What is the right price position for your institution?
Undergraduate students often list “cost” as one of their top factors in deciding to enroll. But cost is not the real issue—it’s value. Do prospective students believe that an education from your institution is worth what you are charging? In addition, as the regulatory and financial landscape of graduate funding continues to evolve prospective students are scrutinizing the return on investment (ROI) and cost of graduate education more intensely than ever before.
RNL’s Price Sensitivity Analysis (PSA) provides a research-based method to answer your key research questions related to your price. We use primary and secondary research to provide actionable recommendations for your pricing, discounts, and value messaging.
This analysis can help you answer critical key questions for undergraduate programs:
- What is the optimal tuition level for your market?
- How is your institution positioned among competitors in terms of price?
- Is a tuition reset, freeze, or increase viable for your prospective students?
- How could changes in price impact enrollment?
- What is most valuable in your market… brand, price, aid, or key aspects of the student experience?
- How could price or strategy changes at competitors impact your market share?
We also conduct Price Sensitivity Analysis for graduate programs that determines:
- How many admits do you lose to each of your primary competitors
- Which graduate programs are driving revenue and financial aid costs (e.g. assistantships)
- Where your competitors rank in terms of quality relative to price
- How students perceive the value of a graduate education from your institution and leading competitors
- The price and aid sensitivity for your market
- Any differences in price sensitivity based on learning format (online or face-to-face)
- How changes to price and financial aid could impact enrollment
- Elasticity of demand and perceptions of value in your market
Harness insights to inform your price strategy
The Price Sensitivity Analysis uses a two-step process to assess value perceptions accurately:
1. Competition analysis
First we identify the institutions to which you are losing admitted students. Additionally, the competition analysis provides a deep dive into historic enrollment patterns by different student groups. This allows your consultant to help you understand key trends and your position within your competitive set.
2. Price sensitivity survey
Armed with the market position data from the competition analysis, you RNL consultant collaborates with you to design a custom instrument to test your critical price questions for your prospective students and when appropriate, their parents. With these insights, you can develop an effective pricing strategy that is aligned to your mission and institutional goals. By integrating a conjoint design with characteristics of a higher education market place, RNL enables you to understand not only how your brand, price, and value work on their own, but how to best integrate the pieces into an effective strategy.
Read our case study on the Price Sensitivity Analysis
Learn how one small private university set their tuition and fees with confidence and clarity. Click to download.
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