Marketing Plan of Australian College Information Centre - Case Study Example

1. Introduction 2. Executive Summary 3. Corporate and marketing objectives Australian College Information Centre (ACIC) was established in 1988 as a world-class education consulting firm which specializes in Australian education. Over the past twenty years, ACIC has successfully helped more than 30,000 international students from over forty countries and regions to study in Australia. Today, ACIC has offices in China, Taiwan, Poland and Slovakia, and is one of the leading education consulting firms in Australia (ACIC 2010). While the company chain has grown over the years, its corporate objectives have remained much the same. Its goal is to help people maximise the returns of their education investments and to make sure that their study in Australia is a successful and enjoyable experience. The marketing objective of ACIC is to utilise the current facilities and well trained staffs to gain more market share and gain a more profound sense of satisfaction from customers. Generally, ACIC understands the importance of corporate identity and strategies, and hence have balanced between the requirements of different stakeholders. 4. Situation Analysis External Environment External environment brings into consideration factors that are beyond the organisation control. External environment factors usually determines and provides a foundation in which an organisation can operate efficient and be successful through ensuring appropriate legislations, guidelines and other fundamentals are in place. This means that it is paramount to understand the external environment of an organisation so that analysis of that organisation can be understood. To understand better ACIC’s external environment, it is necessary to analyse it using SLEPT factors (McDonald 1992). SLEPT factors include social, legal, economic, political, and technology which affect the operations of an organisation. Social Social factors relate to preferences, behaviour and lifestyles of consumers. People often request and look for information that will help them meet educational preferences and make better options. As an education consulting firm, ACIC is in a better position to benefit from the opportunity (Steuernagel 1998) that society weights on more quality education. Moreover, society usually lays the basis in defining the direction and approach an organisation can be viewed from. High standards and appreciation by the society, an area that ACIC has maximised on ensures the number of students/customers increases with time, and thus the success of an organisation. Legal Legal factors pertain to laws that are in place when conducting business activities in Australia. Laws usually defines how business is done and bring into consideration traditions, guidelines and policies that ensures all organisational and environmental factors operate efficiently ensuring a level field of all business to operate. ACIC needs to follow and abide the laws like consumer protection legislation, taxation law, employment law and workplace safety law. Laws frequently change, and it is a requirement for ACIC to be updated on new changes in legal fraternity. Thus, ACIC should appreciate the importance of laws and ensuring that they follow to the later the laws to ensure that the organisation reputation is maintained. Nevertheless, ACIC has a good reputation of following laws and legal frameworks that are in place. Economic Changes in the economy such as wage rate, interest rate and inflation may influences the way organisations operate and the marketing strategies they use to meet the needs of target markets. Australia was ranked 19th in the world in terms of GDP (PPP) as of 2009, with an estimated number of 824.3 billion US Dollar compared to 816.2 in 2008 (Central Intelligence Agency 2010). ACIC can operate smoothly because no significant changes in economy have been reported. The general economy of Australia indicates, it is a good place where businesses can be profitable. ACIC is a better position to maximise on this provision and ensure the organisation operates efficiently ensuring maximisation of profitability is achieved and also ensuring good quality service. Political Political factor plays a major role in defining the direction investors could invest in a country and entire perception of peace, freedom, and high chances that the business could not be disrupted by external forces such as civil unrest. Australia fortunate is a political stable country and government influences is minimal because of democratic space. Politics is involved in educational settings because of policies and regulations passed by new political systems that govern the country. There are ultimately two political parties that ever make it into power. The disciplinary and legal system is fair to business. It means that ACIC can operate and achieve its vision and mission requirements easily. Technology Organizations nowadays have to make enormous investment in technology. The reason for this investment is to improve productivity and customer relationship management. Technology changes at a faster rate, which requires ACIC to be ready to embrace these changes into ensuring the organisation is modernised. ACIC understands the importance of technological changes and thus updates the facilities to fit the way it operates. Moreover, numerous means of presenting and accessing information is available and thus ACIC should introduce these features in fulfilling technological requirements. Example of these technologies may include teleconferencing, online payment methods, and posting their contents and capabilities on different sites such as social community sites. Industry situation Australia’s education system is recognized as one of the best in the world. Education consultants are just like any other financial or business consultants. They have specialized knowledge and experience to help people make an informed decision. ACIC has been consistently committed to providing excellence in the international education consulting industry. As people appreciate the importance of education, this service sector has the capable of growth in the future. Nevertheless, this sector has to manoeuvre through numerous threats and turbulence because of preferences and demands of consumers. Moreover, the industry is not fully developed, which means that huge investments are required to ensure an organisation can succeed in such environment. Competitors The macro economy is based on a capitalist economic model which encourages competition between competitors in the market. Competitors are sometimes threat or at times help an organisation to improve on services proved. In any industry, competitors exist, and the same circumstance applies in the case of ACIC. ACIC has several competitors in the market ranging from local organisations to internal based organisations. ACIC can set its service apart from small size education consultants because it Only promotes reputable educational institutions that offer high quality courses. This is possible because ACIC collaborates and partners with reputed institutions an institutions that are vetted to provide quality and appropriate education Represents a wide variety of educational institutions so the advice that it gives to their customers is impartial. This is because the numerous partners provide appropriate information that ensures the customers and other stakeholders receive value for their money. Provides long-term solutions for students - Through the Sydney head office and overseas branch offices, ACIC provides ongoing service and support to its students before departure and after arrival, and throughout their studies in Australia. This means that they have developed strategies to retain their previous consumers and also encourages them to bring new customers. Has a long-term vision for the firm to grow and develop. It invests heavily in the firm and staffs to make sure that its students consistently receive high quality service. ACIC has ensured that the human resource management addresses issues raised by the staff and management tries its best to fulfil and satisfy the requirements of staff. Thus means that the staff will continuously be satisfied and motivated towards fulfilling their tasks and hence reduces issues associated with employee turnover. Collaboration with different stakeholders ensures that they can operate their businesses easily and effectively. It provides a means in which organisational service offerings can be improved and thus sustains the organisational requirements. However, ACIC offers much the same services as those with similar sizes. This requires ACIC to design better marketing strategies to attract more customers. Generally, it mean that ACIC should differentiated its product and service offerings to ensure consumers are satisfied and they have numerous options to choose from Internal Environment An analysis of internal strengths and weaknesses of an organisation may determine its success because it highlights the critical issues that must be addressed by the marketing plan and the appropriate actions that are needed to deal with them. By considering capitalize on strengths and overcome weaknesses, ACIC can formulate its strategies and operate towards success. Generally, the strengths of an organisation can be used to maximise organisational benefits while formulating strategies that can mitigate against the weaknesses. Some strengths and weaknesses associated with ACIC includes: Strengths It has enough resources through collaboration with other players in the market They have better means to acquire resources such as capital because the entire organisation is large and the number of consumers also continuously increases. It has reliable and hardworking staff that is versed with most organisation requirements, and thus may contribute to organisation success. Weakness High employee turnover because of wages and salaries; many people in different sectors and industries earns better than those employed at ACIC, and hence most of the employees reassign from their positions. Partners’ quality may be questionable and they are loosing customers to competitors. This is because unreliability of partners and their inefficiency has become a major issue, and thus the cumulative quality of services and products are affected. Service-goods continuum One method of classifying services looks at the parameters used to distinguish between physical goods and services along a continuum from intangible dominant services to tangible dominant physical goods (see appendix). ACIC’s service itself is picking students from the airport, informing them on availability of educational facilities and factors that support education. On the other hand, goods refer to the visa, brochures, accommodation facilities, and application forms. Thus, the principle of service-goods continuum is important in ensuring an organisation operates optimally on all its activities and tasks ensuring high quality services. Service Characteristics Intangibility Service is intangible to a certain degree, as it cannot be handled, touched, heard or any other physical activity towards it. Moreover, service cannot be stored, transported, owned or resold. ACIC offers services that are intangible and they facilitate accomplishment of tasks based on fundamentals of services (Steuernagel 1998). However, potential customers could make an informed judgement of the service quality based on a visual inspection of the front of the office. ACIC therefore needs to pay attention on presentation of their services and the environment in which the service is provided to improve on the perception of services provided. Heterogeneity Heterogeneity is the variability in the service quality because people who are associated with inconsistencies provide the service provider. Thus, service provided to one person may differ from services provided by another person. These differences are associated with ideologies, attitudes and psychology of the service provider. Heterogeneity plays an important role in retaining a consumer or even two consumers are assisted at the same time, they could feel equal treatment if similar assistance is provided. Better staff training and management would help to reduce the likelihood of ACIC staff answering the same enquiry in a different manner to each other. Perishability Service is perishable in two ways, which are after providing a given service, the entire process is irreversible and thus vanishes. The other way, is that the relevant processes, resources and systems that are assigned last for a definite period (Baker 2003). Therefore, ACIC should understand the perishability concept of service to ensure they maximise their resources on specific tasks. Inseparability ACIC service is inseparable. The service provider and the service itself are indispensable in that it cannot be separated. This means that the service provider is supposed to generate the service at that instance that he or she is required to do so (Weinstein 2004). Thus, it means that ACIC staff competency is important in ensuring the organisation succeeds in what it is doing. Therefore, the management of ACIC should device ways and means to improve on staff service provision capabilities. Core and Peripheral Services Core service is the actual activity that is provided by a service provider (Allred et. al. 2007). For instance, in the case of ACIC the core service is educational consultancy, thus any other service that support the consultancy is called the peripheral services. However, it is important that both (core and peripheral services) operates concurrently and effectively to ensure best quality services is offered to the customers. 5. Customer Analysis Segmentation Variables Targeting is important since it ensures the merge resources are maximised on specific segment and hence ensuring the approach utilised would be successful. Target segment should be clearly identified before defining the services and other means that should be utilised in that segment such as marketing should be understood in advance. The target markets that the ACIC concentrates upon are the demographic and geographic (ACIC 2010). Demographic Segment Demographic brings into consideration income, age, and sex to name some. The organisation concentrates on age and income since they are differentiating factors in most of the schools. Institutions and schools are differentiated in terms of cost and services offered and thus the cost. Another element is age in that there are students for lower schooling, upper schooling, colleges and universities (Baker 2003). Thus, maximising on income and age would easily define the approach an organisation can take ensuring that the services provide are structured in a way that the organisation would improve on profitability. Geographic Segment Geographic segmentation brings into consideration locality of consumers. This is because the location may easily define the services that are required by a group of consumers. People who study in Australia come from different parts of the world. This means that ACIC concentrates on Australian students and students from overseas - resulting in provision of quality services. Customer Expectations Customers usually require quality and appropriate services that suites different environmental conditions or context. The service that is offered has numerous benefits and its performance is appropriate to the people involved because: It provides an appropriate avenue in which students can access reliable and appropriate information Provides other assistance that helps in fulfilling educational requirements such as travelling and assistance in application of visas Minimisation of time because the consumers access information from a centralised location, and hence the information could be consistent. Perceived Risk Perceived risk is the level in which the customers believes that certain service is that as appropriate or suites their requirements. This is usually a bigger threat to many service providers since perception determines consumer behaviour. Perception of the society may affect the way the organisation is viewed, and the services that it provides Psychological views of the customer may inhibit the success of the organisations based on the services that are been offered. The customer may think the service is beyond their financial capabilities, which means the organisation is supposed to price their products within the reach of many consumers. Service Duration/Emotional Content The customer is supposed to feel associated with the service been provided. It means there should be emotional content associated with the delivery of the service such as trust and loyalty and the belief that the service provided is worth the cost. ACIC understands the importance of emotional content, which they champion and ensure they use it to create competitive advantage (ACIC, 2010). This can be achieved through the approach the services are provided, environment of the service and presentation of the staff. Fulfilling high standards of this requirements ensures that emotional feeling of a consumer is cultivated. Level of Customer-Provider Interaction The interaction between the service provider and the consumer contributes towards satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the service provided. This means those individuals who provided the education consultancy service in ACIC should be knowledge on the services provided and maxima of the services been provided. Thus, services provided in ACIC requires high competence level, customer experience, and effort to ensure that the customer is satisfied on the services been provided. The boundary of services spans since it incorporates different stakeholders and collaborators such as taxi drivers and accommodation providers. 6. Service Product Analysis Physical Evidence The nature and circumstances of the place that the services are been provided. This means that at ACIC offices, the offices are supposed to be presentable, neat, organised, and friendly environment. Thus, physical evidence is paramount in that consumers will perceive based on first sight impression and may affect ACIC perceptual plan of the service (Ruskin-Brown & Clarke, 2000). Role of Servicescape Servicescape includes all aspects of the physical environment where the service provider and customer interact (Fisk et. al. 2007 , p.144). Servicescape brings into consideration facilities interior such as equipment, layout, interior design, facilities exterior such as parking, exterior design, landscape, and other tangibles such as stationary, employees dress and brochures. The physical evidence provides a means in which employees present themselves to the customers, while the consumers may utilise the level of physical evidence to perceive the quality of service provided in the facility (Davids and Newcomb 2006). Cognitive and Affective Responses Physical evidence may affect the way the service of an organisation can be appreciated by the consumers. This means an organisation may utilise physical evidence for competitive advantage since it creates initial and lasting impression of the entire organisation. Consumer behaviour is shaped by perception, society, peers and family members and thus an area that is perceived to be good get higher marks compared to an area that has poor physical evidence. 7. Pricing Strategies Numerous pricing strategies exist, and the circumstances that are used are based on the quality or quantity of the service or the product. Two common strategies exist in many service industries which are cost plus and penetration pricing strategies (Wedel & Kamakura, 1999). Cost plus brings into consideration cost of the supportive services (manufacturing) plus a small amount that is referred to as profit while penetration strategy is fixing a lower price for the services later increasing the price after the organisation has increased market share and has numerous loyal consumers. ACIC utilises cost plus strategy to ensure that they gain competitive advantage by providing affordable services and also making enough revenues to sustain operations of the organisation (ACIC, 2010). 8. Promotional Strategies A successful product or service means nothing unless the benefit of such a service can be communicated clearly to the target market. ACIC’s promotional strategies include the use of promotional tools such as advertising, public relations, sales promotion and personal selling, as in the table. As one of the leading education consulting firms in Australia, ACIC has utilised several types of media to promote including TV, newspapers and magazines, radio channels, brochures and newsletter and website. To achieve its promotional objectives, ACIC focuses on not only non-personal communication methods but also face-to-face communication channels. Promotional Tools Cost/benefit Advertising – the media mix TV and Radio Channels Cost highest but in a faster way Newspapers & Magazines Cost lower than TV and radio channels Brochures and newsletters Cost lower and have good outcomes Website Cheap as it only needs one person to update the information Public Relations Cheap only need the staffs to keep in contact with the public using technology Sales Promotion Cheap may utilise the technology Personal Selling Cheap as the consultant team working by doing personal selling 9. Methods by which Supply and Demand is managed Event1 Event2 Event3 Event4 Event5 Event6 Event7 Event8 Make a call for appointment Enter office and fill a form with name and tick enquires Choose a seat and waiting for the call Being called and walk toward the sfaff’s desk State the personal situation and ask for help Take out the documents to be recorded Wait for the Printing process Pay membership fee Acceptable execution Time           1mins. 2mins. 1-5mins. 15sec. As long as you wish. 15 sec. 1min. 1min. Failpoint               Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Participant               Customer, & Receptionist Customer & Receptionist Customer Customer & Consultant Customer & Consultant Customer & Consultant Consultant Customer & Receptionist Physical evidence: Office, office tables and chairs, sofas, glassware, wall decorations, stationery, computers, printers, rubbish bins, etc. Line of visibility to customers: Frontstage ________________________________________________________________________ Backstage Physical evidence: offices, office tables and chairs, stationery, rubbish bins. Key activities: Selecting; recording; consulting; scheduling employees shift, etc. All of the employees should follow at least have an image from the table of the blueprint and directing attention to steps that should be altered, added or deleted. Complaints can arise due to service bottlenecks or failpoints that are part of the service operation but beyond the control of the frontline service provider. By setting up the right blueprint, it could also help the firm to pinpoint any potential bottlenecks or failpoints and reconsider on how to constitute a smoother problem area. 10. Customer Quality, Satisfaction, Perceived Value and Customer Retention Efforts Student Satisfaction In services marketing concept, it is an important task for every company to analyze the level of customer satisfaction, value and quality of the services. The best way to find out about ACIC and the quality of its service is to speak to someone who has used its service and experienced what they like. With ACIC, people will find its students are highly satisfied with the service. ACIC’s number one priority is always the satisfaction of its students. Its continuing growth and success would not be possible without students’ ongoing satisfaction. Strategies to build customer relationship ACIC relies mostly from repeat customers and ‘word of mouth’ marketing strategy. The figures reflects that over 90% of ACIC’s new students are referred by existing ACIC students; around 53% of ACIC students have used its school placement service more than twice, and 20% for over three times. The fact also shows that between 1995 and 2007, the number of students choosing ACIC tripled (ACIC 2010). Also, ACIC acknowledges the importance of appropriate media and applies it in the marketplace to devise a better marketing strategy. Market Research ACIC management conduct a frequent research in terms of competitor’s market share, supplier, employee and also customer. It is believed by the company that human changes preference and decision all the time that is why there is a need of marketing research to solve the emergence problem and innovative implementation of strategy 11. Internal Marketing Organisational Culture Organisational culture refers to the norms, values, perceptions and traditions. Employees should understand the requirements and goals of an organisation to be able to provide services based on those requirements. The organisation culture of ACIC supports customer orientation and they are the major factor that has made the organisation be successful for this while (ACIC 2010). Employee Reward Programs Two strategies are utilised to reward employees, which are individual recognition and team recognition. Individual contributions and teams contributions are rewarded based on customer satisfaction. Moreover, loyalty programs are mostly used for individual employees so that turnover rates of employees are minimised (Ruskin-Brown & Clarke 2000). Service Provider Emotional Evidence In doing business, emotions can contribute to the success of an organisation or they contribute to failure of an organisation (English, 2006). Emotion is usually associated with temperament, disposition, personality, mood and motivation. Thus, a service provider should ensure they empathise and understand position of the consumer to enable satisfaction of services provided. 12. Marketing Strategy Future Target Markets Segments Future target markets that the company will try to concentrate on are: Online Students Importance and influence of online classes as increased and many students and people do not understand how this provision operates. Thus, the organisational website will be edited and content increased to ensure that this issue is addressed. Exchange Programs The issue of exchange program is gaining advantage in the education fraternity, which means that it is a sector that the organisation can maximise. Brand Positioning The online services and regional offices plus collaboration with agents could improve provision of ACIC services. Product Strategies Differentiation and clear-cut between the services should be championed to ensure that consumers can clearly different between the services offered by the organisation and the services that are offered by third parties. This could prevent poor quality of collaborators from negating the quality of ACIC services (Davids and Newcomb, 2006). Promotional Strategies Advertisements will be carried out in the media, and the organisation will market its services to institutions through provision of pamphlets and brochures. Process and Physical Evidence Strategies Redesigning of all branches to ensure that they have the same colour and the interior and exterior facilities should create a positive and lasting impression. 13. Budgets The total marketing communication budget includes the expenditures of the media mix. In order to execute the strategy, the required budget components have been calculated in the following table. Expenditure Type Cost in AU$ Percentage % (as per the entire budget) Media TV 35,000 17.5 Newspapers & Magazines 15,000 7.5 Radio Channels 30,000 15 Brochures and newsletters 10,000 5 Website 5,000 2.5 Exhibitions and visits 20,000 10 Market Research (Primary and secondary) 10,000 5 Public Relations 5,000 2.5 Operational Charges 30,000 15 All Other Expenses 40,000 20 Total Expenses 200,000 100 14. Implementation A time plan has been developed for the marketing strategy, as following: Task Description Completion Date 1. Meet the directors from different departments to promote the plan and analyse the budget 5/15 2. Consultation team meet to decide the timescale and trial specifics 5/15 3. Define the profile of project implementation 5/22 4. Meet the stakeholders to promote the trial and to schedule other important activities 5/30 5. Launch trial plan 6/1 6. Discuss the outcome of the trial and analyse the feedbacks concerning the implementation of marketing plan 6/16 7. Launch marketing plan which includes all the activities for the marketing plan strategies 6/18 8. Quarterly reviews 7/1, 10/1 15. Evaluation and Control Marketing strategies bring into consideration to ensure that the organisation achieves its vision and mission requirements (Wedel & Kamakura 1999). The methods that can be used to determine the impact of marketing plan includes market share analysis, sales analysis, expense to sale analysis, and marketing audit. In addition, strategies should be in place to determine the impact of direct marketing such as the use of brochures and media adverts such as the use of TVs. Individuals should be assigned to monitor timing of ads and analyse the impact of such ads. Timescale and budgets should be utilised to control the marketing initiative. 16. References Australian College Information Centre (ACIC) 2010, Our Services, viewed 01 May, 2010, Allred, A, Addams, HL & Chakraborty, G 2007, ‘Is informal planning the key to success of the inc. 500?’ Journal of Small Business Strategy, 18(1): 95-104. Baker, M 2003, The Marketing Book, 5th edn, London: Butterworth-Heinemann Publishers. Central Intelligence Agency 2010, The World Factbook, viewed 08 May, 2010, Davids, M & Newcomb, K 2006, ‘Planning for marketing success: Turning the “Wheel,” Debt 3, 21(4): 22-25. English, J 2006, How to Organise & Operate a Small Business in Australia: How to Turn Ideas Into Success, 10th edn, Sydney: Allen & Unwin Publishers. Fisk, R, Gountas, S, Hume, M, Gountas, J, Grove, S, & John, J 2007 Services Marketing, First Asia-Pacific edn, John Wiley & Sons: Australia. McDonald, MHB 1992, ‘Ten barriers to marketing planning,’ The journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, 7(1): 5-18. Ruskin-Brown, I & Clarke, G 2000, Marketing a Service for profit: A Practical Guide to Key Service Marketing Concepts, London: Kogan Page Publishers. Steuernagel, R 1998, Cellular Marketing, New York: John Wiley and Sons Publishers. Wedel, M & Kamakura, W 1999, Market Segmentation: Conceptual and Methodological Foundation, 2nd edn, New York: Springer Publishers. Weinstein, A 2004, Handbook of Market Segmentation: Strategic Targeting for Business and Technology Firms, 3rd edn, London: Haworth Publishers. 16. Appendix Read More