Abstract
Integration of technology into the marketing classroom is not a new phenomenon. By the late 1990s, technology had become a routine component of the classroom pedagogy and of education in general (Nuldén, 2001). However, the technology and its integration in the marketing classroom, such as that described by Malhotra (2002) and Peterson, Albaum, Munuera, and Cunningham (2002), have changed dramatically from that of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Digital and social media are not the technology referred to by scholars at the turn of century; much has changed technologically in the past 10 to 15 years. According to Grewal and Levy (2016, p. 84), “The changes and advances in social, mobile, and online technologies have created a perfect storm, forcing firms to change how they communicate with their customers.”
Digital and social media have changed the nature of interactions between customers and companies, engendering radically new ways of interacting and, essentially, revolutionizing marketing (Hansen, Shneiderman, & Smith, 2011). As such, an integration of digital and social media into business marketing strategies is necessary to promote increased engagement and interaction (Coulter & Roggeveen, 2012). Engagement is the name of the game in marketing practice (Rohm & Weiss, 2014), and the marketing professoriate needs to be ahead of this technological storm instead of behind it (Frederiksen, 2015).
Student engagement with regard to social media in marketing classrooms is a critical component of learning in today’s world of fast-paced, ever-changing marketing practices. This special issue focuses specifically on student engagement and reinforces the contention by Urban (2013) that “knowing how to tweet and update your status is not the same as using social media to influence and analyze trends, engage customers, and grow businesses.” Stated clearly by Grewal, Roggeveen, and Shankaranarayanan (2015), “But simply being effective in social media is not sufficient to transform students into appealing, competitive employees.”
Social Media Platforms and Providers
In their study of Digital Natives, Williams, Crittenden, Keo, and McCarty (2012) delineated between social media platforms and social media providers. Platforms used by students in that study were (in the order of usage from most to least) social networking, text messaging, streaming videos, blogs, shared photos, wikis, discussion groups, video communication, and podcasts. The students engaged on these platforms via the following providers (in order of engagement from most to least): Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Skype, LinkedIn, Shutterfly, Wikipedia, Tumblr, Hulu, Flickr, Blogspot, and Digg. Interesting from an educational perspective, word-of-mouth within the context of marketing communications was not evident in the data collected from students. This finding supported that of Buzzard, Crittenden, Crittenden, and McCarty (2011) in which it was found that while students use contemporary digital tools for communication and entertainment, they did not think it necessary to use them for educational purposes. Thus, there appears to be a gap between digital and social media tools for personal use and for instructional purposes.
Given that digital and social media marketing is a fast-moving phenomenon and that marketing educators need to be at the forefront of marketing practice, it is imperative that educators continually innovate both with curriculum content and social media tool usage. What was happening in the early 2000s is likely different from what was happening in 2010, which, given the rapidity of the changing marketplace, is likely different from that occurring in 2015. In no area of academia are we likely to see the rate of change that we are seeing in digital and social media marketing.
Student Engagement
This special issue focuses specifically on student engagement via digital and social media. The engagement story begins with the article by Neier and Zayer, “Students’ Perceptions and Experiences of Social Media in Higher Education.” According to these authors, little research to date has focused on the student experience with regard to the integration of social media tools into the marketing curriculum. Continuing this line of thinking, “Engaging Students via Social Media: Is It Worth the Effort?” by Mostafa explores the relationships among social media use, student readiness to co-create, value, and satisfaction. The article by West, Moore, and Barry, “Beyond the Tweet: Using Twitter to Enhance Engagement, Learning, and Success Among First-Year Students,” reports on the results of a study in which several Twitter strategies were incorporated and linked to student engagement and course success. In “Increasing Student Engagement Using Asynchronous Learning Opportunities,” Northey, Bucic, Chylinski, and Govind used Facebook as an engagement tool in an asynchronous learning environment. Following these broad-based, overview articles on student engagement are two in-depth explications of classroom activities requiring student engagement with specific social media platforms and providers.
The final two articles in this special issue provide marketing educators with examples of marketing projects in which social media tools are used as a primary teaching tool. The contribution by Fowler and Thomas uses blogging as a learning process for linking theory and practice and assesses the blogging exercise in relation to individual student learning styles. Not only did the authors operationalize Kolb’s experiential learning model, the project also gave students the opportunity to practice blogging. Thus, this exercise captures both learning models and curriculum design in one project (Crittenden & Crittenden, 2015). Looking toward practice in the marketplace, Bal, Grewal, Mills, and Ottley provide an in-depth look at the Facebook fan page project created for local retailers in the community. Not only do students in the principles of marketing class create the fan page site, but they also have to drive both organic and paid traffic to the site and carefully assess the analytics provided by Facebook. As suggested by Spiller and Tuten (2015), the professors are weaving digital and social metrics into the marketing curriculum rather than creating an elective course offering in which to use digital and social media metrics. Importantly, this project also engages students in the actual practice of marketing by working with real companies in real time, which is what recruiters are looking for when it comes to hiring people who can challenge and improve a company’s approach to digital marketing (Dahlström & Edelman, 2013).
Digital Immigrants Engaging Digital Natives
As evidenced by the articles in both parts of this special issue, marketing academicians recognize the importance in integrating digital and social media marketing into the marketing curriculum. Digital Immigrants are engaging Digital Natives in a vast array of programs and courses. In doing so, these digital immigrant professors are enabling the digital native students to not only know how to use the digital platforms and providers but also how to use the tools effectively within the world of marketing practice. Educationally, it appears that technology is both an autonomous force and a tool largely under human control (Harrigan & Hulbert, 2011). The external force of technology in marketing is useful when it can be used to improve practice, and the improvement of practice behooves marketing educators to ensure that students of marketing know how to use the technology effectively.