Learning about our MBA audience

Students are an important demographic for the FT and we work hard to understand their needs and what drives them.

Our customer research team, working with Team Communities, has just completed the first of three stages of research focussing on the MBA student audience. Our research revealed a number of insights about how we should be approaching this audience editorially and commercially.

For this first phase we spoke with MBA students who are either registered or subscribed to the FT. We asked about the resources they value for their studies and career development, and how the FT could better support them.

In the second stage we will repeat this research with MBA students who are not currently registered/subscribed to understand how we can better engage with them.

Finally, we will take insights gathered from the first two stages to test hunches and product developments with a larger audience of business school students via an online survey. This will help us understand the best proposition for this audience.

Methodology for the first phase

To speak to business students around the world, simultaneously, in a personal and conversational manner we used an online discussion group. This method has been used for other research projects at the FT in the past and is beneficial for a number of reasons. It is a powerful way of interacting with respondents globally, allows participation on any device and facilitates in-depth discussion in ways that surveys cannot. This means richer, more reliable, and more expansive results.

We selected 25 business students to take part from a group of 249 who had expressed interest, based on a number of factors like age, gender, location and the course they were studying.

An online discussion group works like a forum where participants respond to the moderator’s posts as well as interact with each other. Over the three-day study, we posted daily assignments at 02:00 BST, accommodating participants in all time zones and allowing them to respond on any device. Additionally, throughout the day Alyssa, an analyst on Team Communities, and I followed up with questions to individual participants to gain further depth on their answers.

Respondents also love taking part in online discussions! Here’s some of the feedback we got:

“Thank you for having the forum! It means a lot to me to take part in such a process. And I’m glad that the FT values the insight of its readers.”

“This was a great forum to be a part of. I enjoyed it thoroughly and also learnt new ideas from other participants.”

Results

These were the key findings from the online discussion group:

• MBA students know the industry they would like to enter and this is trending towards finance, biotech and energy; technology and entrepreneurship are also popular
• Internationalism is very important to this group, who have either chosen to study internationally, and/ or would like to work in international roles
• Networking (face to face and online) is hugely important to MBA students, yet not all enjoy the formality and procedure of it
• News sources are critical to MBA’s studies by providing real-life context to theories learnt in the classroom
• MBA students use a combination of news sources, but FT is the leader in its field with essential news and analysis that suits their international focus.
• The minority currently pay for news; they are open to it but most simply can’t afford to on student budgets. The FT especially is the source they most want.
• Social media is an important channel for sourcing and sharing content and also for networking

We’ll keep you posted on the progress of this research, so watch this space.

If you have comments or questions please get in touch with victoria.bennett@ft.com or teamcommunities@ft.com.