Accelerating participation of student entrepreneur through product strategy implemented by Entrepreneurship Centre in UTM / Nor Anizah Othman and Zetty Raihan Mohd Yassin

Entrepreneurship has been one of the main agenda highlighted by the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education in producing entrepreneur graduates. To champion this agenda, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) has established the UTM Centre for Student Innovation & Technology Entrepreneurship (UTM XCITE). Although UTM XCITE has proven its excellence and improved the number of student participation through their initiatives since 2013 until 2017, it has yet to reach the total population of the undergraduate's students in UTM. Only 6.4% out of 11,000 total number of undergraduate students were reached and in terms of start-ups formation, the number is still insufficient. The purpose of this study is to assess the internal and external factors that impinge UTM XCITE as well to measure the relationship between the product strategy elements and customer's satisfaction in order to gain an understanding on the importance of each factor towards meeting UTM XCITE customer satisfaction. A survey was conducted upon 200 undergraduate students in UTM and the results showed that the course content, speaker background, facilities and secretariat as well as benefits are the significant elements in customer satisfaction. The other factor which is the type of program was proven to be not significantly affecting the customer satisfaction level. Interviews with the managements of UTM XCITE were also carried out and the respondent's comments were used to fully understand the environment UTM XCITE's operated in. Therefore, recommended strategies to UTM XCITE were discussed including the priority towards the improvement and personalization of product strategy together with pursuing market penetration strategy.