Amidst the increasingly competitive job market, the number of business schools and universities offering Post Graduate or Master degree is flourishing in Jakarta. Some of the well-known business schools and universities in Jakarta include: MM-UI Bina, Nusantara, Prasetya Mulya, LPPM, MM-UGM, and many others. Although IPMI do not consider those schools as its direct competitors yet, IPMl's target market now has more schools to choose from for their personal development, and it is not possible that one or more of those schools mentioned above can compete head-to-head with IPMI in the near future.

Consequently, IPMI offered us, Group 4 from Regular Class January 2002, to conduct an Image Study for with objectives to give IPMI a starting point by presenting to IPM! the information on. the market's current perception of this school and what the market generally expects IPMI to be. From the insights gained from this project, hopefully IPMI would be able to develop the "best" strategic plan that would ensure its prosperous growth in the future.

In order to complete the project and to provide IPMI with attributes that indicates the market's opinion on IPMl's image, we conduct a Qualitative Study by inviting respondents from IPMI's current students and alumni, candidate students who have attended IPMl's open house, students from competitor schools, and most importantly the prospective employers or HR executives from reputable companies who are the potential users of IPMI graduates to participate in Focus Group Discussions and In-Depth Interviews.

During the Focus Group Discussions and In-Depth Interviews the respondents were asked to provide opinions according to the leading questions that we developed based on the objectives of the project. As with any market research activities the most difficult task is gathering the respondents, making sure that they attend the discussion sessions, and asking the right questions to stimulate answers from the respondents.

This report documents all of the actual responses from the respondents, groups the response into attributes that would be beneficial for IPMI to decide the next course of action to validate the attributes and plan strategies to maintain IPMl's position as the leading business school in Indonesia and in the region.



Research Location: IPMI Business School

Supervisor: Mudzafar Daud, MBA

Accepted Date : December 2003



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