CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Education has become a worldwide service that every nation aspires to offer to its people, since it is a tool for socioeconomic progress. The growing population necessitates the construction of additional educational institutions to accommodate more pupils learning to read and write. On this point, the government has liberalized education to allow the private sector to participate in its delivery. The private sector's involvement has resulted in a rise in the number of educational institutions to service the increasing population, as well as improved program quality and overall innovation in contemporary educational methods. Following private sector involvement, which has resulted in a "profit focus," schools are vying for students and seeking innovative methods to meet their wants and preferences. Since the turn of the century, there has been a significant increase in secondary schools in Nigeria, particularly in response to innovation, the need to meet globalization standards, and secondary education in Nigeria (Onyemaechi, 2013).In Owerri Municipality, there are many secondary schools4. As a result of the development of many private secondary schools, they must become more active in advertising their institutions and conveying their values to prospective students in order to expand their market share in terms of student enrollment and quality. Furthermore, public schools have an advantage in terms of student enrollment due to government education subsidies that allow low-income home kids to finance their education practically free of charge, compared to their private school peers. As a result, even without implementing a marketing plan, public secondary schools continue to enroll sufficient numbers of students, often exceeding the school's carrying capacity. Private secondary schools are mostly created to serve kids from medium to high-income families, and their services, like those of other organizations, seem to be marketed for profit. The distinction is their commitment to providing education as a social service to people, which helps to bridge the gap between the government's ability to construct a sufficient number of schools to serve the whole population. Meanwhile, to guarantee their long-term viability, established private or cooperative organizations need a large amount of patronage via student enrollment. The amount of public support they receive is largely determined by how well they market their institutions, which includes developing strategies to effectively raise awareness and project their institutions as the best, as well as establishing reasons why parents/guardians should choose them for their children. Marketing is the method through which businesses pique consumer interest in their goods or services. It develops the strategy that underpins sales tactics, business communication, and company growth. It is a multi-step process through which businesses establish strong client connections and generate value for both their customers and themselves. It simply refers to the practice of communicating the value of a product or service to consumers in order to sell that product or service. educational institutions, it refers to the practice of conveying a school's ideals and intrinsic quality of service delivery to consumers and prospects in order to increase enrollment. According to Lynch (1997), a strategy is the pattern or plan that unifies an organization's main goals, policies, and action sequences into a unified whole. It typically deals with the basic principles of accomplishing goals. It attempted to explain why the organization took a specific path toward achieving its long and short-term objectives. The method by which goals are met is referred to as a strategy. Meanwhile, goals define what should be done, while strategy specifies how it should be done. Following the preceding, Kotler et al. (1999) defined marketing strategy as the marketing rationale through which the business unit expects to accomplish its marketing goals. It is defined by Bovee and Thill (1992) as the entire strategy for selecting a target and achieving success within it via product, price, distribution, and promotional decisions. The capacity of schools to accomplish their objectives of sustainability and high-quality service delivery is largely reliant on how they put their plans into action, such as attracting a large number of students to enroll, which will raise the school's revenue and allow it to continue operating. According to Baker (2008), the aim of the marketing strategy is to increase sales and gain a durable competitive advantage. According to the aforementioned definitions, marketing strategies for educational institutions may simply be defined as strategies and channels that institutions use strategically to persuade prospects to enroll in their institutions. According to Maringe and Foskett (2002), an educational institution may be interested in understanding the following facts regarding competition while doing a competitive analysis: Which institutions do we compete with for students, and how successful are we? An institution must do a SWOT analysis in order to respond to the questions. This data will be used to determine how competitive the institution is, as well as the creation and implementation of successful marketing communication strategies to entice prospective students to select their school over their rivals. Parents and students' enrollment are the main objectives of institution marketing. Meanwhile, educational institutions may use efficient customer acquisition strategies to boost student enrollment and therefore raise their revenue. This may take the shape of direct communication with parents, radio/television advertisements, better academic programs, a more attractive school atmosphere, high-quality teaching, the use of websites and social media, and so on.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The number of literate people in a nation is a significant predictor of progress. On this point, Nigeria's federal government has enabled private sector involvement in education provision via an open door policy on education. Despite this improvement, private secondary school enrollment remains extremely low. This has been ascribed to the lack of appropriate marketing tactics to raise awareness and project the level of service delivery available in the institutions to the target prospects, who are typically medium to high-income households. As a result, public schools have been overburdened with students, resulting in a school carrying capacity shortage. Despite the government's efforts to ensure that private schools are up to standard before being approved for operation, ensuring quality in their educational programs, and most private schools' attempts to reach their target prospects through the use of modern infrastructure in their schools and the adoption of some awareness-raising media, the problem remains a major issue. The purpose of this study is to see whether the issue of low enrollment in secondary schools in Owerri Municipality is due to the institutional heads' failure to implement marketing tactics. The goal of the research is to see how far school administrators are using marketing techniques to increase student enrollment. It will also determine whether there is a connection between the use of marketing strategies such as TV/radio commercials, newspaper/magazine commercials, Bulk Messaging, face-to-face conversations with parents, quality programs, infrastructure development, Social Media/Websites, prices, the Public Address System, printing, and student enrollment.In light of this context, the study's issue is posed as a question: how might marketing strategy adoption improve students' enrollment in secondary schools in the Owerri Municipality?

1.3 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

Specifically, this research aims to:

I.       Determine the competitiveness of secondary schools in the advertising industry.

II.    Determine which marketing techniques are most successful in increasing secondary school enrollment.

III. Determine how marketing techniques are used by school administrators to increase student enrollment in private secondary schools.

1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

I.       How competitive is the secondary school advertising market?

II.    Which marketing techniques are most successful in increasing secondary school enrollment?

III. What marketing techniques are used by school administrators to increase student enrollment in private secondary schools?

1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The research anticipates a variety of desirable outcomes, the most important of which is knowledge expansion. The results of this research will offer insight into the impact of competitive marketing and advertising on Nigerian secondary schools.

1.6 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The study looked at the effects of competitive marketing and advertising on secondary schools in Nigeria, using Odieri Municipal as a case study.

1.7 LIMITATION OF STUDY

The research was restricted to Owerri Municipal in Imo State, Nigeria.This is because not all secondary schools in Imo State can be covered, given the short duration of studies and the budget limitations.

1.8 DEFINITION OF TERMS

Competitive Marketing: A competitive market is when there are many producers competing to provide consumers with the goods and services needed.

Advertising : the activity or profession of producing advertisements for commercial products or services.

Secondary schools: A secondary school is a step between elementary school and college that typically offers general, technical, vocational, or college-preparatory courses.

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