Current Customer Value Proposition. Target Customer: Community colleges
Segment characteristics
– Dominant needs: Student Success, Faculty Development and Support
– Academic focus: general education
– Established online program
– Existing Wiley usage (textbooks, WileyPLUS, and WFN)
– Centralized decision making
– Community College
Best Competitor: Pearson
| Key customer benefits | Current level of performance | Current cost to customer |
Current sustainability |
| Compared to the strongest competitor, customers perceive ours to be: | Compared to the strongest competitor, customers perceive our pricing to be: | Time before leading competitor catches up (days to years) | |
| We help the CAOs better manage and improve the academic quality and student success rates of the institution | Worse, by 10% | Higher, by 10% | – |
| We help community colleges achieve their stated goals of faculty development retention | Better, by 50% | Lower, by 50% | 2 years |
| We help keep costs per student down by providing creative institutional offerings | Worse, by 10% | Higher, by 10% | – |
Wiley do not have good coverage, they only cover a portion of the curriculum and thus cost/student (volume discount) is high.
Zone of Competitive Tolerance
This is the range in customer expectations for supplier value-added. The boundaries for the customer are described here.
How do community colleges value Wiley offerings?
Wiley Custom Select does not have the adoption that Wiley would like, but offers an innovative solution to creating customized courses. WFN, WCS and WileyPLUS is relevant and unique for our segment. Benefits/Price = CV is very high. Career progression with MS certification.
What is the minimum adequate level of performance expected from any supplier in order to receive community college continuing business?
Community colleges are not big on the technology performance, but are highly cost conscious.
What is the best imaginable expected performance?
Higher-education publishers continued to grapple with price resistance to textbooks and competition from the used-book market.
- Community colleges expect efficiencies from Vendors and expect higher student success rates along with higher faculty retention.
- Student community within the course by leveraging the WFN platform to achieve “peer-learning”
- Flexible learning and course management platform that helps achieve time savings and cost efficiencies
Is Wiley the best imaginable supplier, or close to it?
Wiley is not the best imaginable supplier due to the difficulties in lowering costs. This results from a weaker market penetration in the digital book sales (only $US7M, less than 2% of overall sales in fiscal 2010).
Is Wiley’s leading competitor, Pearson, the best imaginable supplier, or close to it?
Pearson is NOT the best imaginable supplier because their faculty development and retention index is lower than Wiley’s.
What are the 2 pareto relationships in this customer’s “best imaginable” expectations?
Community colleges don’t necessarily have the resources to give unprepared students the attention they need to be successful. There’s not enough time for the instructor to spend with students who are not prepared- Wiley can provide value here by empowering these students to better manage their course loads. 80% of customer satisfaction will result in improving student grades by enabling students to self-tutor and link the progress back to classroom instruction
What 2-3 things would be quick, easy and cheap to do?
- Meeting with the CAOs of community colleges and sharing information with their peers
- Provide easy access to e-textbooks
Of the remainder, what 2-3 things would drive most of this customer’s commitment?
- Enabling students to self-tutor by creating affordable homework solutions
- Student network
Future Value Creation Opportunities
| Minimum Adequate | Best imaginable | |
| PRODUCT: | Homework solution that offers course learning aids | Self-tutoring solution that enables students to rapidly improve learning |
| SUPPORT SERVICES: | None | Student course-helpline that provides customized help that is relevant to the student’s progress in the course. |
| RELATIONSHIP MGMT: | ||
| IMAGE/REPUTATION: | Wiley is another choice the college can offer its faculty and students. | Wiley is the trusted go-to partner for Community colleges |
| (What 3 words would be associated with Wiley?) | “Fair pricing”, “good value” | “fair pricing”, “superior value-added”, “innovative” |
Strategic Value Positioning
Here, we plot the existing and target positions for Wiley, for each customer benefit. Our positions on both axes are relative to Pearson (our leading competitor) on the same benefits. We assume that each key customer benefit is targeted towards a specific customer group.
What total cost Wiley would charge for each benefit?
Pricing will need to be competitive for community colleges since this customer is highly price conscious.
How can Wiley achieve a strategic value positioning?
Wiley can create superior value positioning by providing the following responses to the 3 key questions of strategic value proposition:
What is Wiley’s unfair advantage in the community college segment?
- No competitor can match Wiley’s product or service in the short term IF Wiley provides cost savings, and improved student grades in the near term (measurable).
- No competitor can match Wiley if faculty development and retention results are superior over a period of time
Why choose Wiley today?
- Wiley’s offering is differentiated, relevant to value drivers and certified as industry’s best performing.
- Wiley can offer immediate cost savings over competitors and improved ROI in the near term.
Why choose Wiley tomorrow?
- Wiley’s value today forms the basis for customer loyalty tomorrow
- Wiley will continue to INNOVATE, PARTNER with customers and INVEST in products that meet the most important value drivers for community colleges- student grades, faculty development and retention, career progression
The Berkeley MBA 