ANALYSIS
English student felt that mobile just wasn’t the right access medium for that subject area. Powell observed: ‘While our clients are increasingly looking to new technologies to deliver resources to students, the focus groups we run at Shift Learning often reveal a certain lack of buy-in from students. At the moment, there don’t seem to be many new products that have really got students excited about the possibility of digital. A market-changing product has still to emerge. Fit to needs is vital with any new product and focus groups are a great way for publishers to test opinion on a product and discover the views of the real end-users, the students themselves, before investing in expensive new product development.’ She continued: ‘We opened the London
Viewing Room because we spotted a gap in the market for publishers looking for a relaxed, professional and understated venue to hold meetings and professional focus groups for their own research projects. We were delighted with the response to the invitation to the event and we had to turn people away as the spaces filled so quickly. Hopefully those who couldn’t get a
‘At the moment, there don’t seem to be many new products that have really got students excited about the possibility of digital’
place will be able to make it to future events we plan on holding over 2012.’
The session concluded with a section based on personification, a commonly-used market research technique particularly effective for company image and branding research. During this section, students imagined Amazon and Apple as types of people they might meet at a party and this resulted in some illuminating conclusions. ‘Amazon is a great brand in this market,’ said Powell, ‘it’s approachable and knowledgeable. The responses to Apple reveal interesting things about the brand in this sector, in that the brand is seen as being elitist and uptight. To these potential customers, Apple is seen as self-regarding and
concerned with outward appearances. In this sense, to these students, it’s not cool. With both brands competing now in the student textbook market, it will be interesting to see how these perceptions change.’
When asked to describe the personality of their ideal resource or content provider the students’ language revealed some interesting clues for marketers. Responses included: ‘straightforward, honest, organised, logical, friendly,
unintimidating,’ ‘If he were a
person he would be someone like Stephen Fry, or possibly Jeremy Paxman, although he might be a bit scary!’ and ‘the ideal textbook provider would be bubbly, colourful and a recognisable face from the subject area, like David Starkey’.
‘This probably illustrates how much textbooks are associated in students’ minds with the author rather than the publisher,’ concluded Powell. ‘It’s interesting also that they want textbooks to have this much personality.’
Jenny Kedros is a research executive at Shift Learning, a specialist education consultancy and market research agency
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