Marketing research

Introduction 

      The number of private institutions increases with speed so that not only to choose between state and private institutions becomes more difficult for matriculants and their parents, but also for private institutions to reach and keep desired position of trustworthy means of education allocation. International Christian University is one of the representatives of private institutions of higher learning in Ukraine and has a lot of distinguishing features from other universities. (First of all in ICU western-style of education is implemented. The main language of teaching is English. No corruption and internationally recognized diploma undoubtedly can attract matriculants). On its example we constructed a questionnaire with different characteristics that matter when choosing among alternative universities.

     The aim of the research is to find the actual loyalty of matriculants and their families toward private universities vs. state universities. The reality is such that some private universities, like ICU can give good education in definite fields of studies, however, people, following old traditions to have the national diploma, sometimes neglect quality of studying. That’s why we try to find out what characteristics do attract students to go to private universities, so that these qualities may be developed further. And from the other side we can find what qualities do private universities lack.  

Problem 

Find out the main reasons why students do not choose private universities. 

Goal 

To create right vision of ICU and increase the number of enrolled students (enrolments).  

Research objectives 

1. Identify the attitude (loyalty) of respondents toward private institutions.
2. Define the most significant factors that influenced the loyalty toward the private universities among respondents (students and those who have already graduated).
3. Outline possible alternatives for the institution’s improvement.

 

Sample 

1. For more reliable information the target audience is students and those who have already graduated.
2. Sample size  is 77 respondents
3. The way how respondents were contacted is mail.

 
 
 
 
 

Analysis

      Descriptive statistics

      Central tendencies

1. From all the respondents 35% are studying in private universities or have already graduated from it, at the same time 56% are studying in state universities or have already graduated from it. Also 9% are studying in both or have already graduated from both.

 

2. As ICU has only three majors (Marketing, Management and International Economics) it was important to know which sphere of education is the most popular among respondents. And as 49% was marked as economics, while another 51% were allocated among 7 different spheres of education, there is no need to expand ICU’s list of majors.

 

3. ICU is the only University in Ukraine which provides an education in English, therefore it is important to know the percentage of respondents that know English: it is 88% of all the respondents. Also 34% preferred to have English as a main language of teaching, while 29% preferred to have a combination of Ukrainian, Russian and English languages, and only 17% and 16% choose Russian and Ukrainian respectively.

 

4. 19% of all the respondents have already studied abroad and 38% are planning to study abroad.

 

5. For research it is important to know the level of awareness of respondents about private institutions. 36% heard about the Wisconsin International University Ukraine, 34% about the International Solomon University, 61% about the European University, 22% about the Kiev Institute for the Humanities, and 51% about the International Christian University – Kiev.

 

6. Only 4% of respondents’ answers on the question “Where did study/is studying the majority of Your acquaintances?” were “In private universities”. 61% were “In state universities”, 30% were “50/50” and 5% of the respondents did not know where their acquaintances studied.

 

7. The scholarship issue is important for private institutions, because for those who are determined to get scholarship it may seem impossible to consider private university as a variant. 23% did not care about scholarship, 48% were neutral and for 29% availability of scholarship was important. The issue of scholarship will be considered in further research with the help of regression analysis.

 

8. The responses on question “What affected Your choice of university?” were allocated in such a way: 36% were “I know people who have good jobs and they are grads from this university”, 26% were “My friends study there”, 9% were because of low price of studies and 34% were marked as “Other”, which mean personal motives of respondents affected their choices. From this information we can conclude that for university it is important to make its students as qualified as possible so that they can find a good job and be professionals in their fields.

 

9. Analysis of the factors that influenced the respondents’ choices of university requires indexing.

 
 
 

    From this table it is vividly seen what characteristics are more important, they are Image of the University, Guarantee of afterward employment and Availability to have Master degree together with Bachelor. For ICU such results are unfavorable, because there is no guarantees of afterward employment and also Master degree is not available in ICU. Further research will show the significance of this results. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

10. The ICU characteristics were ranked and to analyze them we can also use indexing.

 
 

      From this table we can see that No corruption and Internationally recognized diploma are most valuable characteristics of ICU. So while promoting ICU accent can be made on these features. 

11. As ICU has only stationary form of education it was necessary to know the form of education that will be preferred by respondents, so that ICU can decide on whether it is vital to implement postal tuition or not. And 78% agreed with stationary form, another 22% choose postal tuition. We can conclude that postal tuition is not significant.

 

12. As one of the main aims of ICU is to create Christian values, it was important to figure out the attitude of respondents toward availability of Bible studies.

 

13. ICU implements western-style of education and it was significant to know whether respondents consider it as competitive one with respect to national system of education or not.

 
 

 

Standard deviation

Descriptive Statistics 

 

The parameter Expenses on education was coded in such a way:

<1000  USD  -1

1001-1500 USD – 2

1501-2000 USD – 3

>2001 USD – 4

 
 
 
 

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Correlation

      As the main purpose of this research is to find out what and how affected the respondents’ loyalty to private institutions, we can use correlation analysis. 

1. Awareness about private universities vs. Loyalty to private universities.

 

 
 

      These parameters are positively correlated. While Awareness is increasing Loyalty is increasing too, but it cannot be said that the relationship between them are strong. For more accurate results the larger sample can be used. 

2. Loyalty to private universities vs. Expenses on education.

 

      Again, the parameters are positively correlated. With the rise in Loyalty level the Expenses on education rises too, but it cannot be concluded that they are related significantly.  

3. Loyalty to private universities vs. Importance of: No corruption, Western-style education, Having classes in English, Flexible schedule, International diploma.  

 

 
 

      There are positively and negatively correlated parameters. The most positively correlated with the Loyalty to private universities is Western-style of education: more/less loyal respondent is more/less important for him/her the western-style of education is. But the relationship is not significant – it does not exceed 0.7. Also positively correlated with Loyalty parameter is Having classes in English, but again the coefficient does not exceed 0.7, which means that Loyalty is not significantly related to Having classes in English, increase in loyalty level does not increase significantly the importance in having classes in English. International diploma, Flexible schedule and No corruption are negatively correlated with Loyalty toward private universities, which means that the increase in loyalty level causes the decrease in importance level of these parameters. But, again, these changes are not significant.  
 

Regression

     Regression analysis is used to identify the main factors that influenced the loyalty of respondents toward private universities. The main characteristics which were regressed toward loyalty to private universities are the following:

• binary parameter that identify whether respondent is from Kiev or not;
• school grade of respondent;
• importance of the availability of the scholarship;
• importance to have classes in English;
• importance of the image of the university;
• importance of Master degree;
• attitude toward the western-style of education (competitiveness);
• plans of studying abroad (binary);
• expenses on education;
• Work&Travel as advantage (binary);
• whether respondent studies/studied in private university (binary).

 
 
 
 
 
 

Results: 

 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

      Coefficients(a) 

a  Dependent Variable: Loyalty 

Conclusion:

      The R² is 0.403 and is interpreted as following:  40.3% of the variance in the Loyalty to private universities predicted by variation in all the independent variables.  Overall predictive power can be examined through the following test:

     H₀: all the regression coefficients are zero (the independent variables are worthless as predictors)

F = 3.988

F_11,65= 2.533535

     As F>F_11,65 , the null hypothesis is rejected and thus the independent variables are not considered as worthless predictors.

     The overall predictive power can also be seen in terms of the value of standard error of estimate, in our case it is 0.95879, that is less than Loyalty level Standard deviation of 1.147.

      Next step is determining the influence of factors on which the loyalty of respondents to private universities depends. First of all, high influence produces, surprisingly, Importance of Master degree, because there is no Master degree in most private universities, so logically the loyalty cannot be high for those who seek for Master degree. But by regression analysis such a case is disproved, so that the Importance of Master degree matters for those who are loyal to private universities and vice versa. Next, loyalty level is explained by competitiveness of the western-style of education: good attitude toward western-style education provides high loyalty level to private universities. Also big influence has the binary parameter of whether or not respondent studies/studied in private university. Other parameters also produce effect on loyalty level, but this effect is not as significant as previously mentioned parameters. 

Analysis of possible improvements.

      Several extra options were proposed to the respondents. 94% agreed to the abroad probation, 86% agreed to the probation in Ukraine. With enthusiasm was accepted the suggestion to study with foreigners in university, which requires invitation of foreign students to the university. Availability of free library with English literature attracted 79% of the respondents. Opportunity to get BBA attracted 78% and opportunity to get MBA – 87%.

      Also the respondents were offered to suggest the characteristics of “ideal” for them university. One of such suggestions was implementation of cooperation between firms, organizations and universities, so that students can work on real projects, with real tasks, receiving a lot of practical knowledge.  

Suggestions

1. Take into account that there were cases, where respondents did not know about listed private universities at all. So it is needed to promote the university among matriculants. Also loyalty level to private universities is related to awareness about them, so to make people more aware of private universities means to make them more loyal to them.
2. For university it is important to make its students as qualified as possible so that they can find a good job and be professionals in their fields and then advise university to others.

 

3. To turn out professionals university needs not only to provide theoretical knowledge, but also practical, cooperating with different organizations.
4. Remember that loyalty level to private universities is related to expenses on education: the higher loyalty the higher ability to pay for education. Also it is related to Western-style of education:  more competitive respondents think Western-style is, more loyal they are to private universities.
5. Availability to have Master degree has the biggest mean importance, so universities where Master degree is not available need to think of how to implement this characteristic.
6. Internationally recognized diploma has the biggest mean rank, so ICU should develop this feature, maybe through making recommendation of its students to international organizations and universities.
7. Absence of scholarship influences negatively the loyalty level to private universities.