Student Target Marketing Strategies for Universities

Journal of College Admission, Summer 2007 by Lewison, Dale M, Hawes, Jon M

Abstract

As colleges and universities adopt marketing orientations to an ever-increasing extent, the relative merits of mass marketing and target marketing must also be explored. Researchers identify buyer types as potential students focused on quality, value or economy. On the other axis, learner types are described as those who focus on career, socio-improvement and leisure, or those who are ambivalent learners. This conceptual model of market segments presents an innovative and useful way to examine the student market for higher educational services.

Key Words: target marketing, universities, segmentation, customer orientation, marketing strategy

Introduction

Since Kotler's (1972) argument that marketing is a generic concept applicable to all organizations (not just profit-seeking business corporations), various sectors of our society have "discovered marketing." While laggards to the adoption of a marketing orientation, many universities have now adopted the conscious practice of strategic marketing planning (Cochran and Hengstler 1983; Kirp 2003; Kotler and Murphy 1981; Litten 1980).

As might have been expected, many academics still resist the implementation of a so-called marketing approach because they fear change and consider a marketing approach to be a challenge to intellectual integrity (e.g., Jump 2004; Sharrack 2000). Liu (1998), however, provides an important contribution to the literature, which could help overcome this reluctance. She explains the necessary (but different) role of marketing in higher education by describing how universities vary from other service enterprises. The article also identifies the social responsibilities of higher education not-for-profit organizations, explaining the unique context of higher education, and effectively arguing that short-run revenue or profit maximization should not be the primary goal.

For any university, marketing approaches create values among a university's stakeholders. These stakeholders are prospective students, current students, alumni, employers of graduates, and financial supporters. For a state-supported university, the list of stakeholders also includes taxpayers, the state legislature and perhaps the general public (Hayes 1993).

Admission offices may find themselves primarily concerned with the prospective student stakeholder group. To identify market segments among prospective students, researchers build a conceptual model that goes beyond demographics. By understanding the people served by the university, it is possible to develop offerings that satisfy the needs of this target market.

Market Selection Approaches

Universities have developed various types of marketing plans to attract prospective students. Identifying a target market is a key step in this process (Miller et al. 1990; Pappas and Shaink 1994). A university can choose to either ignore the differences among potential students or confront them. If a university chooses the former option, it is practicing mass marketing, or perhaps even non-marketing. Recognizing the differences among potential students enables the development of a target marketing approach.

Mass Marketing

A mass marketing strategy seeks to attract anyone and everyone with a single broad-based marketing appeal. Years ago, people working in college admission and others in leadership positions within the central administrations either did not think about the different segments of students or believed that not enough consumer differences existed to justify different programs for various market segments. Instead, they interacted only with those who applied and were admitted.

Rather than identify relatively homogenous subsets of the entire market, mass marketing treats the entire market as a target by focusing on how consumer needs are similar. This marketing effort is characterized by mass production and distribution. Mass communication is used, but only when necessary to provide information. The offering developed represents a compromise, even though only a few are ideally served by this "one-size-hopefully-kind-of-fits-all" strategy.

Undifferentiated marketing and product differentiation are two variations of the mass marketing approach. The first completely ignores market differences and involves developing a single offering for the entire market. Universities following this approach would develop degree programs-with a generalized emphasis, much like the classic liberal arts college-intended to serve any student within the mass market. In the second approach, a university would seek to distinguish its market offering from competitors on the basis of different product characteristics (real or imaginary) and would then use unique promotional appeals. This strategy offers artificial variety and promotes superficial benefits, rather than making real need-based appeals to different market segments. An example of the product differentiation strategy would be a university that promotes usage of a tri-semester plus summer system rather than a quarter system in a market dominated by the latter. In reality, the differences between the two options are not significant to high school students yet to enter college.