Chapter 8
The Competitive Advantage of Singapore
66 J. Vong et al.
2009. This figure reached 3.43 million in 2009, and is expected to increase annually by 12 % [1]. According to the UK Vision 2020 report, Asia is set to account for 70 % of the global demand for international higher education by 2025.
While Western countries, such as USA, UK, Australia, still remains as the favorite destinations, with great demand and development of several Asian countries in edu- cation, a new trend is starting to emerge. Base on the Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings [2], many of Asia’s institutions have become mainstream top universities in the world, making Singapore, Japan, Korea, or even China as poten- tial destinations for study abroad. In particular, Singapore places strategic intent to increase international students, such as the ‘Global School house’ blueprint [3]. Sin- gapore is now expecting to host 150,000 foreign students by 2015, creating 22,000 jobs and contributing approximately US$ 5 billion to the economy, about 2–5 % of Singapore GDP [4]. Therefore, there are great opportunities to invest in education industry. In a business context, understanding customer behavior is very important for firms to design their own business strategies. According to Phillip Kotler [5], in order to create value for customers and build meaningful relationship with customers, marketers must first gain fresh and deep insight into what customers need and want, and this is also critical in developing competitive advantages of the firm.
The main objective of this case study is to discover the factors that influence inter- national students in choosing their schools. Unlike previous studies, data are collected from students who are currently studying in many different public and private uni- versities in Singapore. In particular, the case study focuses on proving the following two key hypotheses that are important for the market research of educational sectors:
• Hypothesis 1: Surrounding relationships affect more on students than students’
personal experiences when students consider their study abroad.
• Hypothesis 2: Institutional factors are more important reasons for students than country factors when deciding to study in Singapore.
The paper is organized as follows. In the next section, we review previous stud- ies in educational service markets. In Sect. 3, the research methodology is described. In Section 4, we summarize the survey data collected for the study. In Sect. 5, we show the results of the analysis. Finally in Sect. 6, we discuss the results and conclude the paper.
8.2 Background
8.2.1 Types of Information Sources Affecting International Students
According to Phillip Kotler [5], international students rely on the following types of information sources in choosing educational institutes: personal sources (family, friends, acquaintances, etc.), commercial sources (advertising, sales people, etc.), public sources (Internet search, firm ranking, etc.) and experiential sources. An
8 The Competitive Advantage of Singapore Tertiary Education 67 early study done by Steadman and Dagwell [6] shows that the opinions of family and friends have major influence on students’ choice of colleges. Donnellan [7], in a paper exploring the impact of marketer controlled factors on college choice decisions by students at a public research university, concludes that beyond the influence of parents, the others factors such as personal contacts and social life also have great impact on students’ decisions. Similarly, Mário Raposo and Helena Alves [8] concludes that personal perception including background, financial ability and culture have the greatest positive impact, while the influence of external factors, such as advertisements, has negative impact on the decision-making. However, students now depended on more variety of information sources, in particular information available on the internet, for their decision-making [9].
8.2.2 Institutional Factors in Choosing Universities
Chapman [10] proposes a model of students’ decision making process in selecting colleges. The model emphasizes three main factors: (1) quality of faculty; (2) quality of degrees; and (3) overalls academic reputation. These factors are mainly based on educational quality of institutes. Coccari and Javalgi [11] point out that, in addition to the educational quality factors, cost and variety of courses offering also have impacts on students choosing colleges. Furthermore, Kallio [12], in a re- search of the college choice decisions of graduate students, highlights factors of institutional quality, reputation and course diversity. Another research of students’ preferences for university conducted by Soutar and Turner [13] reports that stu- dents are now more concerned about the bottom line outcome after they completed their degrees.
8.2.3 Country Factors in Choosing Study Abroad Destinations
Shanka et al. (Tekle Shanka 2005) examine the major reasons why students chose Australia. They report that the distance of the school to a student’s home country is a vital factor that influenced international students’ choice followed by safety, educational quality, cost of living, and tuition fee. Similarly, Rajdeep Singh [14], the executive director of Angad Info—Overseas Communication Consultancy, states that safety and cultural similarities are Singapore’s advantages that ensures in bringing international students, especially from India and regional areas. Yilin et al. [15] in a study on Chinese students’ decision making of oversea studies claim that those who are willing to study abroad have strong motivation to live and work overseas after graduating, indicating that students are more independent in choosing study aboard destinations.
68 J. Vong et al.
Table 8.1 Demographics of respondents
India China SE Asia Other Sum Percentage
NUS 7 31 4 2 44 19
NTU 3 2 3 0 8 3
JCU 22 21 39 26 108 46
SIM 0 5 6 4 15 6
MDIS 0 0 2 3 5 2
PSB 4 7 4 7 22 9
NYP 0 3 5 0 8 3
Other 3 4 11 6 24 10
Sum 39 73 74 48 234 100
Percentage 17 31 32 20 100
8.3 Methodology
We have surveyed international students who are currently studying in Singapore.
A questionnaire is designed to gather the following types of information from the international students using a five-point Likert scale:
1. Information sources that affected students in choosing studying abroad destina- tions, such as agent and the internet.
2. Country factors, such as living condition and safety.
3. Institutional factors, such as campus facilities, institute reputation, and student service.
Respondents are also asked to rank top 10 countries which they had considered before coming to Singapore. The collected data are than analyzed using SPSS for demographic analysis, descriptive statistics to remove outliers and noise, and select appropriate analysis methods. One-sample t-test and paired-sample t-test are then selected to prove the two hypothesis stated in Sec. 1.
8.4 Survey Data
Data collection is conducted from the 8th of August to 17th of August in 2012. The respondents are diploma, foundation, bachelor, master and PhD students and they are randomly picked from various different public and private universities across Singapore including SIM, JCU, NUS, NTU and other private educational institutes.
Questionnaires are completed in two ways: online and delivery collection. For on- line survey, the questionnaire are posted in Survey-Monkey, and the link of the questionnaire is sent to the international students in Singapore.
Table 8.1 shows the demographics of the respondents. A total of 234 survey responses are collected. About 24 % of respondents are from public universities and the majority of the rest are from other well-known private higher learning institutes.
8 The Competitive Advantage of Singapore Tertiary Education 69 Fig. 8.1 Course
demographics of respondents
The majority of them are from South East Asia and China which account for over 60 in total numbers of respondents. Few respondents are from Europe, USA, Australia, Japan, and South Korea.
Figure8.1Shows the distribution of types of degree the respondents are currently undertaking.
8.5 Analysis Result
Table8.2summaries the ranks of countries that the respondents selected as their preferred destination before coming to Singapore for their studies. Despite that the students are currently studying in Singapore, the students considered other western countries as their favorite destinations.
One-same t-tests are performed on the average scores of survey responses with p=0.05 to test Ho: information type X is used in decision making. According to the testing result, students use the following information sources to make their decisions:
(1) information from the internet; (2) suggestions from their familiars including their parents, teachers and friends; (3) promotional activities of schools, such as adver- tisement and events. Surprisingly, agents’ opinions are not used in decision making.
It also shows that the following country factors also play an important role in their decision making in the following order: Safety, Living condition, Education quality
Table 8.2 Rank of countries for overseas education Priority of choices
1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th Total choices
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) = (1)+(2)+(3)+(4)+(5)
USA 75 53 29 12 2 171
UK 51 53 39 14 5 162
Australia 47 41 42 13 3 146
Canada 14 11 13 15 7 60
Singapore 11 12 12 12 11 58
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guarantee, Job & Settlement, International experience, Location, Cultural similarity, Living cost. It also shows that the following institutional factors are important in the following order: Program, Reputation, Facilities, Academic activities, Admission condition, Tuition fee, Student services, and Campus activities.
Paired-sample t-tests are performed to test the two hypotheses defined in Sec- tion 1 with p=0.05 (two-tailed). The tests shows that the average scores surround- ing relationships are significantly higher than personal experiences. It also shows that the average scores of institutional factors are significantly higher than country factors.
8.6 Discussion and Conclusion
Based on what are found out in the case study, higher learning institutes and the government of Singapore should be concentrated on using Internet and alumni com- munity for their communication activities, and country’s specific feature as well as education quality and institutes’ reputation should be highlighted. Furthermore, higher learning institute in Singapore should provide a multi-national environment, and design their academic and campus activities aligning on Singapore’s experience.
For further research, studies will need to concentrate on com- paring competitive ad- vantages of Singapore higher learning institutes to competitors in Northern America, Europe and Australia. These developments could help Singapore players to determine relevant competitive strategies.
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