About The Northumbria University - Essay Example

About The Northumbria The Northumbria is an expanding multicultural learning community, with excellent links with further and higher education, industry and commerce throughout the UK, Europe and beyond. Situated in the north-east of England, Northumbria has two separate campuses. The largest is City Campus situated in the centre of Newcastle upon Tyne opposite the Civic Centre. Coach Lane Campus is situated in a leafy suburb of the city, 3 miles from City Campus and linked by the University's free bus service. Northumbria University is a large metropolitan University, first established as a polytechnic in 1969 and inaugurated as a University on 1st Sept.' 92. The largely modularized curriculum is delivered to just over 23,500 students, about 16000 of whom are full-time and the remainder study on a wide range of part time and short term courses. It offers around 500 courses from Part-time, 'Taster' courses, programmes through Distance learning to Full time degree courses. The university has various Academic schools which offer various courses at graduate as well as post graduate levels. The present schools under the university are : Graduate School; Newcastle Business School; School of Applied Sciences; School of Arts and Social Sciences; School of Built Environment; School of Computing, Engineering, and Information Sciences; School of Design; School of Health, Community, and Education Studies; School of Law; School of Psychology and Sports Sciences. Apart from these Schools, the University has specialized departments which look into the various activities : Academic registry, Accodomation services, Corporate Planning, e Learning Initiative Team, Finance, Human resources, IT services, Marketing and Recruitment, Public Relations and Communications, Student Services, Regional European affairs. Marketing Mix in reference to the University : The set of controllable tactical marketing tools - product, price, place, and promotion - that the firm blends to produce the response it wants in the target market. Product : In case of Northumbria University, the product is the variety of Courses it offers to the world. It is a service industry, thus the product offered is not tangible. The Courses vary from part-time, short-term, to full time courses. They also offer courses through Distance learning programmes. The target market for the University varies from Higher school students to Graduates to Professionals to Housewives across the world. Price : For Northumbria University, the price is the fees it charges for the courses. Place : For Northumbria University, its campuses and other partner institutions are the channels through which their courses reach the prospective consumers. Promotion or Communication mix : Modern marketing calls for more than just developing a good product, pricing it attractively, and making it available to the target customers. The company needs to communicate with their customers, and what they communicate should not be left to chance . The promotion strategy includes the activities that communicate the merits of the product and persuade the target customers to buy it. The specific mix of advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, and public relations a company uses to pursue its advertising and marketing objectives is referred to as communications mix. Role of Communications mix in Marketing : From the beginnings of the time, man has sought to communicate. At its basic level, communications are the most important element of the social interchange between the individuals. As the time progressed and, importantly, with the development of rudimentary printing processes and television, it became possible to expand communications to reach wider audiences. Today, consumers are exposed to a vast amount of information on daily basis - everything on news reports on television, radio and in the press, weather forecasts, traffic information, store signs, product packaging, in-store point of sale material, and so on. The essential requirement of the new marketing approach is the development of a close customer focus throughout the organization, which in turn, demands an understanding of customers as individuals in order to appreciate their perceptions, expectations, needs and wants. In this context, an important role of marketing is the provision of information, in order that the decisions are based on contemporary, relevant and accurate information about the market place, considering both competitors and customers. By developing an understanding of the identity of the consumer and their particular wants and needs, we can determine the nature of the behaviour which the communication programme will seek to reinforce or change and, in turn, the specific nature of the message which will affect that behaviour, and the means by which we can reach them. The objective of marketing communications is to provide the consumer with relevant knowledge to transfer them to the next stage of awareness. Having achieved that goal, the objective will be to provide them with appropriate knowledge and understanding of the product or service in order that they can make an informed comparison with the offerings of the competitors. Following this, the intentions will be to create favourable impressions and, subsequently, to create preference for the product versus the other alternative. Major Communications objectives : The major objectives of the promotion mix of the university are : 1. To inform the prospective students regarding the courses available and then telling about the new course - knowledge management. 2. Suggesting uses of the new course, i.e, telling the students about the job opportunities that will be available after doing the course. 3. Telling about the fees for the course. 4. Explaining about the curriculum of the course, also telling whether it will be a fulltime, or part-time course . 5. Describing other courses and the success stories of the ex-students. 6. Giving details of the university- its location, its well qualified staff, well equipped infrastructure , thus building a brand image. 7. To maintain a top-of-awareness regarding the courses and the university, to fetch immediate admissions. 8. To maintain healthy internal communications (developing formal communication in schools and services) to aid in the distribution of information and gathering feedback from staff. Brand Values to be Communicated : The University has to communicate about its location, i.e, it is situated in the beautiful city of Newcastle upon river Tyne. It has world class infrastructural facilities. It has an ever expanding multicultural learning community, with excellent links with further and higher education, industry and commerce throughout the UK, Europe and beyond. Renowned for the excellence of its teaching, as well as for preparing students for the world of work, Northumbria also provides research opportunities for professional reflective practice. It offers eLearning through it eLibrary which gives an access to online materials, help services, online guides and helpsheets. IT and information literacy skills programmes are provided to taught groups and are supported from the eLearning Portal through learning materials including Skills Plus. Marketing Communication Strategy : The marketing message for the university should stress on being one of the oldest universities, and its being already offering approxiamately 500 courses and most of its ex-students are well-settled. Its truly an international university as it has more than 30,000 students studying at the campus from across the world. Now, the university is going to add a new feather to its cap and is introducing a new course in Knowledge Management. Today, acquiring knowledge is easy but to maintain it and use it at the appropriate situations in life is difficult. So, a course in Knowledge management would help to use your knowledge resources in a productive manner. The University should have the following communication mix strategy to fulfill its communication objectives : 1. Advertising - in national dailies for announcement of the admissions for the programme and eligibility criteria for the course. Also, advertising on television, giving in full details of the new course. The television advertising should show a little film on the infrastructure and location of the university. 2. An article on the major features of the university can also be published in latest edition of any student's magazines. 3. The university should organize events on time to time basis and there should a proper coverage in the newspapers. 4. Publishing of an attractive and detailed prospectus, which gives in all information regarding the courses and also about facilities available in the university will be a great help to fetch admissions. 5. Providing information about partner institutions to the prospective students is an added advantage. 6. Maintaining and developing the contents on the university website. 7. Maintaining an online prospectus, and updating the information on day to day basis. 8. Maintaining informal communication between schools and services to aid in the distribution of information and gathering feedback from the staff. 9. Ensuring healthy internal communications. 10. Maintaining relationship with the press. Marketing Budget : The major budget allocation for a university should be on Advertising and Public relations. Advertising budget is higher during the admissions period, when the students are evaluating different universities for seeking admissions to various courses. This time of the year should have insertions in the newspapers and also on the television. All through the year, there should be enough budget for organizing the events and giving them proper coverage from the media. Maintaining and developing a proper photo library will help the students to go through the events being organized in the university, also about the infrastructural benefits of the university. The quality should be maintained in university publications, whether they are the prospectus, course material, Northumbria research brochure, visitor's guide, or other facts and figures. The University's public Relations department should work hard to maintain healthy relationship not only with the media but also with the ex-students, and staff. This all will help in effective publicity of the university. Evaluation Methods : The advertising programme should evaluate both the sales and the communications effect. Measuring Communications Effect : This helps to understand whether an ad is communicating well or not. We can measure it with the help of recall and recognition tests. In recall tests, the students are exposed to magazines, and television programmes and then are asked to recall everything in the ad they saw about the university. In the recognition tests, the students are asked to read certain issue of a newspaper or a magazine and then are asked to point out what they recognize as having seen before. Recognition scores help to assess the ad's impact in different market segments and will also compare the university's ad with other universities. Measuring Sales Effect : This will help us to measure the effect of advertising on sales. For the University we can compare the advertising expenditure with the admissions sought last year with the present expenditure on advertising and the admissions fetched. References 1. Integrated Marketing Communication : The Holistic Approach, by Tony Yeshin 2. Principles of Marketing, by gary Armstrong, Philip Kotler 3. Website for Northumbria University - www.unn.ac.uk Read More