Marketing Plan for a University Using the 4Ps Framework

Introduction

The nature of higher education is that it is both a service—a service to the community and to the student body—and a business. Or, at least, a university must keep its marketing focus on commercial as well as altruistic and academic concerns to function in today's competitive economy. Students have many other potential options besides choosing to attend a particular university, and a university must make a persuasive case that it suits its target customer's needs.

Product Segmentation

Reflecting this dual nature of every educational institution, this paper specifically addresses the marketing needs of a public state university through the rubric of the 4Ps marketing mix—the combination of factors that makes a product, service, or institution unique. These 4Ps include product, place (of distribution), promotion, and price (cost). In addition to these traditional marketing concerns, as a not-for-profit organization, the university's marketing must also take into consideration the way it promotes its "people"—such as faculty, staff, and alumni—and the processes it deploys to address institutional and customer needs.

Brand name, quality, style, and packaging are all part of creating the image of a unique product. The university examined here is characterized primarily by its commitment to the educational and professional goals of students and its extensive service to the community ("About CSN," Official Website, 2007). It is a diverse institution in an urban location that stresses its inclusiveness of individuals from different backgrounds and its ability to prepare students for the future. This can be seen in the breadth of its academic program offerings. Along with relatively standard majors such as English and Sociology that might be found at any state school, the university also boasts an extensive array of specialized courses and majors, such as Deaf Studies, Educational Psychology and Counseling, and Linguistics and TESL ("Academics," Official Website, 2007). This suggests that the school offers a distinctive product to prospective and current teachers wishing to engage in a degree of their own market segmentation—developing a specialty or improving credentials to become more desirable and hirable in the educational field by concentrating in an unusual area of expertise.

Another expanding professional field is health administration and healthcare, and the school offers highly specific concentrations in Radiology, Human Sexuality, and Healthcare Administration. These majors are designed to prepare students with an eye on their professional futures and also address the needs of adults wishing to begin or continue their education, maximize their earning potential, and further their personal enrichment. The university presents itself as an ideal stepping-stone into the future. There is also a college of extended learning, which specifically addresses the university's mission to serve the broader community.

In addition to such practical majors, the university offers regional studies—such as Pan African, Asian American, and Chicano/a Studies—that are cutting-edge and answer the demands of students who wish to explore evolving notions of racial, ethnic, and American identity in contemporary society. A Latina student, for example, could prepare for a career as a radiologist while simultaneously taking classes not simply in her grandparents' nation of origin, but studying her own Chicana identity and heritage at the undergraduate level, perhaps jointly majoring in health sciences and regional studies. For international students, there is the opportunity to study uniquely American subjects, such as the construction of "Asian-American" as a cultural and political identity.

Place

Further catering to the needs of adult learners and recent immigrants with family and job demands is the university's offering of web-based courses—another key element of its marketing mix. The institution maintains a presence both in a highly convenient physical location and on the web through distance learning classes. For busy adults or students with demanding schedules and extensive outside commitments, web-based learning is an ideal compromise. Furthermore, for students in health or technology fields, the university provides access through the California State University system to the full content of over 1,500 online books, available to any student, faculty member, or staff member through any computer on any CSU campus, including labs and library systems ("Textbooks Online?" Official Website, 2007).

The school's location in Los Angeles, near the heart of the film industry, is an added bonus for its film and cinema majors, who can study film on both an academic and a hands-on level. Like most programs at the school, the College of Arts, Media, and Communication offers flexible four- and five-year programs, as does the College of Health and Human Development—accommodating students who need or wish to work or complete an internship alongside their studies.