Journal of Marketing Education

This article introduces a selective approach to curriculum integration that consists of linking the subject matter of a new course with knowledge and skills acquired in two or more completed courses to create a deeper and richer learning experience. Benefits and challenges of the selective approach and an example of implementing an integrative project in a marketing elective are discussed. As part of the project, students in the undergraduate branding course design a marketing brochure to be used by the client, the marketing department, for student communication and recruiting purposes. This experiential team project benefits students who had the opportunity to apply new concepts and skills acquired in the branding class as well as reinforce consumer behavior and marketing research knowledge acquired in prior courses. The article discusses contributions and suggestions for project implementation.

This study introduces marketing educators to the Madeline Hunter Direct Instruction Model (HDIM) as an approach to significantly and substantially improve student learning through course-embedded assessment.The effectiveness of the method is illustrated in three different marketing courses taught by three different marketing professors. The results demonstrate double-digit improvement in student achievement. Examples of application exercises are provided. The HDIM offers a viable tool for use in an environment in which marketing faculties are increasingly required to demonstrate course-embedded assessment as part of annual review, promotion, and tenure processes.

In response to political, social, and competitive forces, many firms are developing sustainable marketing strategies. Marketing educators can play an important role in assisting these firms by developing curricula that build the knowledge and skills required to enable marketing graduates to contribute to sustainable marketing efforts. Marketing graduates must not only understand but also be equipped to apply a sustainable marketing thought process to the challenges businesses face today. The authors assist in this goal by (a) presenting key learning objectives in the area of sustainable marketing, (b) describing learning activities that will help students achieve the learning objectives identified, and (c) providing resources that not only support the learning objectives but also connect them to traditional marketing concepts, as well as to concepts from other disciplines.

This article outlines the development of a project-based capstone marketing course, specifically designed to provide marketing students with an international community service learning experience. It differs significantly from previous studies, which focus on integrating service learning into existing marketing courses and on helping local nonprofit organizations. The focus of the course outlined in this article is on strengthening marketing-related competencies acquired through earlier coursework; developing broader work-related competencies, such as cross-functional thinking, teamwork, communication, and cultural sensitivity; and operating a collegiate chapter of a nonprofit engaged in international community service. The course described is well aligned with other significant trends in undergraduate business education: it is multidisciplinary, it emphasizes collaborative learning, it is founded on carefully articulated learning outcomes, and learning success is assessed. It provides a transformational experience and prepares students for a global and diverse workplace. A framework for course design is presented, and a set of pedagogical materials is provided that other marketing educators can use to develop and launch a significant international, multidisciplinary community service learning course.

Marketing students expect feedback on papers and assignments; and many professors expend much time and effort providing individualized and substantive comments in response to student work. Doing so is challenging and time consuming when faced with large class sizes, high student—faculty ratios, and communications-intensive courses. Furthermore, instructors observe that though students often express desire for feedback, some do not appear to use it. The results of this study suggest that when an instructor provides a lot of feedback, as opposed to a small amount of feedback on an assignment, students receive it negatively. The results also suggest that students respond no more positively than when offered no feedback comments at all. Results suggest that if an instructor wants students to be receptive to the feedback provided because they believe it is fair, because they like the instructor, or because they feel the instructor has a positive impression of them, the instructor should provide only a modest amount of feedback or a moderate number of clear and specific feedback comments. Alternatively, an instructor who wants to offer students a greater amount of feedback needs to allow them to revise and resubmit their assignments.

Growing as an educator takes hard work and commitment. It requires the educator to engage in regular, objective self-examinations of instructional beliefs and behaviors. Although this task can be daunting, and unwieldy, due to the complexity of the teaching—learning exchange, it can also be undertaken in a systematic manner. This article proposes a framework of five elements that appear essential for assessing instructor beliefs and behaviors: content, learner, educator, social setting, and physical environment where the instruction takes place. A teaching-style audit is demonstrated to show how the systematic and thoughtful assessment of an educator’s teaching philosophy and style can be undertaken. This research contributes to the professional development of marketing educators by (a) providing a unifying framework to guide reflective teaching practice and (b) proposing that an auditing approach should be used to reveal incomplete or underdeveloped areas of instructional belief and identify inconsistent or incongruent teaching styles.

Competence in pedagogy and research is the sine qua non of marketing educators’ careers. However, there is evidence in the literature that marketing academics focus more on and are more competent in research than teaching. This imbalance, in a majority of instances, can be traced back to doctoral education. Doctoral programs in marketing are designed to prepare students for becoming successful marketing professors. An important component of becoming a successful professor is learning how to teach effectively. Yet doctoral programs fall short of providing adequate pedagogical training. Consequently, marketing educators, from their doctoral days through their professorial careers, have a responsibility to continuously work on their competence in teaching. However, how can marketing educators in general and marketing doctoral students in particular develop pedagogical competence (PC)? In this article, the authors deconstruct PC into five components: content knowledge (or knowledge of subject matter), knowledge of pedagogical approaches, course management capability, classroom management capability, and student management capability. Next, they discuss how individuals can develop PC and the implications of PC for marketing education. Specifically, the authors discuss issues and implications for doctoral students, doctoral programs, marketing departments, and marketing faculty. Finally, the authors conclude with a discussion of the contributions of the article to marketing academe.

With firms focused on increasing efficiency and effectiveness in today’s marketing and sales environment, it is crucial that salesforce training methods facilitate greater adoption of salesforce automation technology. Given the growth in sales education at colleges and universities, firms are looking to recruit their frontline marketing and sales personnel direct from college. Thus, there is an opportunity for marketing educators to influence these future marketing and sales professionals’ attitudes toward technology via course instruction. This study combines technology-mediated learning and technology acceptance theories in the marketing sales education domain to show how two different contextual learning modes affected marketing and sales students’ perceptions of technology. A total of 252 marketing/sales students from an Account and Territory Management class were taught to use a salesforce automation tool using two different contextual learning approaches. Findings showed that when students were taught using an approach involving a realistic sales scenario, their perceptions of technology usefulness were greater than if the course instruction was delivered using a systematic task-based learning approach. This supports the view that the learning context of technology training matters. For students of marketing and sales, the implication is the development of perceptions that make them more willing to use technology in the workplace.

An “information privacy gap” exists in marketing education, with little research addressing the state of information privacy and how appropriate privacy strategies and tactics should be communicated to students. The primary purpose of this article is to provide educators an understanding of information privacy and how they can incorporate this evolving and important topic into the marketing curriculum. To accomplish this goal, a comprehensive information privacy framework is presented, and specific recommendations are provided to assist marketing educators in their efforts to expand consumer information privacy issues in their courses.