Open Password –  Donnerstag, den
3. Oktober 2018

# 448

 

Education  Market – Affordability – Kate Worlock – USA – Price Policy – Outsell – Students – Cengage – Cengage Unlimited – Savings Calculator – McGraw-Hill – Rental Programs – Pearson – Wiley – Chegg – WileyPLUS – Tansparency – Ultimate Medical Academy – Recommendations

Steilvorlagen für den Unternehmenserfolg 

Donnerstag, den 11. Oktober 2018, 9.00 Uhr – 14 Uhr, Steilvorlagen für die Informationsvermittlung – Turning Information Complexity into Simplicity – Neue Chancen und Geschäftsmodelle für Information Professionals, auf der Frankfurter Buchmesse, Halle 4.2, Raum Dimension

https://www.infobroker.de/blog/steilvorlagen2018

Vorschau Sucess Story III

Von der Information zum Insight

Wie aus strukturierten Daten Wettbewerbsvorteile entstehen

Im komplexen Marktgeschehen den Überblick zu behalten, frühzeitig relevante Entwicklungen zu erkennen und auf Basis fundierter Informationen und Insights darauf zu reagieren, ist eine besondere Herausforderung. In einer Branche wie der Versicherungswirtschaft mit über 200 Gesellschaften, bekommt diese Herausforderung noch einmal eine besondere Note. KantarAddedValue bietet mit dem Market Navigator Versicherern seit über zwanzig Jahren Informationen und Insights strukturiert und bedarfsgerecht. Die Inhalte und Formate haben sich im Laufe der Jahre geändert, das Grundprinzip erfolgreicher kontinuierlicher Markt- und Wettbewerbsbeobachtung ist aber seit Anfang an dasselbe: Recherchieren – Strukturieren – Bewerten – Berichten.

Der Vortrag zeigt, wie kontinuierliche Markt- und Wettbewerbsbeobachtung bei Kantar Added Value organisiert ist, auf welchen Bausteinen der jahrzehntelange Erfolg des Market Navigators basiert und worauf es ankommt, um auch in Zukunft weiter erfolgreich zu sein.

Jens Köhler, Director, Kantar Added Value – Moderation: Tim Brouwer

Jens Köhler ist Director bei KantarAddedValue.  Hier ist er verantwortlich für den Bereich Desk Research. In dieser Tätigkeit betreut er gemeinsam mit seinem Team den Market Navigator, ein System zur kontinuierlichen Markt- und Wettbewerbsbeobachtung im Dienstleistungsbereich. Der Kernnutzen dieses Systems ist die Verknüpfung von Informationen aus unterschiedlichen Quellen, ihre Analyse aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln sowie ihre Bewertung im Kontext von Marktentwicklungen und kulturellen Veränderungen. Zuvor war er für Euromonitor International in London tätig und beobachtet von dort aus Konsumgütermärkte im deutschsprachigen Raum.

Education Market

Demands for Affordability
Towards New Textbook Pricing Approaches

By Kate Worlock, VP & Lead Analyst, Outsell, London

The affordability agenda is of central importance in the US higher education market. Pressure from the market to reduce prices has driven providers to re-evaluate their pricing strategies — and led to some pricing errors.

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Important Details

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Affordability is the name of the game in the US higher education market following years of high textbook pricing and regular price increases. It is inevitable that the market will reach a breaking point: Outsell’s recent survey of US higher education students found that 58% thought content resources were too expensive and only 60% felt they provided good value for the money. In addition, 71% believe that digital content should cost less than print equivalents, forcing additional pricing pressure on online offerings.

Students are voting with their wallets due to this pricing dissatisfaction: Just 22% of respondents chose to buy a new print edition, while 44% opted for secondhand editions and 23% for rental. This has forced textbook providers into action, with recent activity including:

• Cengage’s launch of Cengage Unlimited ist an all-you-can-eat model offering students access to all of Cengage’s resources for a set price of $119.99 per semester or $179.99 per year. Those wanting print editions pay $7.99 per title with free shipping. To support student buying decisions, Cengage also recently announced the launch of a new Savings Calculator product. The company is keen to stress that students can potentially save even if they only use Cengage products for one class, although the savings obviously increase for students using Cengage resources for multiple classes.
• McGraw-Hill Education’s decision to make bound print editions of higher education textbooks available to students only through rental models. This textbook and e-book rental program, which began this spring, covers the company’s more than 250 copyright 2019 titles and all future titles. McGraw-Hill Education will provide its distribution partners (Barnes & Noble, Chegg, and MBS Textbook Exchange) with new titles on a consignment basis for their own rental programs at prices significantly lower than what they pay on a wholesale basis today. It will also rent bound print editions of textbooks to students directly and offer them the option to purchase a loose-leaf copy. Students also have the option to rent or acquire e-book editions of textbooks.
• Pearson announced a reduction in e-textbook prices in January 2017 to compete more effectively and also extended its textbook rental program, making 50 of its most popular titles available for under $100 via a rental-only model.
• Wiley introduced, and continues to significantly expand, the ability to rent books to students both directly and through online partners like Chegg. This move is based on research data showing that students prefer the lower cost option of renting course materials rather than owning them. Wiley is also increasing its support for Inclusive Access models that help students get the lowest prices for course materials through a delivery method that ensures that they each have access to the content by the first day of class.

Given the pressures on textbook businesses to drive pricing down, mistakes are also bound to occur. One recent example comes from Wiley, when one of its sales reps was faced with demands from a University of Louisiana faculty member that students have the print edition of the textbook with an option to also have WileyPLUS as a supplementary resource. To meet these requirements and the demands of affordability, the sales rep offered an online and loose-leaf bundle option for purchase solely through the university bookstore. To prevent students from buying WileyPLUS online without the print edition, a placeholder of $999 was entered, with a popup directing all students to the bookstore. This move, however, led to outrage from students who were already sensitive to high textbook pricing.

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Why This Matters
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Pricing is a critical strategic and tactical issue in this market. As the range of options for students increases — print only, digital only, bundles, loose-leaf, rental, secondhand — it becomes ever more complicated for them to identify how they can get access to what they need for the best possible price. Cengage Unlimited is transparent but, given that students usually require course content from multiple providers, it doesn’t solve their problems. Institutional models make matters easier for students: They remove the need for students to search for the cheapest way to get access to required content while also likely providing a better pricing deal than they could have found alone anyway. A recent example is the deal between Cengage and Ultimate Medical Academy, which added Cengage Unlimited subscriptions to UMA’s affordable course materials program, providing all digital books and instructional materials free of charge to undergraduate students enrolled in online undergraduate courses.

Wiley’s clumsy (and unauthorized) hack to implement a more affordable solution is a valuable cautionary tale. In this instance, the sales rep bent over backward to serve the needs of the faculty member, but this should not have been necessary. By escalating the request to a more senior colleague, it should have been possible to find a way to make the digital-only option unavailable to these students without artificially tagging it with an inflated price. Outsell recommends that all solution providers serving this space hire senior leadership to take charge of pricing and commercial models, ensuring that approaches to affordability align with the company’s core strategic vision. They should also put process controls in place over pricing decisions. Wiley has undoubtedly made both of these moves to ensure that an error of this sort can’t happen again.

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