Abstract
This is the third issue of the Journal of Marketing Education (JME) where my name appears as Editor, but the first issue where all the articles went through the review process under my watch. It has been exciting to see some good manuscripts submitted, and watch as our insightful reviewers and hardworking authors developed these into great articles. You may notice there are fewer articles than usual, but some of these are a bit longer than is typical for the journal. This does not reflect a change in editorial policy, but rather the types of articles that were submitted over this time frame.
This December issue of JME provides ideas and insights on a wide range of topics. I am particularly excited by our lead article that reviews the history of marketing education research published in JME. The articles that follow in this issue show how JME is leading important changes in marketing education, including a greater awareness of the importance of ethnographic research, as well as the importance of experiential learning opportunities, whether they be in-class, client-based, or entrepreneurial experiences.
Gray, Peltier, and Schibrowsky have done an enormous amount of work in reviewing and categorizing every article that has been published in JME and identifying research trends. As you will see in their article, just as the entire discipline of marketing has matured, so too has the discipline of marketing education. We thus need to consider how this maturation process has impacted marketing education, and importantly, moving ahead, what issues are most important for creating an educational environment that best prepares students for life beyond college. We are increasingly seeing articles using state-of-the-art research methods. In particular, direct measures of learning, such as exams or projects, are increasingly used in marketing education research, while in years past only indirect measures, such as student surveys, filled the journal. Recent research has shown that direct measures of learning offer important information beyond self-reports of learning. Furthermore, the AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) has required member schools to use direct measures of learning in their assessment efforts. While manuscripts describing novel ideas for improving the effectiveness of marketing faculty and pedagogy are always welcome at JME, we are particularly excited by manuscripts that include direct measures of learning.
The next article in this issue calls for broadening our research and teaching in another way. Despite the growing enthusiasm in industry for ethnographic research, most faculty teach marketing research focusing on quantitative methods. Freeman and Spanjaard document this gap using industry sources and an analysis of marketing research syllabi. They go on to describe specific methods that can be used, including auto-ethnography, netnography, and rapid ethnographic appraisal. They note that in these days of smart phones, most students are never far from a camera or video recording device. The authors describe several case studies where students used qualitative methods and gained an appreciation for the value of these techniques. This article inspired me to reconsider my coverage of ethnographic methods in my research course; hopefully it will inspire you too.
Vander Schee introduces a great in-class experiential exercise that helps students understand product characteristics that influence the rate of adoption of new products. Especially notable is Vander Schee’s use of both direct (tests) and indirect (student surveys) measures of student outcomes. In this case, the exercise has significant positive effects on both types of measures. Vander Schee’s article provides yet another piece of evidence that experiential exercises can be quite effective, although this particular experience does take more class time than just lecture alone.
One of the most challenging experiential exercises a teacher can facilitate is having students work on a project for an actual client. These projects can be even more challenging, but more realistic, when the client is paying for the work. Clark, King, and Jurn draw on nearly 20 years of experience with client-financed projects to provide us with a rich tutorial. From finding clients, through legal issues, and classroom organization, the authors describe the systems they have developed to keep these projects running smoothly and to generate valuable deliverables. In their approach to client-financed projects, multiple student teams work with the same client. Clark et al. introduce Class Participation Point Assignments as a clever way to minimize overlap and redundancy in team–client interactions. Any teacher who has students working with actual clients should find something in this article to improve his or her course.
The last article in this issue demonstrates another approach to engage students in actual business experiences where real money is on the line. Burgess describes how to integrate a pop-up retail experience into a marketing course. In this experiential exercise, students manage a used clothing store that “pops up” on campus. Although the store is only open for a week, the promotional planning and scheduling, pricing, merchandise acquisition, and so on, can keep students busy for a good part of the semester. Once completed, students gain hands-on experience in all aspects of retail, and if they manage things well, they even end up turning a profit that can be used to fund scholarships, travel grants, honors thesis research projects, and competitive awards for students. This article and the previous one should encourage departments to think in creative ways about how to improve education while increasing the department budget.
With this issue of JME, we continue a new era of research in marketing education, including openness to alternative research techniques and a growing awareness of the importance of experiential learning. At the same time, this journal takes a scholarly approach to the study of marketing education, asking for evidence wherever possible to support the arguments for change and improvement. This is an exciting and challenging time to be involved in marketing education and marketing education research. Until April, thank you for supporting JME.