Marketing Plan For Highbury English Language School Essay.

a) Consider the current situation at Highbury English Language School, with particular reference to the business’s strengths and weaknesses. The loss of the Mazubishi contract is clearly a threat to his business, but how could it be seen as an opportunity?

b) Explaining any assumptions you make, use the PESTLE model to summarise and evaluate the main factors which Kevin should consider when formulating his marketing plan.

a) Addressing each section of Ansoff’s Matrix, discuss the options open to Highbury English Language School.

b) Identify what you think are the business’ brand attributes and discuss whether Highbury English Language School should build on existing brand strengths or create a new brand proposition if it is to succeed in any proposed marketing plan.

c) Using the services marketing mix as a framework, summarise the key issues the business needs to address in order to meet the opportunities and threats you have already identified

Discuss the range of marketing research techniques which need to be applied to support your discussion from the first two tasks.

In doing so you should summarise which sources of secondary research would inform your situation analysis, both internal and external to the business, and how and why they should be used.

You should also recommend the most appropriate methods of primary research to supplement any existing, secondary data, and how these might be conducted (by

Kevin and Jill or by use of third party services).

Highbury English Language School is clearly familiar with dealing with Japanese clientele, but if the business is to attract other foreign customers it must consider cultural differences in the way products and services are promoted and delivered. Describe the first FOUR (4) of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and use the model to illustrate any key differences between the Japanese market and others which might be attractive to the School.

Explain the importance of segmentation, targeting and positioning, with reference to information provided in the case study.

With this in mind, summarise the range of communication methods which might most effectively promote the Highbury English Language School’s new strategy.

Be sure to format and present your submitted assignment correctly. This includes checking the references you have used, as well as your spelling and grammar, before submitting your work.

Task 1

The Highbury English Language School can be regarded as a profitable and well-renowned English language school situated in North London. In the last eight years, the management of the organisation has succeeded to develop a strong client based in North London. It is a family based school, run by Kevin and Jill. However, the organisation is facing some difficulties in the recent era as Mazubishi; one of its major clients is not renewing the business contract with Highbury English Language School.  Hence, it can affect the profitability of the organisation in near future. Therefore, the marketing head of the school, Kevin is a thing about doing different activities in order to ensure positive business growth. Recently, Kevin has recruited a business marketing expert for better business operation activities to establish new marketing opportunities for the management of Highbury English Language School.

In this particular task, the marketing consultant will critically analyse the strengths and weaknesses and the particular threat about the loosing of the contract of Mazubishi.

In terms of strengths, it can be stated that quality of teaching processes and adequacy in different business operation processes are the major strengths of the particular organisation. The strong client base is another particular strength of the particular English language school.

In terms of weaknesses, lack of the consideration of professional marketing and other operation management teams and executives are the major weaknesses of the organisation   (Armstrong, 2016).

In terms of the opportunities, it can be stated that the management of Highbury English Language School can consider the development of professional operation management teams for the respective departments.

In terms of major strengths, the loosing of the contract of the Mazubishi School is the major threat factor.

In terms of the consideration of the major threat factor, it can be accepted that the loss of particular contract can become an effective opportunity as the new marketing department can consider some important marketing options, such as new service or product development, new market development, market penetration as well as business diversification., which can help an organization to earn adequate business operation profit (Alvesson, 2012).

It is an important strategic management tool, which will assist the marketing consultant of Highbury English Language School to determine the effect of the important external environmental factors on the business performance of Highbury English Language School.

The UK is politically stable and the government is supporting the business management activities of the organisations within the education industry as sustainable business management activities are assisting the government to reduce different challenges, which can affect the political sustainability of UK.  These challenges are high unemployment rate, high illiteracy etc. Considering these effective aspects, it can be stated that the political environment is sustainable for the management of   Highbury English Language School (barker and Gower, 2010).

Task 2

The economic environment of UK is highly challenging considering the global economic crunch and recent financial crisis, which is affecting the purchasing power, household income and disposable income of people. Hence, it may affect the business growth of the organisation   (Botha et al., 2014).

The social environment is supportive for Highbury English Language School as the demand for learning of English language can improve the writing as well as communication skills of the common individuals, which can help to ensure the quality business growth of Highbury English Language School (Botha et al., 2014).

The technological environment is highly supportive of the management of Highbury English Language School as the UK is technological developed and the organisation can have the access to the different types of advanced technological resources as well as applications (Bunderson, J. and Boumgarden, 2010).

The legal environment is slightly challenging for Highbury English Language School as the government of UK has developed some strict policies for the organisations within the education sector.  Failing to follow such policies can affect the business growth as it can cause the development of different types of legal challenges in the business operation process (Dees, 2008).

The environmental challenges are limited to the organisations within the education industry as the organisations like Highbury English Language School will always focus on knowledge development process of the students. They will not a consideration any type of aggressive business operation approaches.

In this particular task, the marketing consultant will implement Ansoff matrix and service marketing mix approach in the business operation process for the better business outcome.

Ansoff matrix can be considered as one of the important strategic marketing tool, which will assist the management of Highbury English Language School to develop effective growth strategies to overcome the following challenges. This matrix consists of four important elements, such as market penetration, market development, product development and business diversification (Drucker, 2014).

In terms of product or service development, the management of Highbury English Language School should try to develop and introduce some important services apart from the English language services, which will assist the management of Highbury English Language School to ensure effective growth rate through the development of new as well as effective customer base.

In terms of the market penetration, the management of Highbury English Language School can penetrate the North London market for the particular English language services through the integration of some adequate and effective promotional activities (Elway, 2017).

Task 3

In terms of new market development, the management of Highbury English Language School can expand the business operation process in the new marketplaces considering the scope and demand for such services. However, the marketing consultant will recommend that the organisation will go for such business operation management services after a successful consideration of new product or service development as well as the market penetration.

In terms of the service or product diversification, this is highly essential for the management of the particular organisation should avoid this particular option as the management of Highbury English Language School should consider the related services.                                             

The brand attributes of a particular business can include the logo, profitability, brand awareness of the products or services, stakeholder value, stakeholder support, the degree of corporate governance, customer loyalty, employee loyalty as well as the market share growth rate of the organisation (Esper et al., 2010).

In the case of the brand loyalty of Highbury English Language School, the customer satisfaction level and quality of the business outcome are considered as the major brand strengths. In an addition, a strong customer perception regarding the quality of the teaching services is regarded as some important brand strengths (Fang, 2014).

However, the newly appointed marketing consultant of Highbury English Language School can develop effective brand strengths in the near future. It is already identified that the organisation has faced different types of important challenges in the business operation process due to the absence of the professional operating executives (Ferrell and Hillicks, 2013). Now, the appointment of the marketing consultant will assist Highbury English Language School to employ unique and contemporary marketing and promotional techniques in the marketing management process, which will also act like effective strategic management tool. This particular aspect will assist the marketing professionals of Highbury English Language School to ensure quality marketing communication, which will enhance positive brand strength for the organisations.

Service marketing mix framework can be regarded as one of the important strategic marketing frameworks, which will assist the marketing consultant of Highbury English Language School to develop adequate business operation management approaches. The service marketing mix framework is comprised of product or service, place, price, promotion, process, people and physical evidence. All of these elements will be discussed with respect to Highbury English Language School in order to overcome the associated problems, which are faced by the organisations (Johnson et al., 2014).

Task 4

In terms of product or services, the management of Highbury English Language School bus offering only English language skill development process. However, the management needs to consider the development of new language services for better business growth (Jagpal, 2008).

In terms of placement, first of all, the organisation should penetrate the North London market and the basis of the success, the management should go for business expansion in other markets across UK (King and Levine, 2013). Effective market penetration and new services development process will automatically guide the management for better placement and business expansion in near future.

In terms of pricing, the management of Highbury English Language School needs to implement economic pricing strategy in the business operation process. The economic pricing strategy in the business operation process can help to reduce the overall business operation cost, which can help in reducing the prices. Therefore, Highbury English Language School can offer he differentiated language learning and educational services at the economic price level basis on the needs of the target customers (Hunt, 2016).

In terms of the consideration promotional strategy, the marketing consultant needs to implement unique and contemporary promotional channels in the media promotion activities for better brand awareness and business communication process as this particular aspect can create significant business operation growth in the near future (Kran zero, 2015).

]In terms of people, the management6 of Highbury English Language School needs to consider the recruitment of the skilled and knowledgeable teachers in the organisation for better services. The inclusion of the professionals in the business operation services can help the management of the particular company to address the possible issues quite significantly (Kuartko and Hodgetts, 2010).

In terms of process, it can be stated that the consideration of quality conflict-free business operation process by the introduction of the stakeholders in the strategy development approach can assist Kevin and his wife to address the ongoing issues in the organisation quite adequately.

Lastly, the organisational management of Highbury English Language School should also focus on the consideration of effective physical evidence. Physical evidence of the firm can be enhanced through the consideration of the adequate brand image, logo and other elements of the brands in uniforms, websites and other services designs, which will assist the management of the organisation to address the issues quite adequately (Lopez-Nicolas and Merono-Cerdan, 2011). 

In this task, the marketing consultant will strongly focus on the summarising of the considered secondary forces, which are used in the secondary analysis of the organisation.

Task 5

First of all, the marketing consultant of Highbury English Language School needs to ensure adequate discussion of the data collection process. This is essential to know that the data collection process is an important integral part of any kind of research work. Hence, the researcher has adopted secondary data collection process in this research work basis on the advantages (Lunenburg, 2011). In terms of the advantages, it can be stated that the management of Highbury English Language School has considered secondary data collection process as the firm has succeeded to gather a huge number of data and related information from the data sources in a cost effective and time effective way. However, the marketing consultant will use the collected data basis on the demand as well as nature of the research work. Moreover, this is also important for a researcher to consider that the effective utilisation of the secondary resources in the data analysis and research process have ensured the marketing department to develop better market penetration and new product development strategies in the overall business operation process. Moreover, the marketing consultant of Highbury English Language School should also determine that the sources related to the marketing or service marketing mix can be utilised considering the demand, needs and satisfaction level of the target customers (Miller, 2009).

Most importantly, the management of the organisations needs to consider some adequate strategies from the used academic journals as well as textbooks as the major secondary sources to use better promotional activities as it has been identified that the contemporary promotional strategies used by Facebook, YouTube and Twitter can cause effective business growth. Hence, the marketing consultant will wise related academic textbooks as well as journals to develop the marketing plan quite adequately.

Apart from the utilisation of the secondary data analysis, the marketing consultant will also go for the primary data analysis. It is important to know that both the data collection processes have individual advantages. Time and cost effectiveness is the major advantage of the secondary data collection process. Moreover, the researchers can gather huge volume of secondary data within the limited time period (Mishra et al., 2013). This is also an important approach. However, apart from these aspects, primary research and data analysis aspects also have some important individual advantages. The marketing consultant of Highbury English Language School including Kevin and Jill can get effective, fresh, life, up-to-date and raw market information or data through the market research activities, which can help the management of an organisation for better business operation approaches. Moreover, this is also essential to state that the research outcome through the primary research activities is effective and appropriate in nature (Nair, 2014).

Task 6

The simple random sampling will be selected as the major sampling technique.  Moreover, an open-ended semi-structured questionnaire interview round will be ensured for the gathering of quality primary data. Moreover, the newly appointed marketing consultant and the team members will be responsible for the primary research. On the other hand, Kevin and Jill will consider the effective monitoring and evaluation in order to determine the appropriateness of the particular business operation process (O’Leary, 2011).

It is clear from the given facts that the organisational management of Highbury English Language School is facing challenges regarding the development of a strong client base as the organisation has lost its one of the major clients in the recent past and the management has become a failure in attracting the foreign students towards the classroom. Mazubishi is not renewing the contract with the organisation. Hence, the cultural dimension model of Hofstede can be implemented to illustrate differences between Japanese market and other markets, which can be attractive to school (Savery, 2015).

In terms of the power distance dimension or index, it can be stated that the Japanese use to follo0w the flatter power distance index. Hence, it is clear that Japanese used to spread the power within the society; they do not keep power among individuals. The low power distance index needs to be followed by the organisational management of Highbury English Language School for better business performance and customer satisfaction (Shan, 2011).

In terms of the individualism vs. collectivism approach, it can be stated that the Japanese are strongly focused on the utilization and consideration of the individualism approach and they score high in the individualism dimension comparing to collectivism dimension as the Japanese score higher in the particular individualism dimension as the prevail more attain comparing to collectivism approach (Shane and Venkataraman, 2010). 

The long-term orientation dimension is high for Japanese as the Japanese always focuses on the sustainability of the future rather than the present. Hence, it can be stated that Highbury English Language School needs to adopt this particular long-term orientation approach for better business operation process.

In terms of uncertainty avoidance index, the Japanese always focus on strategies to overcome the uncertainty. Hence, the index is high. Highbury English Language School should consider this aspect in the business operation process (Shapero and Sokol, 2012).

It is highly important for the marketing consultant of the Highbury English Language School to conduct an effective STP analysis on the basis on the particular product and services for better segmentation, targeting and positioning. The marketing consultant of Highbury English Language School will conduct an STP analysis in this task to determine effective segmentation, targeting and positioning for the offered services. Moreover, the marketing consultant will also summarise the probable communication method for the management of Highbury English Language School for better business growth.

In terms of the market segmentation, the marketing department of Highbury English Language School should consider two types of segmentation strategies in the marketing activities and business operation process. First of all, the marketing consultant will consider demographic and geographic segmentation for the particular services. In terms of the demographic segmentation, the marketing consultant of Highbury English Language School should target people basis on the cultural background, gender orientation, income level, occupation background etc. On the other hand, the same marketing consultant will conduct an important and adequate geographic segmentation for the development of target client base basis on the geographic location of people (Singh and Hardaker, 2014).

In terms of target market, the individuals aged between 4 and 60 are the major target customers of the organisation. In an addition, the marketing consultant of Highbury English Language School should target both male and female individuals across the globe. Moreover, the marketing consultant of Highbury English Language School should also target people of different cultural as well as religious background (Stevenson and Jarilo, 2008). The management of Highbury English Language School has adopted cultural diversity approach in the service offering process. It is important to determine that the organisation is successful in offering quality education services. On the other hand, the organisation also offers the products and services irrespective of religion and cultural background of people. Moreover, the marketing consultant will target the people of higher income group, middle-class income group as well as higher middle-class income group. Moreover, the organisation is also trying to attract kids, young school children young college goers, households and middle aged business executives as well as entrepreneurs for the major target customers of the organisation.

In terms of positioning, this is regarded as one of the important aspects of the marketing department of Highbury English Language School to ensure the quality of the services, pricing of the services as well as the functionality of the services (Timmons and Spinelli, 2009). Most importantly, it is highly important for the marketing consultant of the Highbury English Language School to develop effective positioning strategy of the developed and introduced services basis on the nature of the target customers as well as above mentioned aspects of the target customers. Hence, this is highly regarded to accept that the UK education industry is getting highly competitive. On the other hand, the majority of the organisations always focus on the use of the adequate business management approaches considering the overall sustainability in the business operation process in order to use some effective business operation management aspects. Similarly, the management of Highbury English Language School should develop the business management activities basis on the sustainability as well as the ongoing demand of the target customers in the overall business operation process. Firstly, the marketing consultant of Highbury English Language School should recommend or suggest Kevin and Jill adopt and implement economic pricing strategy for the particular services. This particular approach will significantly assist the management of Highbury English Language School to enhance competitive strategic approaches in the business operation process. Moreover, the firm's marketing consultant should also try to ensure the development of the new strategies in the business operation process for better business output. Hence, it is the essential aspect for the marketing consultant of Highbury English Language School to adopt high quality as well as high functionality-economic priced positioning for all the services in the business operation process.

In terms of the communication method, it is highly important for the marketing consultant of Highbury English Language School to adopt and implement the combination of the traditional as well as the contemporary marketing and promotional activities  (Trkman, 2010).

In terms of traditional communication method, the organisational management has strongly focused on the establishment of the quality branding through the implication of different effective media platforms, such as print media platform. Among different types of popular print media platforms, the marketing consultant of Highbury English Language School should use local newspapers, education magazines, hoardings, bill boards etc in order to promote the English learning language services quite adequately. In an addition, this is also important for the marketing consultant of Highbury English Language School that Kevin and Jill are going for some strong and adequate service as well as market expansion approaches in the business operation process for the better business outcome (Welch, 2012). Hence, this is essential that the organisation management of Highbury English Language School should consider the traditional media or communication method for the existing services in order to penetrate the particular marketplace.

Apart from the traditional communication method, the marketing consultant and newly developed marketing department should consider the contemporary communication method for the market6 penetration as well as new service development process. In terms of the use of contemporary media platforms, the marketing consultant should use Facebook, You Tube, Twitter and other popular online social media platforms  (West et al.,  2010). Apart from these particular aspects, the organisational management will also consider the use of the company website and different SEOs for the promotion of the existing as well as newly developed services. I n an addition, the organisational management along with the marketing consultants of Highbury English Language School should use advanced digital media platforms, such as Television, FM etc. Use of the e particular communication approaches can easily assist the Kevin and Jill to create a significant awareness among the target customers regarding the existing services as well as the newly developed education and language services.

However, consideration of these both traditional as well as contemporary communication methods can assist the marketing consultant of Highbury English Language School along with Kevin and Jill to develop effective awareness among the target customers, which will also assist the management of Highbury English Language School to develop a strong client base and address the ongoing business operation challenges (yam and Gray, 2014).

Task 6:  Conclusion and Recommendations

This is clear from the above-mentioned facts that Highbury English Language School is suffering from the marketing challenges. Therefore, the firm is going to develop a marketing department within a firm basis on the needs and demands of the target customers. However, the organisation follows family-oriented structure. Therefore, the marketing department of Highbury English Language School is focused on the effective adoption of the contemporary approaches to the business performance to develop a strong client base as the organisation is facing client base development aspects.  In an addition, the marketing consultant should also consider the market penetration as well as new product development approaches in the business operation process for the better business outcome. 

This is highly important for the marketing consultant of Highbury English Language School to develop important and adequate strategies in the business operation process in order to reduce the ongoing business operation challenges in the business operation process regarding the loss of the business clients and business profitability. Hence, the owners, such as Kevin and Jill need to develop some important strategic marketing approaches in the business management activities to address the ongoing challenges and develop a strong client base across the globe.  

Firstly, the business owners of Highbury English Language School should ensure different departments for the different organisational sections. Different departments for the different organisational sections can enhance a systematic business operation process. This particular aspect will also assist a strong collaboration and co-operation between the different departments. The business owner already has taken an initiative regarding the development of a different marketing section by introducing a skilled and experienced marketing consultant in the business operation process. However, the consideration of the effective geographic, as well as demographic segmentation as well as effective quality-price positioning, will assist the marketing department of the firm to ensure a strong business growth by overcoming or addressing the ongoing marketing challenges.

Secondly, the new marketing consultant will suggest Kevin as well as Jill regarding the consideration of effective stakeholder engagement in the business decision making the process for the better business outcome. The organisational management has faced challenges regarding the consideration of the poor systematic business orientation as the organisation did not have specific organisational functions. The initiation of the new organisational function, new product development, as well as effective employee collaboration, can support the organisation for better business operation management approaches. The effective employee collaboration can easily assist the management to ensure better functional activities which will help in the establishment of quality business output.

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