Marketing for secondary private schools in Taiwan Lin Shih Huang

The reasons for dissertation Due to the policy and social environment change, many schools face the competition in the education arena especially at the secondary sector. Broader meaning of marketing for schools could not only help schools to understand external acquirement and internal circumstance, but also enable schools to build effective strategies for whole school self-evaluation and development plan.

The purpose of dissertation This paper aims to realize the leaders in secondary private schools how they understand the internal and external market information; and how they build effective marketing strategies for schools’ development and external relationship management with local community.

Literature review Definition of marketing for schools as: The means by which the school actively communicates and promotes its purpose, values and products to the pupils, parents, staff and wider community. (Davies and Ellison, 1997, p. 3)

Literature review Marketing schools: is reputation management; is customer relationship management; has systematic market research and analysis; stresses effective strategies for achieving organisational goals; is the process for substantial development;

Literature review School market segmentation:

Literature review Dilemmas Government-oriented literature and policy directives imposed the market on school that principals were encouraged to market their products and services. Inconsistency between their moral value and policy imperatives. Such as money should be allocated to marketing rather to teaching and learning. Oplatka I. and Hemsley-Brown J. (2004)

Literature review Marketing plan is the core of marketing process. It is unlikely that most schools have systematic and coherent marketing plan. None of principals had a clearly formulated and written marketing policy or plan. (Bell, 1999) Do school conduct marketing research? Most schools’ teams were unlikely to base their marketing decisions on reliable and systematic marketing research findings or formal consumer scanning. Principals often gained in ad hoc ways: conversation with parents, informal conversation with teachers, meetings with parents associations, local authority and trade union in community. Oplatka I. and Hemsley-Brown J. (2004)

Hypothesis: Market information is valuable for whole school self-evaluation: for schools to realize internal performance, parents and students’ needs; to understand external environment, requirement and expectation toward the schools Marketing strategy is beneficial for school development plan: via building and implementing marketing strategies for schools to enhance development plan; to manage reputation and client’s relationship

Methodology Qualitative methods 2 Taiwanese privet high schools: telephone interview with principals 2 British secondary schools: visit and interview with headteachers or managers