Pricing and Distribution Strategies in College Football
In this week's lecture, Professor Spotts touched upon the pricing strategies of college students, and how scholarships at the Division I level, academic scholarships, financial aid, and possible in-state tuition prices affect decisions when students decide on the school of their choice. This is a similar issue when coaches go out recruiting athletes for the next year's class.
The luxury of being a Division 1-A (FBS) coach is that you have the most full-ride scholarships of any NCAA sport at any level (mostly because of the number of players on a football roster). FBS Schools are allowed 25 full scholarships per year (no more than 85 players on a roster at one time with scholarships). Obviously, as you decrease in division, the less athletic scholarships available, but schools are allowed to divide up their scholarships. For example, if a school has 2 scholarships left, but 4 players they want to sign, they can essentially give each player a half-ride, or divide them up however they see fit. FCS Schools (1-AA) are allowed 63 scholarships on a roster, and up to 30 can be awarded per year, Division II schools are allowed 36 scholarships to be distributed, and as we well know, Division III is not permitted to give out any athletic scholarships.
Obviously, the ideal pricing strategy is to be an FBS School and have the ability to sign an entire recruiting class using full-ride scholarship offers. It becomes more of a numbers game at the FCS and Div. II levels because you have the ability to divide up your money amongst your players. Obviously, the higher up in division a team is, the more appealing their pricing strategy can be to their customers: high school recruits and their families. At the Division III level, we do not have the ability to offer an EDLP strategy through full athletic scholarships, but a student can qualify for academic scholarships and financial aid, which affects us when we compete for a player who is also getting attention from schools at the FCS and Div. II level, especially since we are a private institution.
This past year we actually were forced to change our pricing and distribution strategy in terms of recruiting. The issue arose because we were told by the school that the more students we were able to recruit and bring in, the more funding we would get from the school. So, since we did not have the ability to set prices for our players with the use of scholarships, we went out and attempted to utilize a Sales Oriented strategy to try to maximize the amount of customers (recruits) we could earn. With the use of technology, these did not affect us when emailing or messaging recruits, since we have the ability to do that in mass amounts. The problems laid in making phone calls, hosting visits, but mostly when scheduling high school visits. Every year around the end of November through December, college coaches go out and visits recruits in school. Since we have a limited budget in terms of the number of vehicles we can use and the amount we can spend on hotels and gas, we have to devise a plan to hit as many schools as possible. Our head coach, who is in charge of recruiting Connecticut, which is where we get most of our team from, will literally visit every single school in the state during that time frame. I on the other hand, had 10 days to visit as many schools in Long Island and New Jersey, and not being familiar with the area, it posed quite the challenge. It was important to plan my visits around players that had shown a lot of interest in WNE, and that we were interested in, as well as visiting as many of the surrounding schools of these players so we could give our "sales pitch" to as many high school players in a face-to-face manner, and establish a relationship with them in 30 minutes of time.
During the second week of December, we were informed that the school was no longer going to give us extra funding based on the number of students we brought in, so we had to change our distribution plan on the fly to a more Customer Oriented strategy. We had to change our focus, not towards recruiting as many players as possible, but recruiting more quality players. Again, since we had no scholarships to give, this created quite the challenge. The new strategy was easier in the sense that we did not have to manage as many prospects and recruits, but difficult in terms of finding finding the players, evaluating them through film study and interviews with players and coaches that have worked with them and against them, and trying to land them.
Some of the time, when recruiting players, we have to implement a Competitor Oriented Strategy as well. We compete against Slave Regina University and Endicott College for a lot of our players, as we are very similar in what we have to offer academically and have been at the top of the conference the past few years. I am curious as to whether or not other organizations go through the amount of changes we have to make in terms of pricing and distributing strategies when it comes to our recruiting plan. Just 2 weeks ago, we finally decided on our roster for next season's preseason camp, and we will find out how effective our strategy was in terms of the number of wins and losses we will compile.
Nike Football Advertising Campaign
When looking at different advertising campaigns, Nike is definitely at the top when it comes to marketing, as they always seem to be the innovators of their industry and one step ahead of the competition. For instance, check out the link below:
Nike produces a buzz about their products, even before they are available to the consumer. The Calvin Johnson line was not made available until this weekend, but has been running campaigns for the product line well before its introduction, and well before football season.
Nike is so far ahead, that it forces its competitors to try to keep up, even if the are not ready to, as seen in this ad by under armor. UA claims to be innovating, but hasn't produced yet.
Nike is so far ahead, that it forces its competitors to try to keep up, even if the are not ready to, as seen in this ad by under armor. UA claims to be innovating, but hasn't produced yet.
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