Background

The University of Melbourne is one of the oldest universities located in Melbourne. The university is ranked 33^rd in the world. The main campus is situated in Parkville which is actually an internal suburb north of places called Melbourne central based business town along with many other places situated in Victoria. The university is called as a sandstone university along with member of Association of Pacific Rim Universities. There are around twelve educational institute located near this university that are offering education, sports practice and number of cultural programs along with residential area for the students as well as faculty of the university (Galliers & Leidner, 2014).

Since the university is one of the oldest and offer world class education, there is a demand of this educational institute from many local as well as international students from all across the world. It is also important to understand that the university as well as other higher education based industry is undergoing some important review and some important reforms over the last 5 years (Pulendran et al, 2015). The government also introduced a demand based funding model for educational institutes that is making a way for increase in domestic students over a period of time. Transformation among students with proper visa needs have also caused global based enrolments to develop a strong database for domestic as well as international admission in last few years (Fry et al., 2014).

University of Melbourne is known university and students looks for ways to get admission in such kind of university. It actually separates students in to six distinctions and further defines various segments which is based on the overall motivation and also the mindsets rather than just other kind of demographics permitting university to grow more sophisticated strategies to reach the newer people and students with right operational model in a most impactful manner. Some of the segments are career starters, academics, career accelerator, and academic wanderers and many more (Canniford, 2015). At the same time, it also creates with particular attention on number of undergraduate students where the segment provides a lot of room for the flexible as well as a focused perspective for students.

Following is the marketing mix: –

1. Product: as mentioned the university is one of the oldest in the education sector and the university offer number of courses to students in different disciplines.
2. Price: it is also decided by many factors like service quality, reputation, competition, placement, facilities, infrastructure and other facilities provided by diverse locations of the institute. Mode of education and brand name is also very crucial and University of Melbourne is one of the best in the industry (Wilkinson et al, 2014).
3. Place: it shows the location where an education based institute is established and it is also called as a service centre. The University of Melbourne has higher competitive edge also because of the location where it is placed (Bellman et al, 2017).
4. Promotion: the word of mouth promotion of the university and mention of the education quality of the university in various journals and rankings is one best way to promote the education of the university.

Political

University of Melbourne is one of the obvious places in Australia. The advantages to universities are stability in political environment that can flow right through the bottom base. The country is one of the most important not only for MNCs but also for education especially for number of international students (Slade et al, 2017).  The country has the developing economy with stable political environment, a skilled as well as highly educated workforce, and a competitive base for cost.

The prices for property are usually high in connection with overall income levels in Australia which further creates a huge demand for number of rental properties in the area. The demand is very high in some of the major towns that the prices are set to rise, by making any purchase into property market which is profitable by nature (Slade et al, 2017).

Market Summary and Demand Assessment

Social

The three crucial social classes are middle class, working class and in the end the upper class. However, the lines between these groups are constantly debatable.  The richest are five to ten percent called as upper class and the wealth come from the control over property and overall ownership. The developing middle class is explained as people with different non-manual based occupation (Shields et al, 2015).

Technological

There are number of new technologies that are developed with new kind of products and new procedures. Technology helps in reducing the overall cost and also improving the quality that further leads to innovation. Australia is known for its rich research and development sector.

Economic based competition is one of the specific forms of social based competition in the field of higher education. The transformation from traditional competition is based on much private as well as public economy along with varied capitalist kind of competition with transformation in the character of social kind of competition in universities with broader impact on social differentiation as well as hierarchy (Rowley & Cooke, 2014). It is important to understand that higher education institutions play a main role in the manufacturing of the society and allocation of a specific social status. The overall struggle for the status is very motivating by nature for students as well as institutions in universities. There is economic capital with which one cannot identify closely and status of social based good where possession has moved political, economic as well as cultural potential for the possessor.

Strengths

1. Affirmative reputation in the community or society.
2. Some of most accredited educational programs
3. Faculty as well as staff support the mission of the campus
4. Learning communities develops to increase learning a student-faculty based communication.
5. Diverse environment
6. Dedication of expert faculty.

1. Bureaucracy
2. Uncertainty on fiscal ground
3. Adjustment with pressure to cope with the growth
4. Unequal and high work load on the faculty
5. Limited resources for faculty
6. Highly competitive environment for diverse kind of faculty and staff

Opportunities

1. Large number of possibilities for the staff
2. Diverse region
3. Positional in growth
4. Different social trends
5. Rise in demand for mid-career and learning for a life time
6. Large number of international initiatives

Threats

1. Increase in number of private and on-line universities and its responsiveness to diverse  programs and scheduling demand of students (Wilkinson et al, 2017)
2. Rise in reporting which is expected by the society as well as government
3. Development of other universities in the location
4. Reporting needs contains the huge number of resources
5. Lack of knowledge associated with higher education

Change in environment like diversification, privatization, decentralization and rise in the competition are some of the common factors for many developed as well as developing countries. Such changes have an impact on how higher education campuses functions in present time as branding has become crucial and the practice is gaining popularity with rise in number of private colleges, change in the attitude of people as well as change in the scope of different courses that are offered to students (Bellman et al, 2017). The Positioning of the University is done as one of the premier University in Australia. They have always focused towards the development and building of the career of the folks taking admission into the University. University of Melbourne is one of the prestigious universities in the world and it is considered as a huge brand in itself impacting the decisions of students looking to study in higher education institutions.

Conclusion

Education is a form of service therefore the process is experiential as well as intangible by nature therefore, branding in education has to completely base on the overall employability and the experience aspects. Brand qualities as well as academic based quality of universities like University of Melbourne are interconnected in order to attract the right kind of talent as a faculty as well as for the students (Yang & Su, 2014). In the above sections, we have seen about various analysis done to find out the current position of the University in terms of marketing strategies. The report focused on the Background of the University, its Market Summary, Marketing Mix, Segmentation and Targeting, Competitor Analysis, Brand Positioning etc. in detail (Wu, 2014). All these analysis helped in the understanding of current position of the University and the steps it might have to take to improve further.

Reference

Galliers, R. D., & Leidner, D. E. (2014). Strategic information management: challenges and strategies in managing information systems. Routledge.

Fry, M. L., Drennan, J., Previte, J., White, A., & Tjondronegoro, D. (2014). The role of desire in understanding intentions to drink responsibly: an application of the Model of Goal-Directed Behaviour. Journal of Marketing Management, 30(5-6), 551-570.

Pulendran, S., Speed, R., & Widing, R. (2015). From Rational to Interpretive Planning: Empirically Classifying Planning Styles in Australian Organisations. In Global Perspectives in Marketing for the 21st Century (pp. 487-487). Springer International Publishing.

Canniford, R. (2015). Assembling consumption: Researching actors, networks and markets. Routledge.

Wilkinson, A., Donaghey, J., Dundon, T., & Freeman, R. B. (Eds.). (2014). Handbook of Research on Employee Voice: Elgar original reference. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Bellman, S., Robinson, J. A., Wooley, B., & Varan, D. (2017). The effects of social TV on television advertising effectiveness. Journal of Marketing Communications, 23(1), 73-91.

Slade, M., Oades, L., & Jarden, A. (Eds.). (2017). Wellbeing, Recovery and Mental Health. Cambridge University Press.

Shields, J., Brown, M., Kaine, S., Dolle-Samuel, C., North-Samardzic, A., McLean, P., … & Plimmer, G. (2015). Managing Employee Performance & Reward: Concepts, Practices, Strategies. Cambridge University Press.

Rowley, C., & Cooke, F. L. (2014). The changing face of management in China. Routledge.

Wilkinson, A., Armstrong, S. J., & Lounsbury, M. (Eds.). (2017). The Oxford Handbook of Management. Oxford University Press.

Vomberg, A., Homburg, C., & Bornemann, T. (2015). Talented people and strong brands: The contribution of human capital and brand equity to firm value. Strategic Management Journal, 36(13), 2122-2131.

Yang, Z., & Su, C. (2014). Institutional theory in business marketing: A conceptual framework and future directions. Industrial Marketing Management, 43(5), 721-725.