Integrated marketing communications of educational management of secondary vocational education

Abstract

Information about educational market functioning is well indicated in educational literature and periodicals. As in any market, there are sellers (those who offer educational services) and consumers (service-users) in educational market. The question about the consumers of educational services is controversial, the understanding of this term is ambiguous. After studying various approaches to the consumers of educational services, we singled out the main groups of secondary vocational education (SVE) customers, then we expanded them and described their correlation with the educational organization and the benefits (i.e. the results of the correlation which satisfied the wants) of each party as applied to small town. The introduced groups underlie the Structure of interaction of educational services consumers (hereinafter the Structure). In the Structure the directions (channels) of formal and informal communications are designated with arrows, the relations with customers are being managed through these channels. This structure of interaction between the SVE educational organization and consumers we define as the scheme of directions (channels) of marketing communications between consumers and the SVE educational organization. Building up the relations with the consumers, the educational organization has a right to choose the way to manage these relations independently. Basing on the Structure, we developed the levels of integration of marketing communications and offered the definitions of marketing communications and integrated marketing communications of the educational organization. Therefore, we concluded that the effective management of relations with consumers consists in the increase of benefits of the consumers and the SVE educational organization itself and can be achieved through the integration of marketing communications taking the means of the organization into account.