Central Queensland University Sydney Campus   Executive Summary This report aims to perform an analysis of marketing and competitive environment of Central Queensland (CQ) University. The report covers brief description of the university, its market summary and demand assessment followed by segmentation market and target market. The report also presents the marketing mix analysis of the university with PEST, SWOT, competitor and value and brand positioning analysis. The report presents the current market scenario for universities in Australia and compares that with CQ University. It demonstrates the future total market demand and future demand for CQ University comparing with its competitors. The report also focuses distance education and rural and remote area education as the market segmentation and target market for CQ University. It also shows the effect of PEST factor on the performance of CQ University with typical examples. Important strength, weakness, opportunities and threads of CQU are also provided while going through. The report speaks about the services of CQU, its moderate price, various locations of campuses and promotional performance as well. It also tries to analyse the value and brand positioning of CQU through customer importance and company performance matrix with starting salaries and fees as variables. Finally, putting into nutshell, this report shows that the CQ University is growing education provider and attracts the international and rural domestic students because of its moderate fees and quality education. Table of Contents Executive Summary………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….1 1. Introduction and Background 3 2. Market Summary 3 3. Demand Assessment 4 4. Segmentation and target market 6 5. Current marketing mix analysis 6 a) Services: 6 b) Price: 6 c) Promotion: 7 d) Place: 7 6. PEST analysis 8 a) Political: 8 b) Economic: 8 c) Socio-cultural: 8 d) Technological: 8 7. Competitor analysis of close competitor 9 8. SWOT analysis 9 9. Value and brand positioning analyses 10 10. Conclusion 10 References 10 1. Background CQ University is both internationally and locally progressive university established in 1992 (Central Queensland University, 2017). Initially, it was founded in Rockhampton in 1967 as Queensland Institute of Technology. Now, it is relentlessly ranked within the top 500 universities in World and also within top 150 universities under 50 years old by Times Higher Education World University Rankings (Australian Education Network, 2017). There are 300 education and training offerings for study in this university. If we analyse its vision, it shows that the university is strongly focusing on equity, diversity and inclusion which can also be visible from studying and working of students and staff from more than 50 countries in this university (Central Queensland University, 2017). 2. Market Summary Australia is a country of GDP 1.1%, average weekly earnings $ 1,533.10 and population of 24.5 million (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2017). Among 24.5 million, 36.6 % people attend university courses. This gives a figure of 8.967 million attending university. CQU has currently 31,217 students studying in its 24 differently located campuses across Australia (Universities Australia, 2017). Students are from more than 50 different countries and staffs from more than 25 nationalities. It also has more than 25 percentages of current students coming from international market and also has highest ratio of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. CQ University has a significant growth in student numbers, new courses, new campuses and infrastructures. While looking the history of distance education, CQ University comes as the pioneer of this feature in Australia. This university is leading as distance education provider with about half of the current student number coming from remote places and studying off-campus. 3. Demand Assessment The available market for the university could be students from Asian countries, some European countries, southern American countries and African countries along with student from rural part of Australia through off-campus education and other students from different parts of Australia. Time series analysis is one of the trend analysis techniques to forecast future values based on previous observed data (Kim et al., 2015). If we use trend analysis, it could be seen that the students will grow up to approximate 33000 in next year. And if this trend goes as forecasted, the university will achieve students over 42,000 by 2020. Year CQU fedUni UQ Total student in Australia 2009 19,569 25,176 40,582 2010 19,803 24,424 43,831 2011 19,433 23,101 45,548 2012 19,250 23,187 46,863 2013 19,108 21,567 48,804 2014 32609 22,336 50,749 2015 30,285 21,043 50,830 2016 31,217 20389 51,070 2017 33195 19854 54032 2018 36288 19374 55012 2019 39550 18705 56201 2020 42546 18224 57401 1,539,000 *Students for 2018, 2019 and 2020 are forecasted using Excel with forecast function. Fig.Number of forecatedStudents for CQU, FedUni and UQ Now let us calculate future demand using following formula; *Future Demand (FD) = Potential number of buyers X average quantity purchased X price FD of CQU for 2020 = 42546 (forecasted above) x 8 (considering 8 courses in a year) x 3909.375 (refer to sub-heading ‘Price’ of heading ‘Marketing mix’ below) = $1,330,626,150 Also, total market potential and estimated market potential of CQU are calculated below: Fig: Assumption of total students in Australia Adopted from: Group of Eight Australia (2017).Future Demand for Higher Education in Australia. *Total market potential (TMP)= the total number of domestic and international students X the average unit cost X number of units taken by a full-time students TMP in 2020 =1,883,000 x 8 x 3909.375 = $58,890,825,000 *Estimated Market Share of CQU in 2020= CQU market potential/ Total Market Potential X 100 = ($1,330,626,150 / $58,890,825,000) x 100 =2.26% 4. Segmentation and target market Market segmentation is an essential factor to select target market which divides customers into group of small segments having unique characteristics, responses and choices (Frank et al., 1965). International students and rural students who want to complete their study with lower fee are the market segment for this university. The target market is the first group of qualified available market in which the organization wants to use its marketing strategy (Jang et al., 2004). The major target market for this university is international students from other countries and students from remote and rural region. This university is leading as distance education provider with about fifty percentages of current students being made up of student from remote places studying off-campus and also around 25 per cent of the current students are international students. So, students at rural and remote places of Australia, distance students who have difficulties to attend the classes, international students from developing countries and students who want to study with job-study balance life are the target market of CQ University. 5. Current marketing mix analysis According to Goi (2009), marketing mix is the set of components that a company uses to change market strategies into practice to fulfil the needs of costumer. It contains 4Ps i.e. price, product or services, promotion and place. Below is the analysis of these components of CQ University. a) Services: The services are the non-physical item provided by an organization to fulfil the needs of costumer. CQ University provides on-campus and distance education services. On detail, CQ University is continuously delivering diverse range of training and education programs and courses from certificate to post doctorate level. So, all together, it includes apprenticeships, trades and training, business, accounting and law, creative, performing and visual arts, education and humanities, engineering and built environment, health, information, technology and digital media, psychology, social work and community services, science and environment and work and study preparation sectors as services. b) Price: Table below shows an average price of a course in CQ University with comparison with other two universities of year 2014: Figure: Comparison of course fees of CQU, FedUni and UQ Adopted from: Australian Education Network (2017). Compare CQU, FEDUNI and UQ Universities in Australia. So, the average business courses fees for CQU are approximate $ 57,200, education courses fees are $ 82,300 and so on. If we do the average of these entire faculties fees, it could be (57200+82300+55400+55300)/4= $62,550 per course. Let us assume these courses are of 2 years, then price for one year could be $62,550/2=$31,275. And if there are 8 courses in one year, price of one subject could be $31,275/8= $3909.375 per subject. c) Promotion: Promotion primarily targets the market to increase positive view toward product or service to make rise in market profitability (Pride, 2007). CQ University has a team of Marketing Directorate which generates customer’s i.e. potential students’ interest for the study in this university and also responsible for marketing, student recruitments and branding activities. CQ University delivers its publications, branding, school engagement, recruitment, advertising and marketing policies as its promotion activities. d) Place: CQ has its location for both demographical students, who wanted to stay away from city in regional area or who want to stay in bustling city life. CQ University has 16 campuses in Gladstone, Emerald, Mackay, Adelaide, Bundaberg, Brisbane, Cairns, Melbourne, Perth, Rockhampton, Noosa, Sydney and Townsville. Beside campuses, there are study centre, study hub, delivery site in other different sites of Australia. 6. PEST analysis This is an essential analysing tool that identifies the effect of external factors and evaluates the external environmental performance of an organization. The PEST analysis of CQU is as follows: a) Political: Political factors or the influence of government decisions generate huge impact in performance of any organization and in respect to CQU, its analysis explores that the university is affected by governmental decisions (own nation or other nations) across various time. For instance, government reforms had cut regulatory costs for institutions by $48.2 million a year in 2014 which allowed increasing in number of student to 10% more in 2014 as compare to 2013(Australian Student Accommodation Research Report, 2016). This is one reason for the increase in student numbers from 19,108 to 32,609. b) Economic: It had also played as important factor to influence over the performance of CQU. For instance, a decline in enrolment growth from 2009 to 2011 was indirectly largely due to the Yuan weakening against the Australian dollar which got uplift after 2012 (Australian Student Accommodation Research Report, 2016). c) Socio-cultural: The socio-cultural factors have influenced the Performance of Central Queensland University in many ways. For example, CQ University is giving back to society by spending one percentage of its profit to society through different project like change makers, beside this operating clinics in Nepal, salaam Balaak orphanage in India and many more. This helped to foster the reputation of the University in international market. d) Technological: Technological factor is one of most important factor that is influencing the performance of CQU greatly. For instance, improving and increasing off-campus courses had drastically improved the performance of CQU. Student living in remote and regional area are studying in distance course through online courses. And CQU is a pioneer leader in this sector. This is helping the growth of student number and performance of the university. 7. Competitor analysis of close competitor Even though CQU is large and growing university in Australia, it is essential to analyse the current market competitors. Federation University and Queensland University are few of the competitors among them. If we see the international fees for different courses for these universities, we can find comparable amounts. Figure: Comparison of course fees of CQU, FedUni and UQ Adopted from: Australian Education Network (2017). Compare CQU, FEDUNI and UQ Universities in Australia. We have a formula to calculate share of competitor as below: *Estimated Market Share of a competitor= Competitor market potential/ Total Market Potential X 100 Now, Fed Uni market potential in 2020=potential buyers x average price x no of course = 18224 x ((50.1+65.6+47.1+63.6)/4) x 8 = 36448 x 226.4 = $ 8,251827.2 Market share of Fed=Fed Uni market potential/total market potential x 100 = ($8251827.2/ $ 58,890,825,000) x 100 =0.014 % Similarly we can calculate for QU as well. This speaks that the CQU has larger market share than other two universities and has to maintain it further in future to grow with sustaining the same. Beside this CQU stands top in social innovation and global outreach developing partnership with key stakeholders, society, industries and law-makers in Australia and international market. Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching data also shows that CQU performs better than other Australian Universities in providing support about study, employment to new graduates and salary outcome of new graduates ( Central Queensland University, 2015). 8. SWOT analysis The strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats in respects to CQ University are analysed as below: I. Strengths: The major strength of CQU is that it is one of Australia’s leading and pioneer providers of flexible educations and trainings. It has hundreds of courses covered by distance education which gives flexibility to study without attending on-campus classes and allows in balancing work and study at a time. Some other strengths are as follow: • Enthusiastic campus culture and climate • Better student Services and quality academic courses • International market supporting programs • Better campus location with easy for transportation II. Weakness: The drawback of the University is its less market penetration in city students. About 50 percentages of students are distance off-campus students which belongs to rural areas and around 25 percentages are international students. This shows that the very small number major city students are attracted to this university. Some other weaknesses are as follow: • Less number of courses in city area campus (eg. No course for medical and engineering faculty in Sydney campus) • Less number of full scholarship for students III. Opportunities: Due to change in government and policy of America and instability of Europe, students from other countries are choosing Australian universities instead. This will certainly raise the student numbers and CQ University having moderate fees and high quality education will be good option for those international students. Other opportunities are: • Can cope the international market with better marketing strategies • Can lead as an university of social innovation entrepreneurship • Can sustain as the leader of distance education provider IV. Threats: Since, 25 percentage of market for CQ University depends on international students, so, if there will be any changes in government rules and regulations that will directly influence the number of students enrolling in the university. The biggest threat could be the changing government regulations about international students. • Growing number of other competitors • Less resources and courses in city campuses could lead to losing of market share. 9. Value and brand positioning analyses Customer importance and company performance matrix (IP matrix) analyses can be used to examine the performance of the service of any organization. Here, starting salaries and fees are taken as two dimensions to plot a graph as below: Table: Starting Salaries vs Fees for different Faculty in CQU, FedUni and UQ CQU Starting Salaries International Student fees Biz 62.1 57.2 Edu 48.4 82.3 Arts 51.2 55.4 Science 51 55.3 Fed Uni Starting Salaries International Student fees Biz 49.7 50.1 Edu 56.5 65.6 Arts 52.2 47.1 Science 48.3 63.6 UQ Starting Salaries International Student fees Biz 47.8 55.8 Edu 56.5 68.8 Arts 52.2 56.3 Science 48.3 58.3 Adopted from: Australian Education Network (2017).Compare CQU, FEDUNI and UQ Universities in Australia So, looking the above data for starting salaries and international student fees for different faculties, CQU stands up among other competitors. Also, because of multicultural teaching strategies and participation, CQU has growing reputation. CQU is also holding better market attractiveness because of its reasonable fees as compare to its nearest competitors and its leading distance education providing University. 10. Conclusion Overall, after looking the future demand for CQU and its market share, we can easily predict that the CQU has progressive and bright future in coming days because of its campuses locations, price of courses, promotional campaigns and marketing policies. All together, the growth of University will also depend on the changing rules and regulation of government for international students. Its value and brand positioning analysis puts a satisfactory current position of CQU as comparison with its competitors. But it’s less market penetration of city and town students could be challenging threat to solve in coming days. References Australian Bureau of Statistics (2017).Australian Population. Retrieved From: http://www.abs.gov.au/ Australian Education Network (2017).Australian University Ranking. 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