On the second stage the arrival of competitors begin to enter the market as this is an expanding market stage. Sales are growing primarily fast and capacity consumption increases. As product gain market acceptance, unit costs fall with the economies of scale. Relevant strategies need to be executed in this stage such as – potential buyers are mainly targeted, organization ought to go for market penetration or better price leadership and as for the product, improvement of styling, branding and packaging will take place. Maturity. This is the third stage before declining stage.
Under this stage, competition become rather intense and fight to conquer market share occurs therefore sales growth slowly become low. Level of utilisation and profit become high especially for high market share organization. Competitors with weak strategy will start to leave the market in this stage. Last but not least, prices and profit begin to fall slowly. Under maturity stage, improvements and product differentiation are being implemented. Price is based according to the competitor pricing. Last but not least, persuasive advertising are being use to attract new users and customers to the market, keeping the existing customers along.
Decline. The last stage under product life cycle is Declining stage. Sales, Profit and Cash flow begins to decline and fall slowly in this stage. Number of competitor leaving the market become high and capacity utilisation needs to be find alternative product to market. Despite declining, a business can still implement relevant strategies such as harvest the product by spending less on the marketing product, cut price to maintain competitiveness and retain loyal customers by providing numerous promotion for the product and services.
Segmentation. As stated by (Riley, 2010) market segmentation is the process of dividing group of large number of customers according to their interest, taste and preferences. This is to specifically identify the main needs and wants of the customers. Through market segmentation, a company is able to target its customers with different categories. Segments are mainly measured using sales volume and sales value.
It is merely important for an organization to understand the importance of market segmentation as it helps an organization to produce products or services that gives benefits to their customers, the usage of right mass media to attract customers attention and lastly to provide a good place and time to deliver the product. Advertising strategy is to gain customers’ attention at the same time to communicate the right ideas about the products and services. As quoted in (Poetofcolour, 2011) “One of the major goals of advertising must be to generate awareness of the business and its products”.
For this college it is best suited to use Customer based pricing as prices are determine according to what an organization believes the price meet the requirement the customers are prepared and be willing to pay and spend on (Riley, 2012). This pricing strategy does not simply means setting price according to the price customers are willing to pay solely, it also reflects the value of products according to customer’s perspective (Investopedia, n. d). It is a fixed amount of money, usually paid on a monthly basis, in exchange for services that may be set at a fixed hourly rate, but this amount does not vary from month to month on any basis
Commission is a sum of money compensated to an employee upon accomplishment of a task -typically selling a set of goods or services. Employers commonly use sales commissions as an encouragement to maximize employee’s productivity. Twyla Dell writes of motivating employees, “The heart of motivation is to give people what they really want most from work. The more you are adequate to provide what they want, the more you should expect what you really want, namely: productivity, quality, and service. ” (An Honest Day’s Work, 1988)
A leader is the person who leads workers (Samson ; Daft, 2009). A leader is someone who has a vision, knows what to achieve, has a commitment to achieve something and has the skills to make it happen (Reh,n. d). The main vision of a leader is to successfully achieve its company’s goals and fix anything that ought to be fixed (Reh, n. d). Leadership is commonly determined by the qualities, traits and behaviours of a leader. What traits indicate quality leadership and which leadership theories are similarly parallel to it. (Puffer and McCarthy, 1996, p109).
Deans are required to possess the appropriate knowledge base, skills and abilities to perform adequately in this demanding role. The skills needed to adequately perform the various duties assigned to a college dean are not exhaustive and remain changing as the academic environment evolves. One commonality and requirement among all deans is the capability to be a leader.
Lack of academic preparation and motivation among students and strained budgetary resources are main concerns of deans across institutions. Deans must be able to deal with these situations in the future, as well as the changes that will constantly arise across campuses both within the institutional structure, as well as with the faculty, staff, and students. Bragg (2000) states that deans should “have finely tuned human relation skills, creative management and democratic leadership” (p. 75).
