Marketing education services in a virtual world: Challenges and opportunities Sue Jefferies Monash Mt Eliza Business School and Hume Winzar Murdoch University

In an environment of globally competitive electronically mediated transactions, our constituents expect more, have more choices, and are less loyal to established offerings. Higher education is operating in a very different world than it was just a decade ago. These changes have affected a change in philosophical orientation for traditional educational institutions. Educational institutions have had to move from an essentially product orientation, in which we could decide what we wanted to teach and the students would come, to a market orientation in which we have to recognise and cater to the immediate wants of our key customers.

This paper addresses two important issues arising from the changing nature of our competitive environment: a shift in philosophical orientation towards a "marketing paradigm" and recognition of the changing nature of students as one of our key constituent bodies. Change always has been a part of the nature of educational delivery, but never before has the rate been as great as it has I the last decade, and the pace is likely to accelerate.

• Students will continue to change in needs, demographics, lifestyle, and consumption behaviour.
• Competitors will change as new technologies emerge and barriers to domestic and foreign competition shift.
• The environment in which education providers operate will continue to change as economic, political, social, and technological forces shift.

The marketing paradigm

The marketing paradigm is a simple truism: the long term success and survival of an entity depends on its ability to supply the needs, and enhance the welfare, of its constituents in exchange relationships. Constituents of educational services include government, current and potential students, employers of graduates, local community, and so on. Choices among competing interests depend ultimately on which interests are more powerful, and that usually means which interests are paying money. Many providers adopt what is called a "Product orientation": we decide what we'd like to offer and then people will come to us. When that doesn't work they adopt what is called a "Selling orientation": Now that we've designed this course we have to find people to be our students and then persuade them it's what they need. A "Marketing orientation" is a much more difficult approach. It requires us to first identify key customer groups, discover their own special educational needs as well as discern how they learn about and judge different offerings, and then design programs especially for each group. A marketing orientation is not popular, even amongst commercial firms. It is expensive, time consuming and risky. We do it because forces beyond our control oblige us to. The alternative is to not survive at all.

Forces working to change our focus

Likely outcomes of environmental, technological and market changes

The presentation will discuss organisational features of a market orientated service and alternative strategies for the provision of online services.

Sue Jefferies has completed BSc Information Technology, MBA, and Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance. She is currently a Masters in Electronic Commerce and PhD candidate, and conducts workshops for the Monash Mt Eliza Business School. Phone: +61 8 9383 2761 Mobile +61 411 040 575 sue.jefferies@wt.com.au Dr Hume Winzar, Senior Lecturer in Marketing School of Business, Murdoch University Murdoch WA 6150 Australia Phone: +61 8 9360 6040 Fax: +61 8 9310 5004 winzar@commerce.murdoch.edu.au http://commerce.murdoch.edu.au/~winzar Please cite as: Jefferies, S. and Winzar, H. (1998). Marketing education services in a virtual world: Challenges and opportunities. In C. McBeath and R. Atkinson (Eds), Planning for Progress, Partnership and Profit. Proceedings EdTech'98. Perth: Australian Society for Educational Technology. http://www.aset.org.au/confs/edtech98/pubs/articles/jefferies.html