This paper presents a literature review relevant to the development and implementation of a Marketing Plan for a private elementary school. The school serves grades K-6 with an enrollment of 274 students and a maximum capacity of 360 students. It is located in a community of 40,00 persons; the community proper has three other private schools as well as several public schools.
So that the examined literature may be maximally relevant to the development and implementation of the Marketing Plan, the bulk of the examined research is restricted to schools with similar sociodemographics and school characteristics. The review ends with the formulation of several recommendations for a Marketing Plan strategy.
Marketing Private Elementary Schools: The Relevant Literature
The research on Marketing Education as it relates to private elementary schools in similar communities provides several steps that can be taken in the development and implementation of a Marketing Plan. According to James and Phillips (1995), one of the first steps that must be taken is to assess administrators' degree of management training in educational marketing. In this regard, James and Phillips report that most studies show that because school administrators have so little training in educational marketing they tend to be resistant to most customer-driven approaches and these often are the optimal models to use for private school systems, be these systems at the elementary or secondary level.
James and Phillips (1995) also state that communication with the general community must be maximally utilized when using the customer-driven approach and that the promotion plan should apprise possible customers of several school characteristics. The most important of these characteristics are said to include: (1) Promoting the school itself (e.g., quality of the education, different courses offered, how it differs from other schools in the community);
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