Introduction:
Both of us are Erasmus students and as many students we had to find accommodation in the CIT area for the academic year. Mr. Walsh proposed us a topic about student accommodation around Bishopstown Campus Area which kept our attention because of the rivalry existing among this business. We wanted to investigate an existing problem which involves competition, cost and the profit notice.

The competitors are Parchment Square, Abbeyville, Edenhall and Deanshall. Our study aims at comparing the rivalry over the supply for student accommodation, investigating their actual marketing mix, in other words their product, price, place, and promotion but also to the people, process, and physical evidence, because we are dealing with a service. Of course once the marketing mix has been studied, we will formulate marketing recommendations that must help themselves to increase the quality of their supply.
In order to solve this problem, we leant on our skills and knowledge in marketing research, in marketing and sales management, in communication, in marketing case study and in managing services marketing. Moreover, our own different personal experiences helped us to realize the study. The accommodations themselves, the CIT accommodation office but also all the future students seeking for information or coming might benefit from the findings.
We will now explain you how we proceeded to realize this study, what the objectives of such a research are and we will introduced you our plan.

Approach, research objectives and plan:

With the goal of identifying the supply, our research was guided by the definition of the marketing mix associated to a service, including the Price, the Product, the Place, the Promotion, the Process, the People and the Physical evidence.

So, we have analyzed the competition around the CIT area (Houses or private flats to rent) and consequently established a marketing audit analysis which contains a PEST and Porter’s 5 forces