Education Market Analysis

Continuing the annoying line of thought that claims there is common ground between sales and education, here are a few marketing-related thoughts.

Consider a service provider in a neighbourhood with a mixed population: Some of the families are natives of the country, and some are immigrants. From a marketing point of view, it is clear that the service provider would be wise to check the needs of each of those segments separately. Immigrants bring their own habits from their country of origin - religion and values, for example. They have special needs because they are newcomers - maybe they don't own their home, whereas the natives have been living there for generations. Immigrants may have a totally different state of mind than the natives - they set out to change the lives of themselves and their children, while the natives may be there to live the good life. Almost any shrewed service provider will create a package of services suiting each of these market segments.

How about those providing K12 education services? Actually, the situation is not that bad. There are many program aimed specifically at immigrants from different origins. In some education systems there are also rules about how to deal with native speakers of different languages.

There are many ways to segment the market, and provide different services for different segments. One dimension across which segmentation may be considered is that of level of achievement: High achievers (80^th percentiles, 90^th percentiles, 95^th percentile), low achievers (5^th, 10^th, 20^th percentiles), normal-level achievers. Another dimension may be that of learning styles: Students tending towards visual learning, auditory learning, tactile learning and possible other styles. Another one would be tending to strengths: Mathematically inclined students, technically inclined students, those with artistic tendencies, those with good speech skills, etc. There is also the currently popular segmentation by weakness - all sorts of learning disorders. Some of these segmentation dimensions are addressed to some extent. Of course we can do better - that's always a given truth.

Looking at the market for a product or a service, one needs to look at constraints. Taking the viewpoint of the individual school, there are quite a few constituencies, each with the power to seriously limit the freedom of the school to act:

• The government - on the national level and on the local level - has power through long-term budgeting and regulation. It has its political needs and its ideological requirements
• The elected school-board, where it exists, has its power through close-range regulation. It also has its political needs and its ideological requirements, which may be similar or contradictory to those of the government
• The academia has ideas. It does research, so some of the ideas have a good basis. There is flow of people, together with their ego, between academia, government and school-boards
• The teachers - both individual teachers at school, and teachers unions. They have specific job-related expectations, together with politics and ego. Also, they are out there on the field, and they really know a thing or two about the state of the students, the parents, the methods, etc.
• The parents - as individuals and through their unions and political affiliations. They have expectations
• The pupils have their expectations, perceived needs and real needs
• The public - the tax payer - is sick and tired of paying so much and not being sure anything good comes out of it. Even more so, the taxpayer hates any increase in taxes

Each of the above constituents, and possibly a few more, need to be appeased, lest they stop funding, working, cooperating, etc. They need to be kept informed, and they have their own potential positive contribution that should be put to good use. It's quite a juggling act to keep all of them happy, especially considering that each of them may be further divided into groups with contradicting interests. And last but not least, considering most of these actors don't really know what exactly they want done. They are confused, and at the same time they feel the pressure to do something about an all-important issue. Sounds like life.