The Promotion Strategy of Day Care Centers in Middle Taiwan

[[abstract]]Because both the society and the technology have progressed, the birthrate has dropped largely in Taiwan. Various day care centers have been developed prosperously day after day, and which causes the day care center industry competing intensely. Although each day care center has exhausted to do its best to improve the teaching quality and contents, the quality and contests between each other do not have huge differences and the parents could not distinguish any differences between each day care center. Therefore, how to comply the tendency, promoting successfully, increasing the number of day-care babies are the major things that the day care center industry should not hesitate to focus on. This paper is to analyze the promotion strategies in managing day care centers and the percentages of accepting in promotion strategies that the existing and the potential parents have adopted, in which expecting to give some information to the day care center industry. This paper would build the empirical model via Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), and based on the differences in the entirety of the day care center industry, regional, and public or private day care centers to weigh the promotion strategies of advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations, and direct selling promotion and others that the day care centers use in middle Taiwan. This paper would use internal survey, the 113 samples are taken in this paper, but only 58 samples are taken back, and 33 samples are used, and external survey, the 1,200 samples are taken, but only 884 samples are taken back, and 850 samples are used. The results of the research are as followings: (1) By the entirety of the day care center industry, the advertising is the only promotion strategy that marketing decision-makers, existing parents, and potential parents have selected, but the other four strategies that they focus on are different. (2) By regional, the promotion strategies of public relations and direct selling promotion are selected by the marketing decision-makers, existing parents, and expecting parents in Taichung City, but the advertising is chosen by the marketing decision-makers, existing parents, and potential parents in Changhua County. (3) By marketing scales, the advertising and the public relations are selected by the marketing decision-makers, existing parents, and potential parents in small marketing scale, the personal selling is the major selection in medium marketing scale, and the personal selling and the sales promotion are focused on in large marketing scale. Otherwise, the different promotion strategies in different marketing scales are different. (4) By public or private day care centers, the most important promotion strategies are selected by marketing decision-makers, existing parents, and potential parents are the personal selling and the sales promotion in public day care centers. However, the advertising is selected in private day care centers. Other promotion strategies that public and private day care centers focus on are different. (5) The existing parents have considered promotion activities would increase in day care centers? reputation, the numbers of probation, purchasing, and multiple-purchasing, decreasing in the children transferring to other day care centers, and expanding different customer levels, etc. The potential parents are considered the promotion activities will increase the reputation and numbers of probation of the day care centers