Analysis of Competitors:

Direct Competitors and Indirect Competitors Nowadays, the educational trend is getting huge. Not only the number of people who are attending to college is increasing, but also there are more educational software is out now more than ever before. The Engaged Learning system will have many competitors who have been already exist in the industry. These learning systems have been proven to help you learn more outside the classroom. The direct competitors for the Engaged Learning are consisting of other educations software companies such as Pearson, Cengage Learning, McGraw Hill Education/Connect, iSpring, and Articulate. Indirect Competitors include Blackboard, Moodle, Edmodo, Cornerstone, and Schoology.

Competitor Location and Accessibility Competitors are mostly online, which means it is very accessible to all customers. The technology is getting better and better, that means people are very used to searching or learning anything they want to know through internet. The official website for Pearson showed that the main office is located in London and the United States office is located in New York. Pearson is a worldwide company that also set up some offices at Americas Region, Asia-Pacific Region, and Europe, Middle East, Africa Region. Cengage Learning's main company office is located in Boston, but not only has one location, but they also have many offices located in North America, Latin America, and Asia Pacific. McGraw-Hill Education/Connect company as well. The main office is located in Boston and other few cities in United States. McGraw-Hill Education International has offices in forty-four countries for people from all over the world to be able to access their contents. The competitors are doing well on accessibility of their products or services. Even though the competitors do not have office everywhere in the country, but they cooperate with some school textbook companies. In this way, students are able to buy the product through online or local bookstore. The online learning software accessibility is a little bit different from other company such as Wal-Mart or McDonald's. The online learning software do not need to have many offices or stores in the nation to get success, with that being said, one way to increase the accessibility for online learning software is to cooperate with textbook company and having online services. However, the Engaged Learning is a little bit different from other learning software to increase the accessibility. The Engaged Learning is not going to sell the access code with textbook. The way our software works is to input the class, and it will find the books online for students. As long as the students have internet, they are able to purchase the Engaged Learning software.

Products and Services Competitors Offer The Engaged Learning's competitors have some decent offers for students. For example, Cengage Learning provides audio-visual material, eBook, Online Courses and Homework Solutions. It is easy for students who need some visual aids or some more practice on the materials. As Pearson, they provide MyLab, OpenClass, and College & Career Readiness etc. These products and services are helping people to improve their learning. For McGraw-Hill Education/Connect, they also provide similar products and services as Cengage Learning and Pearson, but the benefit for McGraw-Hill is their products and services are available in nearly sixty languages, which mean people from all over the world are able to use their learning software. The competitors all having learning software, provide specific courses, homework, study aids and example problems, but Engaged Learning having an additional services as four learning styles and develops a specific learning system that best fits students' unique learning style. The four learning styles are included visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic.

Competitors’ Prices and Costs The Engaged Learning competitor's prices and costs are variable. The competitors bundle the access code with textbook, which means when you purchase the textbook the access code come with it. For example, if there is a financial textbook cost two hundred dollars, students have to buy that in order to get an access code. If the biology textbook cost eighty dollars, then students have to pay that amount of money to get access code too. In other words, the students need to pay whatever the textbook cost to get an access code. The Engaged Learning has fixed price for student to purchase. Therefore, students do not need to worry about how much is the textbook cost and be able to use the learning aids with low cost. The Engaged Learning provides fifteen dollars for one class, forty dollars for a semester subscription and seventy-five dollars for a year subscription. How that work is when you buy the subscription from us, and input your school and class, the system will automatically searching the material online, and start creating a learning module and providing an eBook for student as well. The Engaged Learning helps students lower spend on school materials and still be able to have tons of help.
Customers Competitors Attract The competitors like Pearson, Cengage Learning, and McGraw-Hill Education/Connect attract students looking for better learning processes, better grades, and flexible time to study. For example, some of the students went to school and do not understand the material during the class, they could go back home and use the online learning system to learn it by working some problems and practice over and over again to increase their memories. The online system will show student what chapter they need to focusing on to solve this problem. Once the students have better grade in the class, they start want to use those learning system more and more. In addition, if the students have an emergency and not be able to go to the class, they can use online learning software to cover up the material that he or she was missing. When the students purchased the access code, it is one semester long, which means student can schedule their own time to study such as late night or early morning. Unlike the school, you have to go to class in the certain time.
Competitors’ Strengths and Weaknesses Pearson Strengths1. Top brand recall2. World number one publishing company and operations more than 70 countries | Weaknesses1. Focus on English language publishing2. Focus the customer in North America | Opportunities1. Business Magazine2. Cooperate with others and reduce cost3. Enhance publishing to other country, not only English | Threats1. Getting online resources from Yahoo or Google2. Copyright issues based on getting online resources from Yahoo or Google |
(BrandGuide, 2015) Cengage Learning Strengths 1. Operations more than 20 countries 2. Brand recognition 3. Wide range of brand | Weaknesses1. Overall costs are too high2. Lack of the ability to increase market growth | Opportunities1. Acquisition or cooperate with other company to increase market share2. Differentiation through customer service excellence | Threats1. Failure to capture convenience market growth2. Cost of environmental legislation |
(BrandGuide , 2015) McGraw-Hill Education/Connect Strengths1. Top brand recall2. Operations over 40 countries3. publishing since 1888 | Weaknesses1. Concentration on educational sector2. High prices | Opportunities1. More commercial2. More operations in Europe and Asia | Threats1. Increase online data, such as eBook2. Many global competitors |
(BrandGuide, 2015)
Competitor Marketing and Distribution Systems All of the Engaged Learning's competitors are cooperate with school textbook. Competitors are bundling their access code with the textbook, which means when a student having a class that is required a textbook and online learning system, they must purchase it to pass the course. For example, Pearson would print and ship the textbooks to schools and universities, and let schools to use their textbooks. (Booz & Company, 2013) The distribution is not ideal. The reason is that most of the Engaged Learning's competitors are global company and having office that operating in many countries. However, they mostly concentrate on focusing in North America's market. In fact, they are losing many customers outside of the United States. Even though, there are a lot of opportunity and customer in North America, but still need to strengthen operations outside of the United States to increase their revenue.
Barriers Created by Competitors The barriers that Engaged Learning's competitors created are brand recognition, similar services, and the possibility of mimic the Engaged Learning software. Since they have been around longer and created customer loyalty, it is hard to have a new product emerge in the market. Even if the Engaged Learning has successfully emerge in the industry, the competitors could come out the similar idea or service to prevent their inadequate. People are resisting to change, which means the customers are fear of the unknown product. Although, the barriers have been created in this industry, the Engaged Learning provides low price and tailor-made service would be able to lure customer to use Engaged Learning system.
Methods for generating Revenue The Engaged Learning will make a profit through internet by people buying the subscription. The Engaged Learning had low fixed price to let customers know how much they are going to spend for every class. The engaged Learning also provides a tailor-made product for customer to learn in their own way. In fact, the customer can learn the material very efficiency. While customer enjoy the Engaged Learning, more people will come back and buy the subscription from us.
The Engaged Learning Values and Benefits The Engaged Learning has two benefits to customer, first is to providing a tailor-made product for students. Therefore, students are able to maximize learning experience, not only getting a good grade in school, but also can apply the knowledge into real life. The other benefit is the low fixed price. Since the students do not need to buy the expensive textbook to use online learning system, they could save the money for other uses, and still able to enjoy the eBook and sample of practice problem. The core value for the Engaged Learning is differentiates itself from the rest by providing a more tailor made product to maximize learning experience.
The Engaged Learning Competitive Analysis Grid | Pearson | Cengage Learning | McGraw-Hill Education/Connect | Learning Software | Even | Even | Even | Specific courses | Even | Even | Even | Homework | Even | Even | Even | Study Aids | Even | Even | Even | Example Problems | Even | Even | Even | Operations more than 30 countries | Disadvantage | Disadvantage | Disadvantage | Tailor-made help aids | Advantage | Advantage | Advantage | Price | Advantage | Advantage | Advantage | The Competitive Analysis Grid shows that the Engaged Learning does have more advantages than disadvantages compare with Pearson, Cenage Learning, and McGraw-Hill Education/Connect. Since the Engaged Learning just start, it is impossible to have operations in different countries. However, the tailor-made help aids and low fixed price will be our advantage to enter the market and outstanding to other competitors.
Analysis of Competitors Conclusion Although the Engaged Learning has many competitors out there, but still have a gap to create a better learning system, which is cheaper than our competitors are and adapt to personal learning style. These competitors learning system provide books and online course work packaged together or separately. While they have been proven to help you learn more outside the classroom. They do provide students a complete setup for a course but it does not change to fit a student’s specific need. The Engaged Learning would like to take it a step further and build tailor made help aids for the specific students. This will provide for the ultimate learning experience.
Work Cited https://www.pearson.com/contact-us/head-offices.html https://home.pearsonvue.com/About-Pearson-VUE/Discover-Pearson-VUE/Locations.aspx http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/accessibility/index.page http://www.cengage.com/accessibility/ http://www.mbaskool.com/brandguide/media-and-entertainment/5650-pearson.html http://www.mbaskool.com/brandguide/media-and-entertainment/5914-cengage-learning.html http://www.mbaskool.com/brandguide/media-and-entertainment/5651-mcgraw-hill-companies.html http://www.strategy-business.com/blog/How-Pearson-Is-Reinventing-Global-Education?gko=e47ca