Research methodology followed in this MBA Project research to gather the primary source of information is given in the previous chapter and this chapter holds the key research findings from the interview with Marketing managers and Administrative officers from two engineering academic institutions from India as mentioned in the case study section. Based on the interview with the key respondents involved in this research, their opinions and views against the questions asked in the questionnaire are categorized into different sections and their answers are elaborated and presented in this chapter and they are as given below
Findings from interview with marketing managers
Marketing managers are interviewed with respect to understand the role of marketing strategies across education marketing and the level of involvement of these strategies to gain the admissions. Different marketing strategies implemented across their institutions and their impact on the competitive advantages is also discussed in detail manner based on the interview findings from the marketing heads and they are presented in this section. A detailed discussion is made with respect to the traditional and latest marketing strategies being implemented by the institutions and they are given as below
Current marketing strategies
When one of the marketing head was asked regarding the current marketing strategies, he replied like, “We follow all the traditional marketing strategies like paper advertisements, advertisements in all popular portals and issuing broaches to the students at all the important places”. From this statement it indicates traditional marketing approaches are still in place across the private academic institution in India and the most common among them are advertisements across local news papers and national news papers and also distributing the brochures to the students at different collages and counseling centers.
When on the marketing head was asked the same question he replied like, “The most common marketing strategy we implement is to gather the student database from different junior collages and advertise to those students using latest methods like emails and mobile SMS”. From this statement it is clear that even some collages are following the latest trends in marketing like gathering the student database from different sources and escalating the key information related to the collages to the students using the electronic media and email communication. Thus from these statements from the opinion of marketing heads from both the collages it is clear that the current marketing strategies they are implementing include both the mix of tradition and technology and when they are compared most of the collages are opting for the traditional marketing strategies than the technical ones.
In general any marketing strategy include both the direct and indirect marketing strategy and when the marketing heads were asked which is the best one in this context, one of the marketing managers replied that, “Direct marketing has small role to play across the education as we can’t reach the students directly in most of the cases and this indirect marketing is best as per my opinion”. From this reply it can be analyzed that when it comes to the case of direct and indirect marketing, most of the private academic institutions can’t reach the students directly and thus they always prefer the indirect marketing strategies and thus in this context indirect marketing has the significant to play across the education marketing.
When the same question was asked to the other marketing head, he replied like “As there are more number of collages across India we can’t reach students directly and to meet the core competition we always adopt the indirect marketing strategies like advertisements most of the time”. From this statement it is clear when there are more academic institutions it is always better to depend on the indirect marketing strategies rather than going for direct marketing as the level of competition is more across the direct marketing strategies. Thus from these replies it is clear that indirect marketing is the best marketing strategy followed by most of the private academic institutions in India.