Research Objectives:
In order to satisfy the aim for which this research is being undertaken, following objectives need to be accomplished which will lead to provide us the clear view of current strategic position of Business School of University of Greenwich.
- To systematically collect data from current students about perception of Business School of University of Greenwich in relation to their competitors.
- To identify the needs and expectations of students from the Business School of the University of Greenwich.
- To identify the current positioning of Business School of University of Greenwich.
- To critically analyze the findings about current positioning.
- Depending on the analysis, to reinforce the current brand positioning.
- OR, to re-position the brand of the Business School of the University of Greenwich.
- Finding developments necessary for university to make in order to meet gaps in provision.
Key Words: Positioning; Service Positioning; Higher Education;
Research Questions:
Subsequent research questions have been drawn from the aims and objectives, which by answering will provide a direction to purpose for which this research is being put forward:
- What are the needs and expectations of students from the Business School of University of Greenwich?
- What are the perceptions of students about the Business School of University of Greenwich in relation to competitors?
- What is the current positioning of the Business School of University of Greenwich?
Literature Review:
The concept of positioning in the field of marketing has been talked by different authors differently (Kalafatis et al, 2000). Porter (1996) used the term “strategic positioning” meaning performing different activities from rivals’ or performing the similar activities as them but in a different way in order to attain sustainable competitive advantage. Hooley et al (1998) explained a synonymous term “competitive positioning” as the firm’s choice of target market and the differential advantage it seeks in order to secure that market. Originally, the concept of positioning gained popularity by the efforts of Ries and Trout (1986, p2) concluding that:
“Positioning starts with a product. A piece of merchandise, a service, a company, an institution….”
Taking it further, narrating them:
“.. Positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the minds of the prospects…”
For our research, we have selected the concept of positioning from Ries and Trout’s (1986) work as aim of the research is to develop and design a strategy to attain a distinctive position in students’ mind leading to competitive advantage.
Cowell (1989) suggested that the concept of positioning is equally important for service sector as it is for goods sector but due to the characteristics of services, such as, intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity and perishability (Zeithaml et al, 1985), positioning of services is a more difficult and challenging task compared to physical goods.
Blankson & Kalafatis (1999) argues that even after such a long period, the debate on the dichotomy between the service and goods sector still prevails. Blankson & Kalafatis (1999) put forward a debate based on previous studies that there are two schools of thoughts pertaining to positioning in services. First school of thought proposes an argument that there is a similarity in terms of intangibility between goods and services, and customers seek benefits and satisfaction from services that same way as they do to physical goods, therefore positioning strategy need not to be different (Levitt, 1981; Cowell, 1989). The second school of thought opposing first one stresses that services have different unique characteristics which necessitate the need to come up with a distinct positioning strategy compared to goods and consumers actually perceive services to be different from products (Zeithaml, 1981).
Mazarrol (1998) suggested that higher education is a considerable marketable service and it possess all the necessary characteristics of services identified earlier by Zeithaml et al (1985). Among the characteristics, difficulty in marketing intangibility of services prevails more in education industry as it is difficult to define (Mazzarol, 1998). Marketing of educational institutions in UK started in 1980’s (Brown and Oplatka, 2006) and due to increasing competitive environment, nationally and internationally, universities are sensing the need to market themselves aggressively and after careful situational analysis, they carefully need to adapt strategies to effectively position their in the mind of students (Ivy, 2001). Higher education has become a positional good in the sense that students, parents and employers view some institutions as offering better social life and future prospects and vice versa, institutes seek for the best students (Hirsch, 1976; Maringe, 2006).
Different studies have resulted in different positioning typologies. Among the most famous is Aaker & Shansby’s (1982) positioning dimensions based on products attribute, price/quality, its application, user, product class or competitor. These dimensions gained wide popularity. Hooley et al. (1998) further argued that infinite number of positioning decisions can be based on differing dimensions. Hence, they proposed positioning strategies based on pricing, quality, service, tailoring, benefit or innovation.
There are no specified positioning dimensions for educational institutions in particular. Gray et al (2003) concluded that little research has been conducted on the positioning strategy in international educational market even though it is highly competitive. Gray et al (2003) put forward 5 dimensions on the basis of which a university can position itself; environment pertaining to learning facilities; reputations including brand name, recognition and higher ranking; prospects for students graduating; image of the destinations as perceived; and cultural integration as in religious freedom, rights for ethnicities etc. Nguyen & LeBlanc (2001) argued that image and reputation are two important factors which universities can adopt as their positioning strategy. Moving ahead, they suggested that these factors help university to retain students for further education, ending in loyalty for a longer period of time. One university in UK has repositioned itself as “a University for Jobs (2007)” and it is evident that they have turned from a recruiting institution to a selection university. The highlight message for the prospective students is: “It (the university) offers a unique combination of high academic standards and employment success . . .” The need to demonstrate employment opportunities become a key strategy option, encouraging students to get enrolled. Therefore we’ll take Gray et al (2003) dimensions as guidelines and also may perform an exploratory research to see if there are other aspects important to students on the basis of which, positioning can be adopted.
Source: Blankson, C. and Kalafatis S. (2001), ‘The Development of Consumer/Customer Derived Generic Typology of Positioning Strategy’, Journal of Marketing, Spring issue, p 35-53
Research Design and Methodology:
In order to accomplish the end objectives for which this research is being conducted, both qualitative and quantitative techniques will be used, which are discussed further. Data collection, both primary and secondary has been divided into two phases. Phase 1 constitutes exploratory research aiming to look for secondary data from different sources as well as qualitative method of conducting focus groups in order to gather primary data necessary for the next step. Phase 2 accompanies quantitative techniques in the form of survey to gather finalized results to be analyzed.
Data Collection (Phase 1):
Exploratory research is investigation informal studies to provide background information. It is not intended to provide conclusive evidence from which to follow a concrete direction, rather it provides a basis that subsequent research will be a requirement to achieve final results. The basic purpose behind exploratory research is to exhaust inexpensive readily available data which may help to prevent mistakes like rushing into expensive detailed surveys (Zikmund, 1997). Exploratory research can be conducted using various techniques. For our research objectives, and considering the mind in limitations, the most suitable are secondary data and focus groups.
Secondary Data: Also termed as holistic data previously collected for some project other than the one at hand. It is relatively inexpensive and readily available, but we need to make sure it is consistent with the problem definition as they are not designed for the purpose to serve research needs (Zikmund, 1997). External sources where we can gather secondary data for this research includes
- Libraries (Huge source of information including databases, books and periodicals, journal articles) British Library, University of Greenwich Library, EBSCO database, Emerald Management full text database, Athens DA Resources etc.
- The Internet (Provides secondary data, authenticity is a bit doubtful but in many cases huge information can be acquired).
This secondary data will help us to prepare a final questionnaire based on previous researches on the subject matter. For e.g. Gray et al’s (2003) proposed positioning dimensions for universities.
Focus Groups: The second step of phase 1 is conducting focus group which is a qualitative method of data gathering. It is an unstructured, free flowing interview with a small group of people. Focus groups are not rigidly structured; rather they are of a flexible discussion format. The moderator introduces the topic to the participants who in turn carry out the discussion and as this discussion progresses, new topics emerge. It freely allows the participants to truly reflect their feelings and emotions in their own words (Zikmund, 1997). The role of the moderator is to ensure that all members participate in the session and none dominates it. Though focus groups are the least expensive ways of gathering information; it should be kept in mind that data gathered from focus groups only provide qualitative information. Another limitation to them is that since the members are not selected scientifically, they may not truly reflect the opinions of the whole population at large. However, the exploratory information collected through focus groups can be a basis for further scientific research (Sekaran, 2003).
We will be conducting two focus groups of 6 students each. One group will contain a random sample from the international students and other from the domestic students. The objective of the focus groups is to generate further insights about students and the factors they might feel important to them in their ultimate decision of selecting a University. We may or may not come up with factors other than discussed earlier. There is no scientific method to analyze qualitative data. Therefore recording of the whole focus group discussion will be carried out which will help to reduce any risk of biases. Face expressions is a short coming, and it solely based on moderators interpretation.
Data Collection (Phase 2):
The second phase of collecting data is by gathering quantitative data by asking respondents to fill in the finalized self administered questionnaire. We have selected a sample size of 200 students purely based on judgment and keeping in mind the limitations of the study. However, if further we might feel that the sample size is not justified; further alterations may be carried out. Non probability sampling technique is one in which sample is selected on personal judgment or experience and the probability of any member from the population is not known and within that framework, we will be using Quota Sampling (Zikmund, 1997). Quota sampling is a procedure which ensures that all the sub groups present in the population will represent the sample to the extent on the desire of investigator. A logical drawback of quota sample is it tends to select people which are easily available therefore careful supervision is required in order to gather a true representative sample of the population (Zikmund, 1997).
Obviously, the logic for using quota sampling for questionnaires is that we want student representing Business School of University of Greenwich from different geographical backgrounds and level of education to be part of the sample. Quota allocation is explained below:
Data Analysis:
The number of questions in the final questionnaire is not known as yet since they will depend on the findings from the primary data from focus groups. However, a few sample questions are listed below (not necessarily the part of final questionnaire):
Q: The achievements of the institution for you?
Q: The Business School of the University of Greenwich provides avenues for religious practices?
Q: Stable political economy of the host country is important?
The most appropriate technique for measuring the attitude of students’ for this research is through Likert scale which is a type on an ordinal scale. It is a bipolar attitude measurement technique most widely used which allows respondents to rate how strongly they agree or disagree with these carefully constructed statement (Zikmund, 1997). Therefore, for our research we will construct a 5 point Likert Scale ranging from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree and weights are assigned to answers accordingly. An example is shown below:
Q: The achievements of the institution for you?
Each dimension as mentioned will contain certain questions which will reflect the attitude towards the overall dimension. Therefore in order to achieve this, we will use the method of cross-tabulation. It is a technique for organizing data by groups, categories or classes facilitating comparison between them (Zikmund, 1997). For individual question, calculation of confidence interval will be conducted using the t distribution. This will help us in finding out attitude of students that how many respond favorably or unfavorably to a certain question. The results will be measured and analyzed with the help of most extensively used statistical software called SPSS. Once data is input, immediate reports are generated and there is no probability of human calculation error.
Research Limitations and future direction:
The research design section has described the pros and cons of every technique adapted from sampling to focus groups, however utmost care will be taken place to minimize the impact. Other limitations which should have been avoided or may be part of future research are:
- Due to limitations, we have included only students as sample which is one of the stakeholders Business School of University of Greenwich has. Therefore, future research may include university employees, teachers, employers, community etc.
- The sample size drawn for the study is too small to make it a generalization.
- Results will lead to a unified positioning strategy which may not be suitable for both, the international or domestic market at the same time.
- Students’ expectations changes with experience therefore the difference in the dates of collecting data may lead to different result.
Conclusion:
The aspect of positioning university brands in students’ mind is an increasingly growing phenomenon and now a pre requisite for institutions to effectively compete in domestic and international markets. Options for students have proliferated at a progressive rate. Globalization and competitive employment environment at the same time have lead students to treat education as a return on investment in order to safeguard their careers.
The research will help the Business School of the University to establish a unique position in relation to its competitor which is favorable to students. By doing so, it can develop an enhanced image and also attract more students for a higher market share. Also, as mentioned before there are not many studies providing positioning dimensions for universities. Therefore, our exploratory research might lead us to come up with additional dimensions which can be helpful for universities in future to use as a base for positioning strategy. Once a positioning strategy has been identified and adopted by the Business School of University of Greenwich based on this research, future research may be conducted about its validity and may serve as a case study for future work.
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