Company Description
Gaining academic support and receiving tutoring for reasonable pricing is one of the basically unattainable requirements for students in higher education. However, with the help of a project called UNIHIVE, which suggests that students can offer peer support to each other, with more proficient learners training those needing help, the issue of tutorship can be addressed. UNIHIVE is a project aimed at assisting learners in improving their scores for a reasonable price. By offering an incredibly well-balanced price-quality ratio, UNIHIVE is bound to gain immediate success with learners and become an essential product in the current academic market.
Problems that the Product Solves
Unfortunately, in the current academic setting, students mostly have no opportunities for collaboration outside of the activities prescribed in the course curriculum. As a result, the lack of peer support and discussions of the learned material lead to a drop in performance and, most importantly, the understanding of the material (Colver and Fry, 2016). UNIHIVE, in turn, will provide the platform on which learners will be able to support each other through the casual discussion of class materials and active peer support. The questions that learners may be afraid of asking in the classroom setting out of fear to seem unintelligent or slow thinking will be discussed in UNIHIVE freely since there will be no teachers for whom students will want to uphold their reputation of impeccable learners.
Revenue Generation
The project will generate profits with the help of commissions per every transaction performed on the platform. Arguably, one may need to choose between payment per hour of tutoring and payment per segment of material covered. Nonetheless, the general idea of being paid for a specific portion of a student’s learning process will remain in its place.
The UNIHIVE project will also have to pay for the website on a monthly basis, which means that the advertisement targeted at students will have to be based on the word of the mouth and occur within the university system. However, social networks have to be incorporated into the marketing strategy to ensure that as many customers as possible are targeted. In addition, it will be necessary to introduce a rank-based fee. Specifically, the students that will want a higher rank will have to provide a greater fee. Similarly, those learners that require upgraded knowledge and more detailed explanations will submit greater payments.
Competitors
Since UNIHIVE is currently a unique product that does not have any equivalents in the target market, its competitive advantage is huge, and the project does not have any rivals in sight so far. Therefore, UNIHIVE is expected to reach an immediate success with its target audiences. Nevertheless, the project will require promotion so that it could gain the exposure and recognition that it deserves. As a result, the number of customers in the UNIHIVE system will rise.
Nevertheless, there are indirect competitors that may pose a threat to the promotion of UNIHIVE in the target market. For example, Fiverr as one of the best-known freelance platforms where tutoring services can be found is a possible indirect competitor. Nevertheless, the specified platform lacks the sense of community that UNIHIVE will provide since the latter will place the emphasis on peer support within the same academic system. As a result, learners will be entirely certain that they are being trained by their peers, which will increase the levels of trust and solidarity.
Cost Structure
Given the nature of the service, the budget will have to be rather small. Thus, the website will be purchased for $2,000, whereas the application will be developed for $10,000. In turn, the marketing process is expected to be based mostly on word of the mouth and cost-efficient tools, which is why it will stay within the range of $100-500. Finally, operation costs will be non-existent in the specified scenario since no renting will be needed.
Marketing
The target audience will be made aware of UNIHIVE with the help of word of the mouth, including other learners and professors. In addition, flyers and leaflets will be distributed among learners. Finally, one should consider the student union as a possible vehicle for promotion. The financial needs include mostly staffing costs, which are likely to be within $10,000 per month per tutor.
Risks
Despite the presence of a clear competitive advantage and a considerably simple cost structure, UNIHIVE will still face some risks in the market. The threat of failing to be copied by a competitor with a higher technological potential is one of the most tangible threats to the project presently. In addition, there is the threat of reliability and service quality due to the poor control options. Therefore, prior to establishing the system, it will be necessary to introduce effective control tools. Finally, it is quite possible the demand for the product will overload the market, either reducing the quality of the service, or leaving a lot of customers without the opportunity to purchase the service.
Forecast
It is believed that the suggested service will enjoy high popularity among students due to its discretion and the opportunity to be honest about one’s failures and disadvantages. Therefore, it is important consider some of the essential issues such as the strategy to be used with the target market segment. In order to address the needs of learners, emphasis will be placed on the opportunity to speak about one’s academic weaknesses openly and, thus, correct them. The current market trends show that students are in desperate need for effective tutoring (Roscoe, Walker and Patchan, 2018). The specified concern is especially topical for ESL students (Li and Ngai, 2018). Thus, the projected market growth is believed to be quite high in the nearest future.
Reference List
Colver, M. and Fry, T. (2016) ‘Evidence to support peer tutoring programs at the undergraduate level,’ Journal of College Reading and Learning, 46(1), 16-41.
Li, C. and Ngai, J. (2018) ‘Challenges and Issues in Academic Writing: Perspectives from Peer Tutors,’ The Asian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(1), 104-116.
Roscoe, R. D., Walker, E. A., and Patchan, M. M. (2018) ‘Facilitating peer tutoring and assessment in intelligent learning systems,’ Tutoring and Intelligent Tutoring Systems, 1(1), 41-68.