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Evaluating
market research proposals and deciding whether market research should
be conducted internally or externally was the focus of a Presidents
Institute concurrent session led by Lance A. Masters, president of Thiel
College (PA), and a prominent trustee of his institution, Barry
Sabol, president of Strategic College Research.
During the session, entitled "A Market
Research Primer: Separating the Wheat from the Chaff," Masters
and Sabol examined two important questions: 1) What is the relevance
and value of the information I need? and 2) What can we do with the
information to help us better compete and meet our goals and objectives?
Sabol clarified how helpful the data collection methods of focus groups,
telephone surveys, mail surveys, and intercept surveys (at college fairs,
for example) could be in marketing the institution. Sabol said that
"Mail surveys are most often returned by those at the ends of the
spectrum—the very happy and very unhappy respondents." Qualitative
focus groups, he explains, "provide the flavor, but not the degree
of sizzle, in most cases, and they are not quantitatively reliable."
Masters said sound marketing data help a college
define the competition’s advantages and disadvantages. He advised
presidents to include important marketing data in their ongoing institutional
research budgets. The panelists also advised presidents to:
- analyze
student retention and persistence by surveying current levels of satisfaction
in a wide variety of factors;
- evaluate
advertising and marketing allocations and decisions periodically;
- assess
constituent responses to anticipated announcements of campus priorities
by providing some proactive marketing studies.
On
the final point, researching the effectiveness of a president’s
announcements of priorities, Sabol warns, "Don’t ask if you
don’t want to know and if you aren’t prepared to act. People
will expect to see that you have used their advice in some productive
way.
Independent
The Council of Independent Colleges
One Dupont Circle NW, Suite 320 • Washington, DC 20036
tel: (202) 466-7230 • Fax: (202) 466-7238 • e-mail: cic@cic.nche.edu
• www.cic.edu
Last updated: April 12, 2002
Copyright © 2002 The Council of Independent Colleges
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