ISSN 0798 1015
ISSN 0798 1015
Vol. 39 (# 21) Year 2018. Page 42
Marina Georgievna SERGEEVA 1; Ivan Alexeevich PUGACHEV 2; Marina Borisovna BUDILTSEVA 3; Irina Yuryevna VARLAMOVA 4; Natalya Stepanovna NOVIKOVA 5; Tatyana Nikolayevna STANILOVSKAYA 6
Received: 01/04/2018 • Approved: 20/04/2018
ABSTRACT: Introduction. Deep marketing research for educational services market by professional educational organizations is required in the market conditions. Research methodology. Marketing activity of a professional educational institution deals with a special type of product: an educational service that have common and specific features. The educational service was found to have the following components: the goal, desired results, training tasks to provide the reaching of the goal as each method of education should be followed by determination of parameters; control of mastering, conditions for rendering services, reaching the goal. Research results. The important feature of educational services as a whole is the fact that they are produced and consumed simultaneously. The specificity of educational services market in contrast to other markets is as follows; the buyer pays for a non-material service and expects to get some profit from it. Discussion. The final product of professional education is not realized at once but during a long period. Not all the received knowledge can be used in practice due to the fact that conditions of production are changed very dynamically and a person who is trained can get knowledge, know-how and skills which do not completely meet the production requirements by the end of education. Conclusion. Marketing is extra actual for educational system in the region as it can help to solve acute contradictions between an economic downfall and high rates of educational field growth, to determine rational proportions between humanitarian and technical specializations, national economy requirements and production of specialists by educational institutions. |
RESUMEN: Introducción. Se requiere una profunda investigación de mercado para el mercado de servicios educativos por parte de organizaciones educativas profesionales en las condiciones del mercado. Metodología de investigación. La actividad de mercadeo de una institución educativa profesional trata con un tipo especial de producto: un servicio educativo que tiene características comunes y específicas. Se encontró que el servicio educativo tenía los siguientes componentes: el objetivo, los resultados deseados, las tareas de capacitación para alcanzar el objetivo, ya que cada método de educación debía seguirse de la determinación de los parámetros; control de dominio, condiciones para prestar servicios, alcanzar el objetivo. Resultados de la investigacion. La característica importante de los servicios educativos en su conjunto es el hecho de que son producidos y consumidos simultáneamente. La especificidad del mercado de servicios educativos en contraste con otros mercados es la siguiente; el comprador paga por un servicio no material y espera obtener algún beneficio de él. Discusión. El producto final de la educación profesional no se realiza de inmediato sino durante un largo período. No todos los conocimientos recibidos se pueden utilizar en la práctica debido a que las condiciones de producción cambian de manera muy dinámica y una persona capacitada puede obtener conocimientos, conocimientos técnicos y habilidades que no satisfacen completamente los requisitos de producción al finalizar la educación. . Conclusión. El marketing es extra real para el sistema educativo en la región ya que puede ayudar a resolver contradicciones agudas entre una caída económica y altas tasas de crecimiento del campo educativo, para determinar proporciones racionales entre especializaciones humanitarias y técnicas, requisitos de economía nacional y producción de especialistas por instituciones educativas . |
Modern education is characterized by a big choice and a high competitiveness of educational services which are rendered by both state and non-state professional educational institutions. There is rather a big number of educational institutions in a lot of regions which give a possibility to get a primary, secondary and higher professional or additional education with issuing a state diploma for the same specializations.
The current situation demands serious marketing research of educational services market from professional educational institutions that should lead to perfection of managing educational services, methods for search and enrollment of applicants, qualitative change of educational technologies. Marketing and marketing activity has already become an integral part of work in a lot of Russian companies and organizations. Production associations and banks, trade and intermediate firms open marketing departments and search for specialists. Educational institutions have not so far fully realized the need for marketing activity (Pryazhnikova and Sergheeva 2015).
Professional education goes through a transition to a market-oriented system of rendering educational services, that’s why it is necessary to introduce the system of marketing in education. Nowadays, marketing services are set up in a lot of professional educational institutions. Formation of educational services market became possible alongside with the formation of market relations in the Russian economy. It is marketing that is able to provide a lot of educational institutions, variations of educational forms and methods, variety of educational services etc. Objective requirements of the market which is being formed dictate the offer for educational services in the form of a commodity.
The aim of marketing: coordination of professional educational institution opportunities with the society requirements.
The aim of marketing management: setting up and reaching the goals for coordination the opportunities of professional educational institution with the society requirements.
The aim of marketing service: creation of an effective system for receiving marketing information, its acceptance on the basis of managing decisions and coordination of their application to reach goals set by a professional educational institution in market conditions.
The main directions of a professional educational institution marketing service activity are as follows:
The tasks of marketing service are the following:
The main directions of marketing service activity in the process of professional educational institutions functioning in market relations conditions are as follows:
Marketing activity of a professional educational institution has a number of peculiarities as the main product that is realized in the market is a special type of a commodity- an educational service.
When buying an educational service the customer increases the cost of his/her commodity “manpower” in the labor market that’s why the state of educational institutions directly depends on the state of the branch for which they prepare specialists.( Sergheeva, Bedenko and Machekhina 2017).
There arises a wave process for changing the demand due to the influence of the labor market on the educational services market. The demand for educational services is formed under the influence of changes in the labor market and subsequent change of the public opinion about the prestige and profitability of the profession. This explains the inertia of demand for educational services i.e. customers’ delayed reaction for educational services due to the labor market changes – “temporal lag”. The cycle of the demand changes for educational services can be about 10 years.
Professional educational institutions can set “minimum” and “maximum” tasks while assisting to job placement of their graduates. The first is to establish and maintain the backward communication with potential employers. It will make easier the graduates job placement and increase the image of a professional educational institution. The “maximum” task includes receiving funds for development from potential employers. (Kolchina and Sergheeva 2016).
Such activity presupposes studying the demand for specialists of different profiles. The direct subject of such research is a sphere of market relations between “ a professional educational institution – a student – an enterprise” in the system of professional education. It is necessary for professional educational institutions for the nearest years to know which enterprises are ready to hire young specialists, how much they can pay for their training and the required level of their training quality.
Meeting the corporate requirements for young specialists the organizations of professional school system receive the possibility not only to increase their incomes but finally to strengthen their state in this system.
It is required to consider the following directions while studying the competitiveness in the educational services market (Korzhuev and Sergheeva 2015a):
On the basis of the educational services market thorough analysis the conclusions are made about prospects for development of the given market including the development of national economy branches, dynamics of the population incomes, attractiveness of the given region from the point of view of paid educational services growth.
A constant research of the educational services market, analysis of the dynamics of all its components – demand , offer and prices gives a possibility to correctly determine the strategy in the field of marketing and management. The managing efficacy of educational organization activity depends on this strategy.
The main tasks of educational marketing in the region while setting up marketing services are as follows (Segheev and Sergheeva 2010):
It is necessary to analyze the concepts “educational service”, “field of education” to define the meaning of educational services and to find their specific features.
In Agapova’s opinion (Alferov and Bezdudnaya 2004), an educational service – is a personified education, education of a separate person according to his/her individual skills, possibilities, desires. The need for educational services is a person’s desire to get education as a service according to his/her abilities and possibilities. Modern humanitarian idea of the educational content regards the system of educational services as a person’s certain social-cultural environment with his/her values and requirements, interests and self-expression.
Education is aimed at teaching a person to cope with problems facing the mankind in the modern world. Education embraces all age categories of learners from which professional strata in a society are formed, science, culture and art are developed.
If the educational system is rather developed, it renders services to all categories of customers and consumers of education. Educational services being rendered by educational institutions are a commodity and have specific features which should be taken into account while evaluating the competitiveness of an educational institution. (Markova 1996):
Intangibility of educational services; lectures, practical lessons, laboratory works and seminars conducted by the educational institution teachers do not take shape of a ready made product. The given fact complicates the assessment of a service quality. The educational institutions familiarize with their licenses, state accreditation certificates, curricula, syllabi, a list of current and feasible specializations, the availability of different forms and methods of education etc.in order to attract a consumer and to convince him/her of a service quality;
Synchronizing the process of production and consumption of an educational service;
Preferring a concrete physical person: a lot of courses are conducted according to a teacher’s own methodical manuals, there exist authors’ courses delivered only in the given educational institution and by a concrete teacher, there are own scientific schools and their followers;
Non-stability of educational service quality: it is affected by a teacher’s potential, his careful attitude to a training process, physical and psychological state. Besides, the availability and the condition of a material-technical base will influence the quality of a training process. The current standards of specializations also give a large discretion in selecting the delivered disciplines by an educational institution which in turn leads to a different quality of the educational service. The quality of specialists having the diploma of the same specialization but received in different educational institutions will be different even with the same marks in diplomas;
Impossibility to keep the educational service: on the one hand, it is not possible to prepare the service as a commodity and keep it in a storehouse but in such a case it is possible to prepare beforehand, for example, different training manuals, methodical instructions, computer training programs etc. On the other hand, the information received by a student in the training process can be forgotten and gets old in some period of time. That’s why there arises a need in an additional education in the process of a labor activity, retraining and receiving new best practices and information required in the field of his/her activity. Educational services differ from other non-material services in their consuming properties (consumer cost); they meet the person’s requirements in spiritual and intellectual development and acquisition of a certain specialization or qualification. Besides, educational services have the following specific features (Karavanova and Sergheeva 2014):
Each service should have certain limits, content, cost and other parameters from a customer’s and a consumer’s point of view . The subject of a service should meet certain requirements and the service itself should be in a certain way structured. First of all, there should be a real reachable goal of education: what a customer may have as a result of the service rendered. One and the same goal can be reached by different ways, different training tasks can be applied for realization of the goal. That’s why a customer or a consumer of a service should know those methods which will help him/her to reach the goal. In this case each method of training should have its own parameter values: the cost of education, duration, the scope of knowledge. It is very important to beforehand agree with the customer the method of control (testing) of the service subjects being learnt: knowledge, skills, psychological functions.
Thus, an educational service includes the following components: the goal, desired results; training tasks which provide for reaching of the goal as every method of education should be accompanied by determination of parameters; control for mastering, conditions for rendering services, reaching the goal (Sergheeva 2015b).
An important feature of educational services as whole is their simultaneous production and consumption. But in this case an educational service is always a rather long process. V.D.Markova (Bedenko and Sergheeva 2012) determines the following characteristics which differ educational services from a commodity: intangibility, quality change, continuous production and consumption, impossibility to be kept. Therefore, speaking of educational services specific features, it is necessary to note their intangibility, volatility or a non-material character of services. It is not possible to demonstrate them, to see, to try, to transport, to keep, to pack or to study before getting these services. Educational services should correspond to the uniform quality criteria designed by the bodies of governmental, municipal or public management for education or by international organizations. Educational services depend on the purpose and the goal of the education being received which should correspond to certain standards.
On the one hand, the educational sector integrates different in form components of a training activity into the unique society sub-system , on the other hand, it is the ground to interact a training process with a training activity. Professional education takes a special place in the educational system being an individual sub-system of education which realizes the functions inherent to it by specific techniques. In Zykov’s opinion (Korzhuev and Sergheeva 2015b) the system of a professional education is formed on the basis of regional labor markets requirements for training specialists and qualified workers and has the following important characteristics:
Professional education has lately been functioning in market conditions. Market is a complex system of interrelations between a producer and a consumer of commodities and services which functions in its turn in the system of political, economic, public relations provided with a developed legal infrastructure.
The main market characteristics are as follows: a producer’s freedom of choice for commodities and goods supplied to the market and organizational forms (economic, technological and others)of their production, and a consumer’s freedom to select commodities and goods being bought; freedom of a price formation for commodities and services in the period of fluctuating demands and services; free competitiveness of commodities producers.
The main goal of a market economy is to gain a profit. The labor market is a buy and sell field on the basis of agreed conditions between a labor force buyer – employer and a seller of person’s skills which are later used in the process of a material production.
Formation of labor markets and educational services and the processes taking place in them always directly depends on the state of economy. At the same time in an educational services market the relations are formed between direct consumers of educational services- different categories of population and producers of these services-different types of state and alternative educational institutions. (Oreshkina, Sergheeva and Goryaghina 2015).
The specificity of an educational services market in contrast to other markets is as follows: a buyer pays for a non-material service expecting to receive a profit from this service. The seller commits itself to realize an educational service for a certain time (period of education) by general education and professional training, retraining or worker’s competence increase through its program.
According to Sagindikov’s statement (Koroleva and Sergheeva 2016) the educational services market is formed and functions on the basis of a consumer’s freedom to choose a service profile and the type of a training institution , and the right of all citizens to have a primary, basic professional education on a competitive basis, as well as retraining and competence increase through employers’ initiative, employment services and the own will of a citizen. Thus, the solution of professional education problems, training and employment of the population as an integral social complex in economy of all regions requires studying the corresponding markets as well as social-professional structure of the population. Along with this, it is necessary to conceptualize the issues of theory and methodology for formation and use of human’s capital and also the analysis of labor and educational services markets, assessment of modern tendencies and consequences of their development for the population, transformations being performed in an educational sphere. (Sergheeva 2010).
One of the problems for the further development of a professional education system, growth of its final performance is to determine rational ways, means and methods to include it into the system of market economy relations which is being formed : to determine rational ways, forms and methods to spread the system of market relations on the system of a professional education .
One of the essential theoretical –methodological statements in national and foreign authors’ works is the assumption of the principle that development of education can not be performed directly under the action of a market relations mechanism because one of the basis for these relations is the system of self- contained , egoistic, individual-personal or limited corporative interests of separate groups and society strata involved into different types of contradictions with the same self-contained, egoistic interests of other groups and strata in the process of production, distribution, re-distribution and consumption of commodities, services (Sirotyuk and Sergheeva 2001)
In market conditions a professional education giving a skill of a worker, a working force to a person (therefore, commodity in a labor market) should be considered in the aspect of a process, the result of which is a given commodity (working force) in the system of expense-profit ratio related to a worker , whereupon all the concept of a human capital is based. The final product of a professional education (the sum of knowledge, skills and habits – what is determined as a person’s ability to work) , firstly, is not immediately realized but during a long period, and secondly, can not be fully used ( and in separate cases it is not used at all) because the production conditions change very dynamically, and a person who is trained can receive knowledge , skills and habits which to a certain degree do not meet the requirements of production by the end of his/her education (Rakovskaya and Sergheeva, n. d). In view of this the investments into education have a high degree of risk that’s why they are objectively alien to the majority of economic subjects. However , the joint public interest demands the support of education as one of the most important system-forming factors of a public life, absolutely required for its normal functioning and development. In view of this, the institute of education enters the so-called public sector of economy which in contrast with the market sector deals with public benefits. The society in the name of a state takes the functions of education financing at the expense of funds received from economic subjects and separate persons in the form of taxes. It predetermines a considerable role of a state in running a professional education, in supporting certain proportions of its functioning. Ignoring this linkage, as a domestic practice shows, leads to a lot of negative phenomena. For example, paid education has rapidly been developed lately, with mainly in the range of professions and specializations having the demand in the period of the market expansion: in the field of purely market types of economic activity –management, marketing, finance and credit; in the field of a legal activity and some others where a high demand for specialists was followed by high salaries. (Bedenko and Sergheeva 2014).
However, even now the overproduction of specialists in this group of specializations is growing up and a population purchasing power to get such an education is not likely to be kept in the current scale. Therefore, it is required to study the tendencies of professional education development to match them with the development of an educational services market.
Domestic and western experts note that in XXI century the advantage will be in economically developed countries which train educated and highly qualified specialists who present an intellectual potential of the country. According to their evaluation, the education provides, as a rule, up to 40% of economic rates of growth. (Oreshkina and Sergheeva 2015)
Marketing as a philosophy of market relation participants is not a philosophy of concepts or doctrines. It is not a system of knowledge as it is and more over is not a tool for creating an agreement of opinions of market subjects. It is an element of their conscience arrangement correlated with the style of life in the market. For producers of commodities and services including educational ones, the degree of inherence to marketing as a market philosophy is embodied in the degree, stages of transition from a company ‘production –sale’ orientation to a market, marketing orientation.
The main differences between these types of orientation for educational institutions are as follows:
Under “production” orientation (Lomakina and Sergheeva 2015):
Market orientation of the educational institution presupposes absolutely opposite directives and decisions related to the above mentioned aspects of its activity (Sokolova and Sergheeva, n. d):
The essence of marketing as a market philosophy for an entrepreneur is, first of all ,expressed by the fact that a consumer’s demands are of primarily importance. In this case we don’t speak about an average consumer (except for the strategy for a mass , non-differential marketing) and moreover not about the society as a whole but about concrete consumers’ target groups, clearly defined market segments with inherent special demands and opportunities related to the demand for commodities and services (Sergheeva 2012).
It is new and unusual for all the branches of the national economy and particularly for the field of education, including a professional school. It is here that the governmental –paternalistic approach related to all the participants of a training process manifested itself in nearly all the aspects and for a long time as it formed the whole generations. It was embodied in declarations of priorities for the “national economy”, the society as a whole, branches of economy as the leading consumers of professionals.
In reality, the autocratic requirements of governing bodies were behind such kinds of declarations , that exclusively themselves set up, financed educational institutions, dictated them their will and required own models for training specialists. The educational requirements of a person as the unique final ES consumer were actually ignored.
The basic marketing principle of educational services is focused in its philosophy and is concentrated on the consumer’s needs and requirements but not on the producer’s ones. But it could not have become a reality if other marketing principles had not been aimed at the realization of this basic principle. Let’s distinguish the most long-standing principles among them.
The beginners who actively apply marketing of educational services in the region are more attracted by such aspects as strategies and especially the tactics of the market activity , its “ tools component”, the formulation of actions. However, any tool and, moreover, the formulation of actions can be correctly and appropriately applied and lead to a market success only in the case if its application is not by chance and a tribute to a fashion but a consequence of understanding and accepting, mastering mutual principles, techniques , methods of existence and expertise in the market.
For the time being such work is being conducted by few numbers of HEIs among educational institutions. As a result, the leading principles of marketing practically do not influence the RES subjects behavior in the region, and their actions turn out to be very little interlinked with each other, contradictory and consequently ineffective.
Our scientific-pedagogical specialists, as a rule, do not have a real practice enough and a psychological state of mind to participate in realization of marketing principles: psychological tiredness, pessimism of intellectual specialists adversely affect them. All the more, there is a necessity to set up specialized marketing sub-divisions in professional educational institutions. Services, marketing departments could be responsible executors, customers and coordinators of marketing researches and training toolkits and to interact with co-executors both in the collectives of professional educational institutions (i.e. with faculties, chairs, separate scientific workers and teachers) and outside them.
It should be noted that modern education is characterized by a wide choice and a high competitiveness of educational services rendered both by state and non-state educational institutions. There exists a rather big number of educational institutions in many regions which give a possibility to receive a secondary vocational education, higher or additional education with granting a state diploma for the same specializations.
However, marketing is particularly actual for the system of education in a region as it is able to help to solve acute contradictions between a downfall economy and high rates of educational field growth, between the demand and a factual offer for educational services, between a state and non-state education, to determine rational proportions between humanitarian and technical specializations, requirements of a national economy and production of specialists by educational institutions.
Thus, the current situation in a region demands a serious marketing research of the market for educational services by professional educational institutions which should perfect managing a training process, methods of search and enrollment of applicants, a qualitative change of educational technologies.
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1.Bauman Moscow State Technical University (national research university), 105005, Russian Federation, Moscow, 2nd Baumanskaya st., 7; E-mail: sergeeva198262@mail.ru
2. Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), 117198, Russia, Moscow, Miklukho-Maklaya st., 6
3. Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), 117198, Russia, Moscow, Miklukho-Maklaya st., 6
4. Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), 117198, Russia, Moscow, Miklukho-Maklaya st., 6
5. Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), 117198, Russia, Moscow, Miklukho-Maklaya st., 6
6. Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), 117198, Russia, Moscow, Miklukho-Maklaya st., 6