week8

1.  Make a list of competitors for Islington College.

     Some of the competitors’ for Islington College are listed below:

·                     The British college

·                     Softwarica College of IT and E-commerece

·                     Ace institute of management.

·                     WLC

·                     Apex college

·                     Kantipur city college

·                     KIST College

·                     Kings college

2. Develop a porter's five forces model for Islington College.

Michael Porter developed the five forces model to analysis the attractiveness and captivation of any industry, to locate the means of completion with respect to the industry and to help to position the industry. Beside the rivals there are also the various other factor affects the organization performance. Those factors specifically external factors are evaluated with the help of Porters five forces model.

The five forces model includes the following:

Following are Porter's five forces model for Islington College:

Threat of new entrants:

Ø  Huge initial capital investment.

Ø  Student and parent constancy.

Ø  Economies of scale.

Competitive rivalry:

Ø  No. of competitors

Ø  Exit barriers

Ø  Level of similarities of customer

Bargaining power of suppliers:

Ø  Brand image

Ø  No. of suppliers

Ø  Switching cost

Threats of substitutes:

Ø  Student willingness

Ø  No’s of short and long term IT courses

Ø  Cost and quality relation on education

Bargaining power of buyers:

Ø  Price elasticity

Ø  No. of students

Ø  No. of choice for selecting college

Threat of new entrants: 

Where there is more profit people will invest more and there will be high competition. In the respect of threat of new entrants it totally depends on the barriers to entry. Set-up costs, customer loyalty, economies of scale and legislation come under this force.

Its very expensive to start and run the college providing international degree in Nepal. Islington College has invested a huge amount of capital to create it. Now its leading education house providing international degree in Nepal. As the licensing process is also very complex it will be very difficult to new college to get into the competition with Islington College.

Competitive Rivalry:

If the number of industry providing same product and services are more in market than there will be high competition. In context of international degree providing intuitions in Nepal, Its number is very low. Eventually the competition is not high. Islington College is oldest and best one it do not have any serious rivals in market.

Bargaining power of buyers and suppliers

This is the relative power of the customers/buyers to influence a firm. Buyers have this power when they have more choices and they purchase high volume of products and services form the suppliers. 

Islington College currently is providing its services to around 600 students. There are many who want to study in this college and every semester there are hundreds of students applying for the college. The reasons for this is quality education and few colleges providing international degree. The students have very few choices and thus bargaining power of buyers here is relatively low and the bargaining power of the college is very high.

Threat of substitute products:

Substitute products and services reduce the demands for a firms service and product. Customers switch to substitutes due to various reasons such as increase in price, decrease in quality and so on. Substitution can be in the form of products or needs. For Islington College, there are various threats of substitutes like Computer Engineering courses, short term certified IT trainings and Computer Application Development courses.Also, the later trainings are cheaper and are of short duration too. Many people these days in order to save time and money attend trainings and short term courses. Thus, this shows that there exists high level of threat of substitute products for the college. 

3. To which strategic group might Islington college belong?

4. Can you map the group?

References:

(n.d.). Retrieved from www.ebiz.educacao.ws: http://ebiz.educacao.ws/Arquivos/Artigos/Strategy_and_the_internet.pdf

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/bitstream/1826/1179/1/JMD%20-%20Strategic%20Group%20Theory%20Revised1.pdf

(n.d.). Retrieved from dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk: https://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/bitstream/1826/1179/1/JMD%20-%20Strategic%20Group%20Theory%20Revised1.pdf