File:Marketing plan for the Naval Postgraduate School Master of Business Administration to the Navy unrestricted line community (IA marketingplforna109459942).pdf

The purpose of this Master of Business Administration (MBA) project is to develop a practical marketing plan to attract U.S. Navy Unrestricted Line (URL) officers to the resident Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) Defense-Focused MBA. The intent of this project is to create awareness in the Navy Unrestricted Line community about the benefits of the Defense-focused MBA and to build a brand name for the Naval Postgraduate School MBA (NPS-MBA). The goal is to make the resident NPS-MBA the graduate business school product of choice. The authors believe that the MBA degree provides URL officers the business tools required to become successful managers in the modern naval establishment. The starting point of this project was to conduct a present situation analysis of the MBA degree by determining its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It was noted that there is a decreasing number of URL officers in the NPS-MBA program since its inception in January 2002. Although graduate education is a strategic goal for Navy officers, it was found that current URL career progression does not provide an adequate time for resident graduate education. In addition, a fleet survey was conducted to assess URL attitudes toward the NPS-MBA in order to ascertain their awareness levels, which would enable the authors to arrive at effective marketing strategies and recommendations. The survey was conducted in a fleet concentrated area in San Diego, California in March of 2004. Based on the research, there is a need for boosting awareness of the program with a marketing plan that identifies strategies and distribution channels. In addition, research suggests that further marketing to operational commands, hardware commands and detailers, is essential for lobbying Navy URL officers to join the resident NPS-MBA program. Thus, in order to fulfill those needs, a practical marketing plan for the resident NPS-MBA to Navy URL officers is created.