A paper by Vik Naidoo and Terry Wu in the Journal of
Marketing Management seeks to expand the discussion and understanding of
college marketing geared toward international students. Reviewing colleges in the U.S., UK, Australia
and New Zealand they have been able to narrow down their understanding to
implementation related outcome variables, commitment dimension, strategy, and
role factors. The work adds to the body of literature on key concepts related
higher education marketing and its success.
The trend in global educational services appears to
be growing. Educational services range from the actual education to textbooks.
It also appears to be growing as an export trend making it an industry with
huge future potential. Both traditional and non-traditional education has seen
increases in exportation of services to full-paying foreign students due to
declining governmental budgets.
Due to the changing nature of marketing from
domestic to international education, organizations have been implementing new
marketing strategies. Failure is associated more with implementation than with the
actual strategy. Conceptually, organizations can find a marketing strategy but
often fail to take into account details of the environment when implementing
such a strategy.
Like other marketing strategies the failure to align
the internal operations within the organization to the marketing promises can
create a misalignment between the message and the actuality. This problem can
become even more apparent in large traditional universities where large bureaucratic
structures with a large swath of competing interests can slow change. It is
this large bureaucratic structure that continues to maintain strategies even
though they may not be competitive.
The study used the four countries in their analysis
as it represents around 45% of all international recruitment. A total of 570
mid level marketing managers were included in the study in order to assess
overall strategy. To be successful
organizations must emphasis strategy, role commitment/performance, strategy
implementation success, and fit vision with strategic initiatives. There should
be an alignment between the strategy, the behaviors that are needed to achieve
that strategy and the ability to implement that strategy within the
organization’s vision.
Marketing managers seemed to have difficulty
understanding how the implementation of the marketing strategy fit within the
overall vision of the organization. There should be a heavy amount of
communication about how the marketing managers and their teams fulfill the
strategy as well as how this strategy fits within the goals mission. It is an
alignment between vision, strategy, role, and action.
The overall strategy and vision should be well-known
among the senior administrative and college leadership in order to ensure that
actions are not obstructed by misunderstanding or poor activity alignment. Administrators
may be able to encourage the implementation of the strategy through proper
systematic adjustments while deans will be responsible for the fulfillment of
the strategy when new students arrive. Without a clear understand actions can
be wasted and counterproductive.
The report does not indicate this concept but like
in companies, a successful strategy and its implementation make systematic
changes throughout the organization. It is not enough to work in silos as this creates
haphazard service implementation. Those who make decisions within the
organization should be fully aware of the strategy and how it fits within their
operations. The alignment of all of the organizations parts creates a more
efficient and consistent production that fulfills the needs of students.
Naidoo, V. & Wu, T. (2011). Marketing strategy
implementation in higher education: a mixed approach for model development and
testing. Journal of marketing Management,
27, (11/12).
