Journal of Marketing Education

The rise of business schools around the globe has been a success story. However, paradigmatic changes in technology, fundamental shifts in values and major demographic developments have put business schools on the defensive. Students question whether business schools still adequately prepare them for their future careers, managers are concerned about the relevance of business schools’ research output, and some stakeholders even debate whether business schools prioritize profit and neoliberal values over societal needs. Consequently, there is an urgent need for business schools to enhance their legitimacy. This article offers a pathway to the strategic renewal of business schools. Using a Socratic questioning approach, we propose a guide to review a business school’s key strategic decisions. This offers insights on selecting a competitive positioning that aligns external stakeholder demands with the resources and capabilities of a business school.

College graduates earn higher wages than noncollege graduates, but questions remain about the degree to which this wage difference is driven by learning in college or by the signal that the degree sends to employers. Based on a review of the literature, I propose that the value of a marketing degree is much less related to learning marketing than it is to the business school’s brand equity. A business school with strong brand equity can be more selective in admissions decision making, which in turn leads to increased graduate success and further builds the school’s brand equity. This brand-centric perspective resolves several persistent questions including why student evaluations of teaching are so important in business schools, why improvements in learning are underfunded, and why marketing education research is under-emphasized. Implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.

“What ‘is’ marketing?” Perusal of the marketing literature reveals that “marketing” has been defined and characterized in multiple, often inconsistent but typically ambiguous, ways that have evolved over time. The present essay argues that characterizing marketing as a transdisciplinary body of knowledge formally captures its essence and possesses numerous implications for marketing education as well as marketing practice. Following a brief review of how marketing has been conceptualized in the past, the benefits and challenges of conceptualizing marketing as a transdisciplinary body of knowledge are discussed from a paradigmatic perspective.

The perseverance and agility to be transformative marketing educators have been identified to be critical for the future of marketing education. In developing this observation further, this study conceptualizes the transformative marketing education (TME) concept and defines it. Furthermore, adopting a management educational institution perspective, this study proposes a framework for the implementation of TME. The proposed framework identifies the drivers of TME to be the marketing education triad, comprised of the management education institution, the marketing learners, and the external environment. The study identifies the outcomes of implementing TME as fourfold: (a) an interdisciplinary activity, (b) a value-creating activity, (c) an insights-centric activity, and (d) a “brain retrain” activity. The study also offers some variables that could moderate the outcomes of implementing TME. For the drivers and outcomes, this study offers propositions that can be tested. In addition, potential strategic implications of the TME outcomes are identified as (a) personalizing marketing education, (b) enhancing student engagement, and (c) establishing closer stakeholder connections. The study concludes by identifying a research agenda for TME.

Employers expect university graduates seeking entry-level marketing jobs to be well-versed in contemporary topics, such as sustainable development, digital marketing, big data, analytics, and the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in both traditional and contemporary marketing domains. Because many of today’s cutting-edge technological advances are deeply relevant to marketing, marketing educators must reconsider how they prepare marketing students to enter the technology-enabled world and workforce. The authors propose that marketing educators adapt their teaching of foundational marketing concepts to reflect the technology-augmented marketing era. Such reconsiderations span multiple arenas, including how classes are conducted, which topics are covered, how assignments are crafted, and how technology—and AI and generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) in particular—will transform future marketing roles. The authors also suggest ways educators can modify and reimagine existing marketing courses to prepare students for a successful entry into technology-enabled marketing jobs, as exemplified with some sample class assignments.

Ethics, social responsibility, and sustainability are important areas to address in marketing education. While they are distinct constructs, the terms are often used interchangeably. Understanding their differences and relationships to one another is important in teaching these subjects. Ethical decision-making is based on organizational principles, values, and norms and is often more internal and covers areas beyond social responsibility and sustainability. Social responsibility is more externally focused on the duty to maximize a positive impact upon all stakeholders. Sustainability relates to how the natural environment impacts social and economic well-being. While ethics is the foundation for social responsibility and sustainability decisions, these constructs are linked by conceptual and operational relationships. Insights are provided as to how these topics are being taught and how research is being conducted in each area.