Courses Offered
The Victoria state has an enormous population that is yearning for education; the state is served currently being served by three main universities one of them being Central Queensland University. The University was established to meet the demand for education in this state.
The Central Queensland University was established to serve all the citizens of Victoria State, without discrimination of race, gender, ethnic background, family size, or religion. The university policy directs that the admission of students is done based on merit and that the age of admission should be that of legal age. The university also operates by affordable education(Carson, Cundiff, & Still, 2017).
Also, Central Queensland University offers a variety of courses that ensure that the students get marketable skills and knowledge. The variety of courses that are offered by this university include, business accounting and law, education and humanities, engineering trades, health, psychology, social work and community services, service industries, creative, performing and visual arts, engineering and built environment, English work and study preparation, information technology as well as transport and safety sciences.
The varieties of courses that have been made available are the efforts of the institution to segment the market and ensure every clients preferences have been served (Chung, 2017).
Political
The current political state of the university is largely determined by the political environment of the country. The institution political state is currently stable due to the efforts of the management as well as those of the student leadership. The healthy political state is what has ensured that the institution is growing and shaping the leaders of tomorrow.
Economic
The institutional existence has largely contributed to the growth of the economy in terms of providing employment and producing leaders who take care of the economy. This shows that the role of the institution in the economy is crucial, as it has also made the businesses to thrive around, hence enriching the economic well fare of the state.
Social
Central Queensland University has managed to incorporate the society around and within its environment; social state of the university is in harmony environment with the society. This harmony has helped in running the operations smoothly. Moreover, the university has an Alumni Association, which ensures that former students can keep in touch.
Technology
The university has recognized the need for technology, which has helped, accomplish a lot of goals as well as smoothen operations of the institution. The institution has digitalized almost all its operation, whereby students are now able to access services through the universities website(Dawson, 2014).
Political State
Central Queensland University has a lot of competitors. The competition arises from the fact that all these universities employ similar academic structure, this makes current competitors come up with new and innovative ways such as online degrees to attain a competitive edge. However, all these competitors are working towards providing affordable and credible education To The Australian Community(Doyle, 2013).
Strength The University has well-established internal operations The policies and values that the institution operates on are rewarding and have kept the university running all those years A strong and competent management system to govern the University |
Opportunities The institution has plenty of room for incorporating new courses as well combinations of courses that will be very marketable The rise of the digital era has provided the institution with the opportunity to reach a wider market(Stanley, 2017). |
Weaknesses The internal control systems are very rigid, and it takes a lot of time to implement new marketing strategies |
Threats The competitors are using a uniform academic structure, which sets Central Queensland University which means competitors can out do the university if they are able to offer extra value for the same services. |
The university uses a similar academic structure with the rest of the universities in the country. However, the university is one of the oldest universities that began with the aim of creating a better and educated country. This makes it unique and sets it apart from its competitors. The university management has so far managed to set up sixteen campuses across Australia, whichaims to create brand awareness and provide better services to its clients as well as maintain a competitive edge(Elrod, 2012).This include campuses located at Preth, Brisbane and Townsville. The university has managed to build a strong brand in the Australian market, which has seen it manage to sustain itself through all those years(Faisal, 2016).
The university looks forward to ensuring that its brand is well recognized in the coming year. To realize this, the institution has put forward a marketing and promotional plan, which involves contests that will be held by the university at public places, this will ensure that the institution brand is widely recognized(Feig, 2013).
The other strategy involves, the use of social media platform, the platform will be used to pass content related to the institution services as well as educational courses that the institution is offering.
Sports in the institution will be well sponsored and provided with branded kits; this will ensure that the co- curriculum activities of the institution are well recognized.
Causes and charity are another way that the institution tends to use in the coming year to promote its brand. This makes the brand earn a conscious social image through supporting a cause in the society through donations and charity (Jeannet, & Hennessey, 2013)s.
Also, the institution will use branded promotional gifts such as caps, umbrellas t-shirts, and diaries for marketing purposes. These gifts will be given to the institutions clients as well as its staff.
The institution has strategized on using modern as well as previous marketing mix strategies to ensure that its services are readily available to its clients. The previous marketing mix (4Ps) strategies include,
Product: this involves products and services that the institution is offering
Economic State
Price: which is the amount of money paid for this service
Place: the location where the client can conveniently access the services of the institution
Promotion: activities that the institution undertakes to ensure that the client is persuaded to purchase the services.
Based on these strategies, the institution has managed to tailor their courses in a way that these courses are marketable in the modern job market thus attracting interested customers. Also, the institution has been considerable in pricing it courses to ensure that the prices are affordable and sustainable(Kolberg, 2012). Moreover, efforts have been realized, whereby the institution has set up campuses in various locations of the Victoria state to ensure that clients access its services conveniently. Finally, promotional activities have not been left behind as the institution has been providing branded items to clients and staff members.
The modern marketing strategies (4Cs) involve
Customer: value and solution to the problem
Cost: total cost of acquiring, using and disposing of a product
Convenience: the convince in accessing the product
Communication: the customer wants a two-way communication with the institution
Through the modern marketing mix, the organization has managed to provide marketable courses that meet the demand of clients and considered the cost of acquiring these services. Moreover, the institution has managed to set up a website as well as social network platform that enable the clients to access services easily apart from being able to communicate with the institution management directly. These strategies when combined have managed to create a brand that has ensured customer loyalty(Osmond, 2017).
The institution has an advantage in developing competitive strategies due to the virtue of having business and accounting as one of its courses.
The various competitive strategies that the business has been using include
Cost leadership
The institution has managed to establish cost leadership through providing courses at very competitive charges that making it one of the most affordable educational institution in Victoria State(Silvya, 2017).
Differentiation
The courses offered by the institution have been differentiated into the various market target to ensure that each course adequately serves the needs of that specific market. At the same time the differentiation, give the clients an easy time to choose among them.
Price strategy
A business can utilize an assortment of evaluating systems when offering an item or administration. The cost can be set to augment benefit for every unit sold or from the market general. It can be utilized to shield a current market from new participants, to build piece of the overall industry inside a market or to enter another market.The strategy allows the institution to offer `bundle of services and products that enable the institution to lower the cost of accessing the packaged services(Pearson, 2014).
Social State
The media budget allocations made by the institution was based on various factors and constraints. These factors included the target market, which in its case are those citizens who are seeking to advance their level of education.
Another factor that has been put into consideration is the various types of media channels that the organization is currently using to pass information across to its clients(Ryan, 2012).
Also, the special requirement of advertisements are considered as this increases the cost of advertising, this is, however, necessary to drive the customer to purchase these services.
Finally, the impact that will be made by the advertisement to drive the client is another consideration, as the advertisement will require bearing fruits(Sarsby, 2014).
For proper and affect budget allocation, the following methods will be used to allocate,
Percentage of sales method, objective and task method, competitive parity method, market share method, and affordable method ,as per this methods they will see the marketing and advertising analysis of the other competitive companies and what are the actions to be taken to make strategies to get the results. In this they will observe the others marketing sales and objectives and their methods also. They will allocate the percentage for media from their sales for example if sales are 70% from that they will allocate 6% for advertising and they will see others profitability levels marketing levels skills and allocate budget according to it. So these methods are very useful for the impact of media budject allocation and to stand forward in the competitor startagies
Outcomes And Conclusion
The market analysis conducted ensures that the institution is able to come up with various strategies of marketing and promotion. In order to ensure the increase in efficiency in services as well as increase in the number of clients, the institution needs to implement the listed strategies, to aid the growth of the organization.Following this strategy, the institution will be able to provide bundled services to its customers at very affordable prices.
Finally, the digital platform has contributed a lot in making the university’s brand get recognition in that the institution markets its services through the digital platform. Apart from marketing these services, the clients are able to access the services through the institutions website thus ensuring convenience. Another expectation is that the media budget allocation will be increased so that more can be achieved in popularizing the institution through media.
To conclude on the topic, it is necessary that the owners of business or those heading institutions such as the one mentioned on this paper, familiarize themselves with the need for market analysis as well as marketing strategies. This will ensure that the organizations brand is always at the top as well as manage to fetch more clients. This positions the business or institution ahead of its competitors. Brand creation is one of the tools that keep the business going with many clients flowing in even after the competitors have given up. As such proper attention should be given on this area.
References
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