Australia which has encouraged the international students to go to Australia for the studying purpose since the beginning of the 21st century.
Economical
Australia is a developed country which is stable in terms of economy and for that reason, many national students takes their admission in the Universities of Australia. There are also a variety of growing economies like India and China which has not much of education infrastructure facility and thus students from those countries goes to the Australian Universities for the purpose of studying a variety of courses (Fong et al., 2009).
Social
For the purpose of improved exposure in the universities that are based in the foreign locations, there are many students who come to Australia for education and also the students from the management background immigrates to Australia to get attached with the new culture and learn new ways of business measures. The business management students thus know about the Australian work culture while coming to Australia for studying purpose.
Technological
Among the technological factors, it can be said that Australia is a developed country and the universities are equipped with the bets facilities for the purpose of student research. The students can research with the help of the internet and also the faculty members can provide education to the students with the help of the projector system.
Legal
The legal environment of the university environment states that the universities should be able to take care of the students from any difficult situations (Myors et al., 2008). There are some rules and regulations regarding the university education which provides safety and health to the university students of Australia.
Among the environmental factors, it can be stated that the Australian Government has passed a variety of laws that protects the natural resources of the country from being exploited and also keeps balance between the flora and fauna in the country. Thus, the universities present in Australia should be able to follow these rules and regulations implemented by the government in order to avoid any legal difficulties.
There are a large number of international universities that are present in the country and most of the universities rank among the top 100 in the university rank list of the country. So, it can be said that the competition that is there in the education sector of the country is very high and most of the universities compete with each other to get students from domestic as well as from the foreign according to the number of seats that are there in the university (Universityrankings.com.au, 2017).
The top competitors of University of Southern Queensland are the Victoria University, University of Adelaide, and Australian National University and so on. It is regardless to say that University of Southern Queensland is very ahead of their competitors as they rank 32 in the Australian University context.
The SWOT Analysis is conducted in order to identify the internal strengths and weaknesses of the company along with the identification of the external opportunities and threats. The SWOT analysis of University of Southern Queensland has been conducted below in a tabular format:
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Strengths v The online application system helps a lot of international as well as the domestic students to enrol themselves in a variety of courses that the university offers (Ewing, 2011). v The support team of the admission and the marketing managers of University of Southern Queensland help the organization a lot to gain strengths. v The partnership and the stakeholders support University of Southern Queensland in order to gain strength. v There are facilities of distant education in the university which supports the students that are unable to travel. v The university also follows multi-culture which helps the students of from the foreign to feel like that they are in home. v The materials which support the students are also available online in the university website and thus the students get help from those materials. v The customer relationship management system of the university helps the university to maintain a cordial relation with the domestic as well as with the international students. |
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Weaknesses: v Among the top weakness of the university, there are a lot of courses that the university offers to their students and students often get confused while choosing the courses. v The internal staffs are mostly aged and that is the reason, sometimes the operations of the university are slow. v There are some campuses of the university which are not that big and for that reason; those campuses are unable to provide a full time course to the students. v University of Southern Queensland is a regional university and that is the reason some students consider it is a university of second tier (Savage et al., 2013). v The students are also not made to work by the university and thus it can also be counted among one of the weakness. |
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Opportunities: v The university can offer new partnership and also agents which will help to improve the operation of University of Southern Queensland. v The community links and the joint ventures can also help the university to grow in the market. v They can also think of amalgamation with other universities which can add to their strength in the market. v New sponsors on the part of the university can also help in expanding their operations. |
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Threats: v The changes in VISA rules and regulations by the government can be a barrier to entry of many students in the country (Phillimore et al., 2010). v There are also racist attacks on some of the international students recently in Australia which can also stand as a threat in the country. v The financial crisis in various countries of the world can also stand as a potential threat to University of Southern Queensland. v Lastly, fraudulent transactions over the internet and the hackers can also pose a threat to the international students paying the money for the distant courses through online. |
Among the local as well as among the international students, the university is quite famous as in a year, a lot of international students migrate to Australia to study various courses in University of Southern Queensland (Xu et al., 2010). There is short term as well as long term courses that are offered in both University of Southern Queensland and Monash University which attracts the students towards the university and according to the need of the students the selection can be done by the students. There are distance courses of education that the university also offers to their students and the international students are targeted more by the university with the help of offering research facility scholarship and grants.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that University of Southern Queensland follows diversity in their education system and attracts a lot of students from a diverse range of social and economic background. The global education tours are conducted by the university every year, in which the students of the university participate. Thus they can attract the students with the help of the marketing mix that has been discussed above and they should indentify their strengths and weaknesses in order to convert them into their opportunity to gain more market in the future and in the coming year.
References
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Sheil, T., (2010). Moving beyond university rankings: developing a world class university system in Australia. Australian Universities’ Review, The, 52(1), p.69.
Universityrankings.com.au. (2017). Australian University Ranking | UniversityRankings.com.au. [online] Available at: https://www.universityrankings.com.au [Accessed 2 Jun. 2017].
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