Page 5 - Phase 1 - Understanding your organisations' entrepreneurial opportunities

The Rise of the Service Industry

such as organising expo, open house, and distributing leaflets, are employed by DSS schools,

aiming to increase their exposure and access to the community.

Student learning experiences, including social and emotional development have been
emphasised and institutionalised in some school evaluation systems. In terms of the quality
of a school’s ‘products’ and ‘services’, student’s academic performance is still a convenient
indicator for many parents who wish to determine the quality of a school, which is especially
the case for Hong Kong (Wu, 2008). In Hong Kong, only 18% of secondary school students

can be admitted to government-funded universities (University Grant Committee, 2017).
Parents regularly check the schools’ websites to verify a school’s academic performance
(Yu and Chen, 2013).

According to a study conducted by Ho and Lu (2019) aiming to investigate the validity of school
competition and verify the propositions regarding the effects of school marketing practices,
an increase in school academic performance and marketing school academic performance
was related to an increase in student intake. The strongest associations were observed
between student intake and school academic performance, marketing school academic

performance and the school type. In addition, DSS schools are more likely to have higher
student intake than aided schools.

This study also suggested that school academic performance, rather than promotion activities
or school features, is still the primary indicator that parents use to determine the ‘attractiveness’
of a school in Hong Kong.

Aided school (a) DSS school (b)

Student Intake Student Intake

Low High Low High
School Academic Achievement School Academic Achievement
High Marketing Low Marketing High Marketing Low Marketing

Figure I. Means, standard deviations and inter-correlations among main variables
Ho, M. C. S., & Lu, J. (2019)

The study shows there is a positive relationship between school academic performance and

student intake when marketing academic performance was high and low, with a significant
difference in the two slopes.

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