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2011

DIFFERENT ATTRIBUTES OF POSITIONING STRATEGY OF THE BUSINESS SCHOOL, K.U


Huryat Mushtaq Roll No. : 1004 IMBA 4Th Sem Assignment Submitted to : Prof. Musadiq A.Sahaf

7/20/2011

Positioning refers to creation of an image in the mind set of the customers, and for the Business schools the positioning will mean creating a distinctive image in the minds of students (their customers). To Business Schools students are their customers whom they have to serve to the best of their abilities to ensure their satisfaction. Such satisfaction would lead to change in the perception of the people that is in favour of the institution. So lets have a look on the present Positioning Strategy of The Business School, Kashmir University. Going through the prospectus and the official website of The Business School, I am of the opinion that it has been Over Positioned.  It claims committed to excellence but the reality is that from the infrastructure facilities to teaching, it is no better than any institution offering the same course in Kashmir.  The website mentions the active participation of the students in so-called Business Club but the fact is that it has never taken place. Although it has a place on the Time -table but it never happens.  Talking about the placements, TBS claims that the students have been placed to prestigious organisations like Maruti Udyog ltd, Jet airways, Hero Honda ltd, Indian telephone industry , however the fact is that students only gets placed either to HDFC bank(Branches in Srinagar) or to Jammu and Kashmir Bank.  It claims to have an Audio Visual lab where different management films are shown but I am afraid to say that they dont have any such lab. Poor quality infrastructure in an educational institution, admitting poor quality students and then attempting to place these poorly trained students can turn in to a vicious cycle for both students and institution.

Considering the students as customers as well as products will require The Business School to be more effective and efficient and more likely to be distinctively effective and efficient which means that TBS should distinctively do the right things and distinctively do things rightly. Positioning is all about creating differentiation. Whatever it will do it should have distinctiveness in its operations, programs, staff, teaching and learning techniques etc. This means it should offer something that is not being offered by other institutions of the state. Although it has differentiated itself from other

similar institutions of the valley by providing an Integrated course but it needs to strive more so that the perception of the students changes in their favour. Positioning may not necessarily be communicated through advertising only, but can and should be established through all elements of marketing mix. While formulating the Positioning Strategy it should first shift itself from negative to neutral state. The Business School can be positioned on a variety of dimensions:
y Course and curriculum : TBS should be able to create differentiation in its programs by offering the major specializations in the upcoming fields like Risk management, Hospitality and Tourism, Finance, Entrepreneurship etc. Although it has differentiated itself in this dimension by being the first one in the valley to offer an Integrated MBA course but it still needs to do a lot of work in this dimension. The student before enrolling to any Business school checks how t he curriculum has been designed. As a student of TBS, I have identified that there is a great need of re-designing the syllabi. The syllabi lack sequence; it is designed in haphazard manner, everything related to the topic is put in the syllabus and thus the students are not able to understand any topic fully (because the teachers have a lot to complete and thus they teach in a rush). The ultimate sufferer s are the students (the customers of TBS) and hence dissatisfied, which is a loss to TBS (a one customer if dissatisfies takes along the 10 families). y People : The people include the stakeholders of TBS. The major stake holders being the students and the teachers. TBS no doubt has the best faculty in the valley; however we cant deny the fact that it has i ncreased its contractual faculty to an undesirable extent. The reason being, it is not able to utilise the permanent staff as they are being given the other jobs in other departments of the university. The contractual s are usually the MBA freshers, thus not experienced. On the other hand we see that the other institutions in the valley like Islamia College of Science and Commerce provide better and experienced teachers. However providing the experienced faculty will not be distinguishing feature of the TBS as every institution is bound to provide the experience and intellectual faculty. Therefore, in order to make itself different from other institutions of the valley it should bring the visiting faculty from other institutions of the world for a week or two so that they deliver the lectures which are in syllabi and thus the students get to learn something new. TBS selects the students on the basis of a separate E ntrance test.TBS should select the students on the basis of MAT score which is held all over the nation thus ensuring the top-like minded students"

y Infrastructure : TBS has already committed a mistake by introducing the IMBA course without taking into consideration the intake capacity of the building and hence the result is negative perception in the minds of customers.TBS should ensure that it provides its students the best infrastructural facilities with AC classroom which can accommodate 75 students, connected with Wi-Fi so that the students are able to use internet in classrooms. This can be the distinctive feature and thus will be able to create a positive perception in the minds of customers. y Services : The services include the teaching mechanism of the institution. As a student of TBS, I have experienced that the teachers here teach for exams only and such teachings do not go head to head with real life. Teaching should be such that application of theoretical concepts are demonstrated, thus bridging the gap between theory and practice. TBS should bring about a change in its teaching by bringing in experienced professors for teaching and guiding the students. Sticking to teaching for exams should be put to an end in TBS and enhancing the skills of students in practice should be ensured so that the graduates from this institute perform better and again distinctively than the graduates from the other business schools. In addition to teaching the syllabi, s tudents should be given Case studies. Educational research has shown case studies to be useful pedagogical tools. Grant (1997) outlines the benefits of using case studies as an interactive learning strategy, shifting the emphasis from teacher-centred to more student-centred activities. The future belongs to institutions which ride on a vision and serve a clear, definable customer need. How well a business school has been successful in placing its graduates at various good job positions in companies is a matter of concern to every prospective student. A student will prefer to study in an IIM rather than TBS, because the former provides promising placements in MNCs unlike latter. The placement wont be a problem if the above attributes are taken into consideration. Good quality infrastructure, admitting quality students and then training students properly will help the students to admit themselves in any top industry they want. Also it will encourage the top organisations to come and recruit the students from TBS. TBS should strive not to create employees but to create employment. At Harvard Business School they say we create employers not employees . It is obvious that we cant see TBS even far in competition with HBS, but we can strive to the goal th at they too strive for. TBS can adopt the ideology of creating entrepreneurs who

will create business undertakings that will lead to growth of the economy .It should strive for nourishing its students in such a way that they become more intellectual and en thusiastic to bring about a change in the economy by taking the path of entrepreneurship.
y Business Club: The Business Club aims at giving students the exposure to the realistic business world. Workshops are an extremely flexible and effective method for training, learning, development, team building and problem solving. It will help the students to get to know the real business world and have an interaction with the outside environment. What the students are taught should be practiced here. For example in t he last semester we studies about the sick units and their revival but we were never exposed to any such sick unit or given a chance to study one and think of how it will be revived. Industrial tours should also be a part of Business Club. Its very unfortunate that in last two years TBS was not able to take IMBA to any industry as comparing the BBA Students of Islamia College of Science and Commerce who had this chance twice.

We should start right from the beginning. Everything needs to be reframed and restructured, teaching techniques, curriculum etc. After a couple of years, once TBS would have built its base it can see where things are headed, it can more ably build out the specialty areas. For example, let's say that over the first 3 years TBS somehow falls into a lot of good exposure to students and working relationships with Corporate World. TBS starts attracting the best professors; the consulting firms start hiring students from there, etc. Then it can start changing up its programs, etc., to reflect this developing strength and focus in Strategy. Also TBS already scores higher than other institutes providing MBA in Jammu & Kashmir in terms of low tuition fee and the quality of education is better the prevailing B-Schools in J&K. But it will have to improve more in these terms as there may be chances that business institutes known for providing quality education may be setup in the state and it must not happen that TBS may fail to compete and loose its relevance in the state. As we look to long-term goals and solutions for TBS we should recognize the opportunities provided by the current global crisis to bring ethical thinking, the role of business in society, the relevance of business history and the changing

impacts of globalization into the fabr ic of TBS curricula. In this process TBS must recognize, and be even more sensitive to, the variety of cultural and educational models that exist beyond their home countries.

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