International schooling is complex market, requiring a multi-faceted high quality product offering. Novema conducts a series of annual surveys of parents to assess the choice drivers for international schooling in Singapore and other Asian Markets. Applying insights from parents’ opinion & behaviour, we advise schools in their marketing and strategic planning. We report on key insights in a series of blogs…
Private and international schooling, as a business, can be highly attractive, and as a sector appeals a lot to private equity investors. Education can be a very ‘sticky relationship’ between the parent and the school, i.e. a single enrolment of a child can mean a commercial relationship between the parent and the school for 10 years or more.
But schools operate in competitive environments. Private schools, mainly populated by local children, can rely a lot on their ‘catchment areas’, i.e. the local wealthy population that ‘feeds’ the school. International schools are also becoming attractive to local populations, but depend to varying degrees on expatriates, none more so than Singapore where local children are usually not permitted to attend international schools. Expat parents have little or no attachment to the neighbourhoods in their host countries, and inbound expats might choose schools before their homes, i.e. gearing their choices around the best school, rather than the best location to live. This broadens their choices.
International schools face increasing competition – there are more schools opening, existing schools have taken on more capacity through extensions and larger campuses, but expat numbers are falling in some areas. Novema has helped schools in maximizing the conversion of parent inquiries to child enrolments. Schooling is a complex purchase path with many pitfalls along the journey.
Stage 1 is raising awareness of the school among parents – this relies a lot on word-of-mouth, but marketing and advertising play an important role.
Stage 2 is ‘getting your school into the consideration set’ of the parent – this again depends on word-of-mouth, but the messages that schools send out through corporate communications and social media is also highly important.
Stage 3 is prompting the parent to inquire, e.g. a call to action, and Stage 4 is the school visit – the opportunity for the school to ‘close the sale’ (Stage 5) which, over a 10 year engagement, could be a $300,000 sale, this excluded any additional children that the parent might enrol in the same school later on.
Based on Novema’s international schools brand equity research, the average ratio of likelihood to consider a school compared to overall awareness of schools is 24%. The ratio of inquiry to consideration is 68%. But the conversion of inquiry to enrolment is considerably less as parents will typically evaluate three to four different schools for their final selection.
How do parents make choices about international schools?
Considerable research has gone into understanding consumer behaviour towards purchase decisions. For many consumer goods categories, the ‘System 1’ brain is dominant in the purchase decision, e.g. fast, instinctive, impulsive, etc. But international schooling is one of those more complex decisions that involves more of the System 2 brain, e.g. logical, considered, with rational trade-offs, etc.
However, System 1 still plays quite an important role in decisions on international schooling. When faced with complex decisions, consumers rely on ‘mental short cuts’, and they will look for things that will eliminate a school from their consideration set. Sometimes these things are very small details that they notice during their inquiries with the school, and more significantly during the school tour itself. These can range from lack of response to the parent’s initial email inquiry, the admissions department sending out the wrong signals over the phone (e.g. inappropriate tone), or the wrong impressions given on the school tour.
International schools are investing a lot in building their brand equity and image, but sometimes overlook the elements of the purchase path that can help land the $300,000 sale.
Through our mystery audit program of international schools, we have found ways to significantly enhance the inquiry handling and the management of the school tour that will lead to higher conversion rates to enrolment, and often these are small details that schools can implement easily without significant cost.
Article written by Piers Lee, Managing Director of Novema Pte Ltd. Contact: info@novema-research.com
