Abstract
The purpose of this study was to understand the implementation of marketing strategies by preschool in Hsinchu, which faced different backgrounds and marketing conditions. Citation analysis was the key groundwork of developing questionnaires. Besides, after verifying the marketing development of nowadays preschool with professionals, ‘The Marketing Strategies of Preschool Questionnaire’ was designed to make a general investigation on officially registered preschool in Hsinchu. 340 questionnaires were delivered. Among them, 2 questionnaires were delivered to each school, with one of them delivered to the director, the other the teachers or educator members. 208 valid questionnaires were retrieved thereafter. The questionnaire data deduction and analysis approaches include Chi-square test, contingency coefficient, t-test, and one-way ANOVA. According to different types of schools, respectively 7 directors who were willing to attend the interviews were selected for the one on one interviews. Interview data were thenceforth presented with broad-based thematic approach. Context related statements were intimately linked together to observe the connections. The results were summarized as follows:A. Schools of different backgrounds adopt different marketing strategies.B. Schools of different marketing conditions have influences on marketing environments, other than that, school members have no different perspectives on marketing environments. Staff’s assessment towards managers and managers’ themselves consistently agree that the leadership style should be on concerns for their subordinates and on the systems of organizations. Besides, school members all agree that marketing plays an important role in schools development. They all agree that marketing can help recruiting students, improving schools’ competitiveness, and enhancing parents’ understanding towards schools. Considering the influences from external environments, schools should develop related marketing strategies.C. Adoption of marketing strategies by schools under different marketing environments a.Managers who concern for their subordinates would emphasize on team work and labor division while promoting the marketing strategies. They would regard public praise as the best strategy of marketing promotion. As for their price strategy in marketing, the focus would be placed on the establishment of school-home relationships, in other words, making a connection with parents. Considering the needs of parents, discounts on tuition fees and multi-person enrollment would be offered. As for the personnel marketing strategy, they all agree that teachers’ profession should be respected and school marketing should start with personnel perspective. b.Economic downturn has impacts upon schools’ price strategy, in other words, discounts, fee waivers, or late payments are the methods offered in order to stand in parents’ shoes. While facing the decline of birth rate, as far as product marketing strategy concerns, schools would make extended planning on their courses, and show their characteristic and excellence. Furthermore, schools would hold a variety of events for promotion purposes. As far as preschool are concerned, drafting and adoption of marketing strategies could be affected by extrinsic factors such as economy, policies and low birth rate. Yet, even the best marketing strategies can not compare with school members’ affability, passion and responsibility for education.