SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS
The Situation Analysis provides a brief SWOT analysis that highlights CUD-Reads internal strengths and weaknesses, and external opportunities and threats. Furthermore, an in-depth investigation about the industry, competitors, company, and participants will provide us with a better understanding of how to strategize our marketing plan. This overview allows us to probe finer levels of detail such as industry, competitors, company, and participants.
SWOT ANALYSIS
Figure 1: Highlights both the internal and external factors affecting the market opportunities for the CUD Reads Khawater Story-Telling Competition.
Swot Analysis Summary:
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The CUD Reads Khawater Competition is intended to act as a creative outlet for students to come together to share their experiences about the pandemic. As the competition is in collaboration with the Canadian University Dubai, talented staff members can assist in reviewing the written pieces, ultimately indicating an added strength as students in all fields are encouraged to share their thoughts by writing a short story. However, as the age category is limited to the ages that are said to have a low literacy rate, the competition entries might not be high, specifying an overall weakness. In comparison to competitors, The CUD-Reads event intends on utilizing the competition as a way to gain potential students and overall consumer knowledge of the University and offered programs, providing the university with an opportunity to grow.
INDUSTRY ANALYSIS: TRENDS IN THE READING AND CREATIVE WRITING INDUSTRY
Throughout the year, countries worldwide continuously announce the initiation of both local and global writing competitions as an attempt to encourage individuals of all ages to showcase their creative talents. Almost all contest’s offer winners a variety of awards, ranging from cash prizes to the chance of getting your piece published. In 2021, an assortment of creative writing competitions such as short stories, poetry, novel manuscripts, essays and flash fictions are taking place.
In Canada specifically, there are multiple creative writing competitions intended to challenge and enrich their creative senses in the competitive atmosphere. The categories range from fictional writing, poetry, essay writing, etc.
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The Poetry Institute of Canada is an open-themed creative writing competition open to all ages (18+).
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RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers encourages the future writers of Canadian Literature. The winner claims a prize of $10,000 as well as the chance of establishing a book deal.
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PRISM is an annual creative writing contest in Canada in which they have four recurring categories each year:
o Creative non-fiction contest
o The pacific spirit poetry prize
o The Jacob Zilber Prize for short fiction: Named after the famous Jacob Zilber, known for the formation of the very first Department of Creative Writing in North America (1965)
o The Grouse Grind prize for V. short forms: Open to writers around the world
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CBC short story prize: Winners will be given the opportunity to attend a two week writing residency at the Banff Centre for arts and creativity and will have their fictional piece published in CBC books.
According to a study conducted by Booknet Canada (Hirchberg and Hirchberg, 2021), 78% of individuals in Canada frequently read hard print books during a period of 12 months with the main reason noted as being a source of relaxation. The study also compared the frequency of reading habits throughout a period of three years (2017-2019) indicating that 20% of the respondents read on a daily basis in 2019 in comparison to a low 16% in 2017.
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Figure 2: Chart Indicating How Often Individuals Read
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Literacy Rates & Creativity in the UAE:
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According to a survey conducted by Bayt.com in 2015, 73% of respondents (total 5,891 people surveyed), expressed their belief that creativity is in fact being restricted by schools and universities in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region, stating that the education system is flawed in this respect. In 2016, the Arab Reading Index indicated that the UAE is ranked fourth (82%) amongst 22 other Arab nations (This study does not provide an ethnic breakdown.) Furthermore, the statistics showed that individuals in the UAE spend approximately 51 hours a year reading a book, with over 60% of the books being in the Arabic language. This in itself eliminates the perception in which outsiders believe that the UAE’s education and literacy rates are decrepit. Jamal bin Huwaireb, Managing Director of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation, addressed the matter by highlighting the fact that the survey had over 148,000 respondents and the results collected “should forever dispel the "illogical" results of previous studies, one of which claimed that Arabs read only six minutes and a quarter of a page per year.”(UAE ranks 4th in Arab Reading Index, 2016)
Figure 3: Indicates reading habits of readers in the UAE
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In 2020, it is said that the Covid-19 pandemic, has however led to positive changes in reading habits amongst the youth. This is due to the fact that individuals tend to find comfort in the fact that they can escape the reality of the pandemic when reading and immersing themselves in the lives of their fictional characters. According to Nielsen's report on ‘The Impact of COVID-19 on the India Book Consumer’ individuals have increased the time spent on reading to sixteen hours per week, which was previously recorded as only nine hours.
COMPETITORS IN THE READING AND WRITING INDUSTRY
The creative writing industry has a range of competitions worldwide, which take place multiple times throughout the year. As of today, the UAE is home to four main writing competitions, which range between poetry, short stories, investigative stories, short film production as well as poetry recitation.
Figure 4: Competitive analysis table between CUD Reads Khawater Story-Telling Contest and its competitor events in the UAE.
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PARTICIPANT ANALYSIS
In terms of customer analysis, this section describes 1) the demographics of the participants who will partake in the Khawater Story-Telling Contest and 2) the psychographics of these participants.
Demographics: The demographics for the writing competition will be 1) high school between the ages of 15-17 who are located in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Sharjah and 2) university students, ages 18-22, who are located in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Canada. In addition, the students will come from established English-medium schools. All races and both genders fall into the category for our target market.
Psychographics: In terms of psychographics, these can be broken down into three aspects which are; lifestyle habits, social media usage and Covid-19 impact.
According to lifestyle habits, the participants will either have an existing interest in reading, writing, literature, and/or creativity, enjoy partaking in competitions, or have an interest in trying something new. A study conducted on how youth in UAE spend their leisure time showcased that 54% of youth, aged 15-25, spend three to five hours a day on leisure activities. Further research found that male youth spend an average of 4.43 hours a day on leisure activities compared to 4.3 hours a day by female youth (Al Saleh, 2018). Youth in UAE distribute their leisure time to internet/social media (34%), spending time with family (15.5%), relaxing (10.9%), TV and music (9.9%), spending time with friends (9.2%), reading (7.3%), sports (5.1%), electronic games (4.3%), hobbies (2.9%) and volunteering (0.7%) (Al Saleh, 2018). More than 55% of the youth, above the age of 15, do not have an interest in club participation but of those that do, 9.9% are in reading clubs.
In terms of social media usage, the results tell us that the youth spends most of their time on the internet or social media. Hootsuite provides data that show us that females between the ages of 13-17 make up 3.1% of internet users, while their male counterparts make up 3.6%. Youth in the 18-24 age group have females making up 10.8% of internet users and males making up 14.4%. More so, the 2021 January statistics for the most used social media platform in UAE (according to percentage of internet users) are Youtube (87.4%), Facebook (81.4%), Whatsapp (80.2%) and Instagram (67.1%).
Covid-19 has amplified social and economic stresses faced by adolescents. The UAE is a progressive and a politically stable country, but is surrounded by countries experiencing political and economic instability. Around 80 to 90% of the UAE population is expatriates and immigrants. Challenges for this group of residents include separation from their families and financial hardships, and job security (Al Yateem et al, 2020). More so, the impact of Covid-19 has worsened these challenges as thousands of employees, often the breadwinners of a household, were made redundant. To add to that, the deaths caused by Covid have led to dire challenges and trauma for families and children. A study conducted in UAE in 2020, with 968 participants, showcased the overall prevalence of anxiety disorders among school-aged adolescents in the UAE to be 28%, which is higher than rates in other countries. The study found that the prevalence of anxiety-related disorders in children younger than age 16 years was higher than that among children older than 16 years. This could indicate that anxiety onset is prominent in early childhood (Al Yateem et al, 2020).