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ERIC Number: EJ1167336
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2017
Pages: 21
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1835-9132
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Does Marketing Need Better Marketing? A Creative Approach to Understanding Student Perceptions of the Marketing Major
Cobb-Walgren, Cathy J.; Pilling, Bruce K.; Barksdale, Hiram C., Jr.
e-Journal of Business Education and Scholarship of Teaching, v11 n1 p97-117 2017
Marketing is often used to correct misperceptions and better align them with reality. Ironically, the discipline of marketing itself currently faces a misalignment between negative public perceptions of the field and the reality of marketing's vital role as a business function. The question this study addresses is: does this misalignment carry over to the academic community, and specifically, undergraduate business students? This paper surveys graduating business students, using semantic differential scaling to measure degree of interest and amount of learning in the nine core undergraduate business courses. The paper then focuses on the core marketing course to examine perceptions of both the marketing field and the marketing major. An innovative qualitative technique using word clouds reveals several diametrically opposing associations that students make of marketing (easy/hard, essential/useless, love/hate) both within the group of marketing majors and between majors and non-majors. Given that today's business students will likely become tomorrow's business leaders, this study suggests that the marketing discipline may need to do a better job of marketing itself to create a consistent and positive image of the profession.
Australian Business Education Research Association. PO Box 408, Mapleton, Queensland 4560, Australia. e-mail: editor@ejbest.org; Web site: http://www.ejbest.org/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A