Introducing the Macromarketing Pedagogy Section of the Journal of Macromarketing

Background

With this issue, we officially begin a new section in the Journal with a focus on developing and sharing effective macromarketing pedagogy. This section is intended to meet growing demand for tools that assist educators in successfully preparing both undergraduate and graduate students for a changing world. Such tools lead students to identify existing macromarketing-related challenges, sort through the complex systems in which they occur, and develop critical thinking skills to contribute to solutions. It is our hope that this section also elevates the teaching of macromarketing to where it becomes a mainstream marketing focus.

A strong case for purposeful attention to macromarketing pedagogy was made by Shapiro (2008) who offered a controversies-based approach to teaching macromarketing and called for a macromarketing textbook to support in-class learning. In Shapiro (2012), he continued his call for additional pedagogical materials, and reviewed the recently published macromarketing-oriented textbook written by Peterson (2012), a welcome addition to the pedagogy toolkit. He also offered an important retrospective on the then 40-year effort to integrate the macromarketing perspective into the broader marketing discipline.

There have been just two articles in the Journal since Shapiro (2012) with a sufficiently sharp focus on macromarketing pedagogy to warrant inclusion of the term in the abstract. In Radford, Hunt, and Andrus (2015), the value of experiential learning is explored as a complement to traditional case-oriented teaching, with critical thinking skills and systems-based awareness as key benefits. Separately, Shapiro et al. (2021) summarize the challenge of imbuing marketing education with macromarketing and offer four distinct examples of how it can be done. This work led to the establishment of Pedagogy Place, an online repository of macromarketing-oriented teaching materials open to all who are interested. It is located at http://pedagogy.macromarketing.org/.

It is on the heels of these efforts that this new section of the Journal begins. As noted in the Call for Papers to the 2019 Macromarketing Conference, “Each summer true believers in the macromarketing faith from universities all over the world gather together at an annual meeting for both spiritual revival and intellectual co-production. They then disperse from when they came, universities at which very little, if any, aspect of macromarketing is taught, either openly or covertly” (Shapiro and Francis 2018, p.14). This reminder resulted in eight pedagogy papers presented in multiple conference sessions, a record for the conference. It is clear that momentum for macromarketing pedagogy is underway.

What to Expect

In order to make this new section as actionable to educators as possible, we aim for the included materials to take one of the formats described below. These contributions from macromarketing thinkers should provide guidance to colleagues on how each tool, case, or subject could be employed, making them immediately useful in the classroom. Together, accepted materials will serve as a cumulative resource to which educators can turn for ideas and inspiration for incorporating macromarketing principles into any course. Thus, while we offer descriptors here, we also suggest that interested contributors ensure that their work carries the tone and content that will make the materials attractive to their colleagues and illustrative of the potential applications that result.

Contributions may take one of these formats:

Reviews of textbooks and other materials that illustrate how they can be used to elevate the macromarketing focus of specific courses. Such reviews should, as appropriate, differentiate between commonly used materials and those reviewed, as well as illustrate the pathways to generating value for specific marketing courses.

Welcome!

With this, we open the call widely, encouraging our colleagues to dig deeply into their course methods and knowledge base to help broaden this resource for both current and future macromarketing educators. We look forward to the day when this section is no longer needed – when the teaching of macromarketing topics is so ingrained in the teaching of marketing itself that one need not look for specialized tools or ideas to get started. For now, it is our honor to build on the work of Stan Shapiro whose enthusiasm and motivation to establish this effort is unparalleled. Any true change in marketing education that addresses the focus of macromarketing will be the result of his tireless efforts to transform us all into macromarketing educators.