Marketing Plan for an Online MBA Program Case Study

Marketing Plan for an Online MBA Program - Case Study Example For instance, a student will not be able to have a class-room or a face to face experience with his/her faculties and could also miss out on those regular industrial trips. Apart from discussing the marketing plan, the other main focus of this report is to provide the advantages of an online-MBA program over an on-site program. To begin, an overview of the Kaplan University are discussed followed by the description of the target markets, competitors, product and services, location, pricing strategy and finally the report concludes with the implementation plan of an online MBA program and a summary. An online-MBA program is ideal for professionals who wish to soar in their careers but cannot afford to pursue a full time course. According to the Manya Group, one can acquire an MBA degree through the mode of distance learning where the interaction with the faculty is almost virtual, with the aid of communication technologies like the internet, email and video conferencing. Kaplan University is one of the many universities which provide online educational programs for those who wish to pursue their masters' degree but do not have sufficient time to attend traditional courses. Kaplan University was founded in 1937 and was formally known as Kaplan College (Kaplan College Reviews). Kaplan University offers top class business education and training for their students and offers more than 300 online Bachelor degree, certificate and diploma programs. According to their official website, Kaplan University focuses on adding a human touch to the high technology of learning online.The next few pages would describe the Marketing Plan for Kaplan University's online MBA program.A marketing plan is a written document that details the necessary actions to achieve one or more marketing objectives (Marketing Plan - Wikipedia, online source). Description of the Target Market Markets can be segmented using a lot of approaches which would include Demographic, socio-economic and psychographic approaches (Adrian Palmer, 2004). According to Adrian Palmer (2004), age is probably one of the most widely used bases for market segmentation. The Target Market for the online MBA course at Kaplan University would be for working professionals, students and even housewives who wish to pursue higher education between the age group of 22 to 60. According to U.S News and World Report, about 50% of current graduate students are over age 30 and nearly 25% are over 40 (Michael Hergert). Fig 1 shows the marketing Ps and centralization of the target market Ways of targeting people for enrollment: With the advent of the internet, e-mail has become an efficient and the cheapest way of targeting a lot of people towards your company but one must be careful of spamming as this could also lead to junk mails (Adrian Palmer, 2004). E-mails can be sent out to these targeted groups informing about the online MBA courses available to them by offering concessions on fees and added advantages of an online educational experience. Other methods could also be done by using radio broadcasts