INTERNATIONAL MARKETING

International Marketing

International Marketing

Introduction

The UK is the second leading exporter of international education behind the USA. In 1999, 219,285 international students were enrolled in UK universities and colleges, then increasing up to 224,660 students in the year 2000. Australia is the third exporter of international education with 162,865 foreign students in 1999 and 188,277 in 2000, while the USA is the market leader in the markets for international education. In 1999, there were 490,933 international students learning in the USA, increasing considerably to 547,867 foreign students in the year 2000 (Figure 1).

Recently, the UK Government sponsored initiatives to attract more international students. These initiatives identified several aims, such as achieving a higher education market share of 25 percent by 2005 or 50,000 additional foreign students and being the world's leading nation for international education. The Government has also provided £3 million in 1998 for scholarship schemes in order to attract more international students[1]. In 1999, Tony Blair announced an initiative to attract more foreign students by injecting an additional £5 million to strengthen the UK marketing campaign and penetration in the world markets of international education. Since then, the British Council (BC) has made international education promotion as the main priority and has increased grants throughout its network (British Council, 2002).

Our research indicates however that the UK is lagging behind that of its rival competitors such as the USA and Australia. In the year 2000, Australia achieved the highest growth of 15 percent, followed by the USA with 12 percent, while the UK achieved only 2 percent growth[2] of its international students' enrolment. The USA and Australia have been attracting more international students than the UK. This continuing strong growth in overseas student numbers in the USA and Australia is due to the sustained pro-active and aggressive marketing strategies of the USA and Australia in the international markets for education (Smith 2001; IDP 2002; Mazzarol and Hosie, 1996; Michael, 1990) while the UK is behind in terms of its strategic marketing policies. The UK is facing rigorous changes in their macro-marketing environment; for example, through a decrease in demand for traditional international education and an increase in the global challenges from its rivals from other countries such as: the USA (among others, Stanford University, MIT, UCLA, Harvard Business School, etc.), Australia (University of Melbourne, University of Sydney, Australian National University, etc.), Japan (Kyoto University, Waseda University, Christian University, etc.) and other European Countries (Insead, Groningen University, University of Amsterdam, Catholic University of Belgium, etc.).

Financial constraints imposed on higher education have encouraged institutions to recruit larger international student intakes for sourcing revenue. During the last 20 years, the provision of education for international students has emerged as a prominent growth area in the service sector. As seen from Table I, year on year growth has increased from 2.5 per cent between 1998/1999 and 1999/2000 and 5 per cent between 2000/2001 and 2001/2002.

In June 1999, the UK Government launched an initiative to attract an additional 50,000 international students to UK higher education by ...