Market Need And Analysis Of Charles Stuart University Essay.

Mission and Vision of Charles Stuart University

Charles Stuart University was established in the year 1989 and since then it has made a good reputation in Australian market. It was named in honor of Captain Charles Sturt, a British explorer who made expeditions into regional New South Wales and South Australia. This report includes a market need analysis of CSU and based on that analysis, the recommendations are made for CSU. The mission and vision of Charles Sturt University can be discussed as:

Mission and Vision of CSU 

A commitment to provide quality education to its students has been made by CSU. The mission and the vision statement of university can be discussed as:

Mission: Our mission is to foster a highly skilled committed team, dedicated to providing effective service solutions to the University

Vision: Our vision is to be recognized for the provision of premium services to the University.

Source: https://www.csu.edu.au/enterprise/cscs/about-us/mission-and-vision-statement

Key to Success 

Marketing plays a significant role in any organization across various verticals of the organization. Unlike initial times when marketing was considered to be just a support function, it has emerged to be a crucial function for every organization these days. This change has happened due to change in people’s perception with time. There is a need for a consistent marketing strategy whose consistency can prove to be a key to success. The four key to success drivers for CSU can be discussed as:

ü Ability to provide the quality education across various courses at CQU	ü Focus on Technological Innovation to improvise on its product offerings
ü Ability to have tie up and partnership with external stakeholders like government to provide quality education	ü Ability to manage the change within the university administration and make it more flexible

Critical issues for CSU

. In order to achieve its goals and objectives it’s important for CSU to overcome its internal issues. The key issues identified for CSU can be highlighted as follows:

• Increasing number of supply with the flux of more and more universities
• Lack of motivation among people to join teaching profession

Marketing Objectives

Marketing helps to generate, offer and replace products of value with others. Therefore, marketing works as a managerial and social process which enables groups and individuals to gain what they need and want (Andaleeb, 2016). The marketing objectives for CSU can be listed as:

• Target to increase the student enrollments by 12% to 20% in 2018
• Increasing brand reputation of the university to emerge as a socially responsible brand I Australia and internationally

Financial Objectives

The key financial objectives for the university can be discussed as:

• Increase in revenue of the university by 6% to 10% in 2018  
• Increase in profit margins by over 5% to 8% in 2018

CSU is a public university multiple campus located in Albury-Wodonga, Goulburn, Wagga Wagga, Bathrust, Port Macquarie, Dubbo, Orange and Canberra. Apart from campuses, CSU have specialist centers in Wangaratta, Manly as well as Regional study centers in Parkes and Griffith. In addition, it also has study centers which are in the heart of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane (Locations: CSU, 2015). Product is probably one of the most important element of the marketing mix. The product offering for CSU is the wide variety of courses that university offers. There are three levels of product offerings; the core level, the actual level and the augmented level. This product model for CSU can be shown as:

Key Drivers for CSU

 

The core product for CSU is the quality courses and education that university can offer (Singh, 2012). The actual product for CSU would include the staff of university, the infrastructure provided by the university, the computer lab, the support services, etc. The augmented product would be the ‘feel good’ factor that students can generate when they study and get education in CSU.

The market analysis would suggest that there is a high demand in the market. High Demand is the good thing about the education market in Australia. Market is healthy with the presence of both domestic and international students. For universities like CSU, there is a high dependency on international students due to high enrolment of international students in the universities of Australia. For universities like CSU, there is a high dependency on international students due to high enrolment of international students in the universities of Australia.

Due to their success, the universities in Australia have nice reputation in market. The market summary can be shown with the number of courses that CSU offers. The table that summarizes the number of courses can be shown as:

CSU Course	Year - 2015	Year - 2016	Year - 2017
Vocational Education and Training	2000 students	3000 students	500 students
Undergraduate and non-award	4000 students	5000 students	6000 students
Research Higher Degree	520+ students	400+ students	450+ students
Postgraduate Coursework	4000 students	4000 students	4000+ students
Total	11000+ students	22000+ students	13000+ students

Market Need 

There would always be the need of quality education in the market (Hutchinson & Donnell, 2015). Approximately 40,000 students are enrolled in 2015. Among them 85% of students are local and only 15% of students are international students including both on-campus and off-campus education. But excluding distance education CSU has high number of international students at on-campus education which stands about 83% (CSU at a Glance, 2015). 

Market Trends 

The latest trend in the market is to have more of online courses in place (Hassan & Craft, 2012). The universities in Australia have realized that it is easy to scale-up the online courses. Another market trend in the education industry in Australia is the use of social media in education.  

There are various parameters or factors of segmentation that the organizations can use. One of the most widely used segmentation method is demographic segmentation (Moutinho, 2000). It means segmenting the user base on the basic of demographic variables like age, race, region etc. CSU uses a combination of demographic and interest or behavioral segmentation. There is variety of students from different countries in CSU. The demographic and behavioral segmentation variables as used by CSU can be discussed as:

Demographic variables: The prime target market for CSU is students. Therefore, university has done the segmentation on the basis of age. The university wants to target (primarily) the age group of 18 to 25 years.

Critical Issues for CSU

Interest (Behavioral) variables: The university wants to target the people or students who are interested in education.

The Australian education industry has seen a good market growth rate. In the last five years, the growth rate has been more than 7%. It is expected that the education market in Australia would continue to grow at a good growth rate. The market growth over the last five years can be shown as:

Year	Market Growth Rate
2011	6 % to 9% with an average of 7.5%
2012	7% to 9% with an average of 9.5%
2013	8% to 10% with an average of 9.5%
2014	9% to 11% with an average of 10%
2015	6% to 9% with an average of 7.5%
2016	7% to 9% with an average of 8%

The competition is high in the education sector in Australia. In fact, it is expected that the competition would further increase (Rahmani & Emamisaleh, 2015). Various aspects of industry for Australian education university can be discussed as:

The SWOT analysis helps organizations to assess the current strengths and weaknesses and realize the external opportunities and threats (Lindgreen & Wynstra, 2005). The SWOT analysis for CSU can be shown as:

STRENGTHS	WEAKNESSES
· The strong and established legacy of the university is its biggest strength · The university has talented student base that adds to its strength   · CSU has good brand name and positive brand image in the market · CSU has some of the best and qualified faculty · The campus and infrastructure if CSU is also good	· CSU has found it difficult to retain the best talent from the market. There is an issue of faculties leaving the universities · The university has less number of courses to offer as compared to the competitors like CQU.   · There exists a lot of dependency on the foreign and international students
OPPORTUNITIES	THREATS
· There is an opportunity for university to target the international students in the Asian countries. Every year a lot of students from India enters the Australian market · There is also an opportunity for CSU to launch few more courses. The university can benchmark its courses against the courses offered by other universities and come up with some new courses	· The biggest threat for CSU is the threat from competition. The competition is high in the education sector in Australia. In fact, it is expected that the competition would further increase (Rahmani & Emamisaleh, 2015) · There also exists the threat from external factors like legal regulations, financial exchange rate, etc.

Competition 

The competition is high in the education sector in Australia. In fact, it is expected that the competition would further increase (Rahmani & Emamisaleh, 2015).

	Specialization Index (rounded of)	Total Research (rounded of)	Teaching & Learning: Undergraduate student satisfaction	Teaching & Learning: Entrance score	Rank in international standing (rounded of)	AACSB (2010) accredited
Canberra	60	4	86	86	27	X
CQU	40	3	76	84	36	X
Curtin	21	17	87	91	17	X
Griffith	25	23	87	86	14	√
JCU	19	10	90	84	24	X
Macquarie	54	24	87	97	9	X
Newcastle	23	22	87	88	13	X
QUT	27	28	84	90	10	√
CSU	49	7	94	70	27	X
Swinburne	76	9	94	80	26	X
Tasmania	23	18	86	84	14	X
UQ	30	82	87	96	4	√
UniSA	36	16	84	79	20	X
UWS	28	16	80	71	24	X
Wollong	35	20	96	88	11	X

One of a close competitor of Charles Sturt University is Central Queensland University. The aim or objective of CQU is to emerge as a preferred university for domestic and international students. CQU is a tough competitor of CSU, as both the universities want to target the international students. The marketing mix analysis of CQU suggests that its marketing strategy is to create differentiation through its pricing strategy. Both CQU and CSU has almost similar pricing structure. For some courses, CQU has less prices and for some courses, CSU has less prices.

The PEST analysis of CSU can be shown as:

Political Forces: Political factor is where government get involved in the economy. CSU is regulated with the government policy, and it gets affected with political stability. It would be correct to say that any change in any immigration norms could affects the number of students. Presently, the political forces appear to be positive for CSU.

Economic Forces: Economic factors comprise interest rates, economic growth, inflation rate and exchange rates. For an instance, exchange rates can affect the price since CSU has number of international students. The fees structure of the university could be increasing with the change in economic condition of country which also could results in decreasing in enrolments. Presently, the economic forces appear to be positive for CSU.

Social Forces: Social factors include population growth rate, cultural aspects, career attitudes and age distribution. Having students from all over the world CSU has cultural diversity. Population decline could affect the ratio of students in the university. Presently, the social forces appear to be positive for CSU.

Marketing Objectives for CSU

Technological Forces: Technological factors involve technological aspects like research and development activity, automation, rate of technological change (Hollensen & Raman, 2014). With the development of technology, university offers an advanced teaching ways to make it easier to students to understand the subject in depth. Presently, the technological forces appear to be positive for CSU.

The Porter Five forces analysis is a powerful tool to assess the external environment. The Porter Five forces analysis for the education industry in Australia can be shown as:

Porter Five Forces	Impact
Threat of new Entrants	Low to Moderate
Threat of Substitutes	Moderate
Bargaining power of buyers	High
Bargaining power of suppliers	Low to Moderate
Industry Rivalry	High

This model can be shown as:

With time, CSU has positioned itself as a brand that provides quality education at affordable prices. Charles Sturt University wants to position itself as a university that provides good returns of the education. The university uses the business level strategy of ‘cost leadership’ and with this strategy the positioning focus of university is on ‘value for money’.

The product lifecycle helps organization to decide the future course of action based on the current position of the organization in the industry. The product lifecycle view of CSU can be shown as:

 

Generally, the marketing strategy would revolve around the 4 Ps of marketing and STP i.e segmentation, targeting, positioning. It is crucial for the organizations to understand the basis of 4Ps of marketing moreover all the 4Ps should be synchronized together (Ellson, 2004). For promotional element of marketing mix the marketing strategy for CSU is to focus more on the social media marketing. The university needs to focus on the promotional element in order to increase its reach and presence in the Australian market.

As discussed above, CSU is heavily dependent on international students. Therefore, it is important that the university should have a dedicated targeting strategy for international students. To target the domestic students, CSU should use online channels as well as offline channels. However, for international students the university should use more of online channels of targeting. The university also uses agency structure where the enrollment of international students happens through agencies.

Charles Sturt University wants to position itself as a university that provides good returns of the education. The university uses the business level strategy of ‘cost leadership’ and with this strategy the positioning focus of university is on ‘value for money’. With time, CSU has positioned itself as a brand that provides quality education at affordable prices.

The competition is high in the education sector in Australia. In fact, it is expected that the competition would further increase (Rahmani & Emamisaleh, 2015). The competitive strategy of CSU stems from the business level strategy of cost leadership. The competition analysis would reveal that the competition is high among the players in the education industry. The common aim of all the competitors is to get more market share and increase the number of enrollments in their universities. Every competitor has a different way of marketing (Holbrook, 2006). However, a common trend, that could be observed in the marketing mix of all the competitors is the increase use of social media marketing. It actually makes sense, as social media platforms are the fastest way to reach out to customers.

Product Offering for CSU

CSU uses mainly social media strategies for promotion because it wants to position itself as a university that provides good returns of the education. The university uses the business level strategy of ‘cost leadership’ and with this strategy the positioning focus of university is on ‘value for money’. With time, CSU has positioned itself as a brand that provides quality education at affordable prices (Ross & McGowan, 2012).

The marketing mix consists of four P’s of marketing mix. For CSU these four elements of marketing mix for can be defined as follows:

1. Product: It is an item that satisfies customer’s needs, it may be tangible or intangible. CSU offers more than 100 undergraduate and postgraduate courses under following faculties: Arts, Education, Business and Science.
2. Price: It is an amount that students/customers pay for an education/service (Ashley & Tuten, 2015). CSU has a very reasonable price for every field of study.
3. Promotion: The positioning focus of university is on ‘value for money’. With time, CSU has positioned itself as a brand that provides quality education at affordable prices
4. Place(Distribution): It is a location where the service/education/product is available. CSU have many campuses in different location in Australia as well as study centers. In physical market buyers should meet sellers just like that students should come to the University for On-campus education. (Needham, 1996)

The BCG matrix for Charles Sturt University can be shown as:

 

The marketing research or market research is an important function for Charles Sturt University (Moller & Parvinen, 2015). It helps the university to get idea about the strategies of other players in the industry.

Investment is always demanded while focusing on any marketing activity. The marketing budget for the coming year for CSU can be discussed as:

Marketing Budget for CSU 2018
	Amount in AUD
	Quarter 1	Quarter 2	Quarter 3	Quarter 4	Year Total
Market Research / External Research
Focused study	900	1000	1100	1200	4200
Fee for Secondary Research	1200	1400	1600	1800	6000
Survey Cost & Expenses	1100	1300	1400	1500	5300
	3200	3700	4100	4500	15500
Online channels Investment					0
Facebook Marketing	2100	2300	2400	2700	9500
Twitter Marketing	1000	1100	1100	1100	4300
Mobile Marketing	1700	1800	1900	2000	7400
Web Advertising Marketing	1000	1100	1200	1300	4600
	4100	4500	4700	5100	18400
Offline Channels Investment					0
Television Cost	4000	4000	4000	4000	16000
Newspapers Cost	2000	2000	2000	2000	8000
Direct marketing Cost	1600	1600	1600	1750	6550
	7600	7600	7600	7750	30550
Other Investments					0
Travel Investment	3000	3000	3000	3000	12000
Postage Cost	500	400	400	400	1700
Equipment Cost	1000	1000	1000	1000	4000
	4500	4400	4400	4400	17700
Total Budgeted Cost	19400	20200	20800	21750	82150

Conclusion

The above report discusses the 2018 marketing plan for Charles Sturt University. The above report discusses various internal and external elements of marketing mix for Charles Sturt University. The report highlights that the strong legacy of university is its biggest strength. The report discusses the marketing plan that has been developed for the year 2018. The report also discusses the marketing budget for Charles Sturt University. It is expected that the marketing plan would help the university to achieve its goals and objectives. With the above discussion it can be said that the university can achieve its marketing and financial objectives if it used its marketing budget in an effective manner.

References 

About CSU. (2015). Retrieved from Charles Sturt university: https://www.csu.edu.au/about/learning-and-teaching/facilities

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Courses: Future Students. (2017, Jan 27). Retrieved from Charles Sturt University: https://www.csu.edu.au/courses?gclid=CMnt1bC3odMCFYWWvQod2bcEgQ&ef_id=WL@dSwAAABOrjTjp:20170413122824:s

CSU at a Glance. (2015). Retrieved from Charles Sturt University: https://www.csu.edu.au/unistats/products/csu-at-a-glance

CSU Summary Statistics. (2015). Retrieved from Charles Sturt University: https://www.csu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/2410791/CSU-at-a-Glance_20161212.pdf

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Locations: CSU. (2015). Retrieved from Charles Sturt University: https://www.csu.edu.au/about/locations

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