18.THE NATURE OF MARKETING.

Marketing is a problematic concept not just for those working in education. Most institutions clearly identify marketing as an important management function, yet diversity in interpreting the term leads to diversity and contradictions in the way schools and colleges participate in their own markets. Just as 'consumers' (parents + pupils/students) posses inherent advantages in the market because of differences in their 'cultural capital' (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992), so institutions vary in their 'institutional cultural capital'. Some schools and colleges possess not only high 'market value' because of their educational outputs and perceived market status but also have the skills, knowledge, attitude of mind and institutional culture to participate effectively in the market - others do not. Of key importance in this view of marketing held by key managers.Three perspectives on marketing may be identified. Product-orientated    organizations are concerned primarily with the product or service that they have skills and expertise in producing, and the customer's perspective is subordinate to this aim. This is the traditional perspective in professional services such as education, where the view of the professional as the 'expert' who dictates what the customer receives is commonplace. Indeed, in education the customer may not be seen as the pupil or parent anyway, but as an academic discipline ('I'm a science teacher') or as society as a whole. In product-orientated organizations marketing, if present at all, is seen as 'selling' and as a relatively unimportant activity.The second perspective on marketing is that of sales orientation. Such organizations have a strong product focus, but recognize that selling is central to their survival. Such a sales-orientated culture is often the marketing stereotype, and the imagery of 'a bewildering bazaar' in education (Brighouse, 1992) and 'Kentucky-fried schooling' (Hargreaves and Reynolds, 1989) reflects such a perspective. The first response of an educational institution moved from the market-protected    positions of monopoly power, or of a great excess of demand over supply is to seek to sell what it already offers very vigorously.

The third perspective is that of a marketing orientation, in which the satisfaction of customer 'wants' is central. In education, each institution has a very diverse range of customers, including pupils/students, parents, government, professional bodies and 'society', and market orientation indicates a focus on all these groups. Such an orientation has considerable implications for an organization and its management, for it represents a holistic philosophy. Marketing is not an activity of the 'sales' team, but is central to the organization's whole approach.Such a broader perspective on marketing encompasses issues of quality and community responsiveness, for both are essential in meeting customer wants. Neither of these is as alien a concept as 'selling' to most educationists. Indeed, they may reflect the very essence of education to many. It is possible, therefore, to produce a model of what 'marketing' is which includes traditional educational values as well as the discipline of the market-place. This can be represented as a marketing triad model (Foskett, 1996), which presents the concept of marketing as a 'field', with an individual's or organization's precise conceptual location representing a balance of perspective between quality, recruitment and community responsiveness aims. Such a position will depend on 'micro-market' conditions, and will be subject to change. An institution under threat from declining pupil numbers, for example, might focus its marketing perspective on the bottom left of the model, while those in a more secure market position might be located more centrally or towards one of the other apices.

This view of marketing in education can be extended to incorporate an important concept that has emerged from small business marketing (Payne et al., 1995). Relationship marketing recognizes that small organizations (and schools are small organizations) actually sell not just a simple product or service to their 'customers' but a relationship which is built on partnership, mutual trust and confidence. It emphasizes that marketing is about a relationship built over time between individual people inside and outside the organization, and not a distant, impersonal link between the 'customer' and the 'corporation' (Stokes, 1996). Such an approach to external links characterizes much of what primary and secondary schools have tried to do for many years for sound 'educational' reasons, without the word 'marketing' being mentioned. As O'Sullivan and O'Sullivan (1995) suggest' such a view of marketing means that 'even while claiming an innocence of marketing, or more vehemently, an antipathy towards it, are actually rather good at it'. Relationship marketing seems an especially helpful perspective and approach for schools and colleges, therefore.