My blog posts in late 2014 were heavily retail focused as I was working on several projects in that area at the time and anyway the run up to Christmas is always a fascinating time in retail. However 2015 has brought a big Education project my way and I’ve been suprised to find massive parallels across both sectors.
It turns out that Differentiation, communicating Value, offering Convenience and trying to adapt a slow-to-change business model to rapidly evolving customer needs are all as relevant in Education as in Retail. It’s rapidly changing with strong competition from a relatively new sub-sector, businesses that are slow to evolve are falling by the wayside and even experts are unsure of what direction the sector will evolve towards. Interesting times.
Of course, there are perils to working on two such similar sectors in close succession – I haven’t yet accidentally asked a Headmaster how many SKUs are in a typical class but its only a matter of time…
All true. The difference between public and private sector education bring with it a host of additional issues; to what extent do parents consider themselves as customers?, do the children behave as consumers? What does it take to change a ‘purchasing’ habit and how much genuine choice do they beleive they have. It would be interesting to know how much difference experiential campaigns and money off schemes actually make.