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Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2003 16:17:58 +1100
From: "Bell, George" <george.bell at anu.edu.au>
Subject: TEACHING - International standards for marketing education

I would like the help of marketing educators on the ELMAR list to help me
benchmark best practice in Marketing Education.

In my years as a marketing practitioner, a student of marketing and now a
marketing educator, I have not seen any agreed set of core skills for the
"profession" of marketing.   It is difficult therefore even to define what a
marketing professional is.

The accountancy profession has internationally recognised core skills for
which they insist students gain a mastery, before they are able to call
themselves professional accountants, the same goes for engineers, lawyers
architects etc.

Disappointingly, the Australian Marketing Institute does not have any
guidelines that universities can adopt to help them in creating rigorous and
relevant courses. It seems that the creation of marketing courses is left up
to individual universities and marketing educators.

I understand that the British Marketing Institute has a set of accredited
requirements that enable students to become certified practicing marketers. I
would be grateful if one of the ELMAR list participants could point out where
similar accreditation is in place.

My first instinct is to list the following core subjects that I think would
equip students with essential skills to navigate a successful career in
Marketing:

An introductory course in Marketing,
Marketing Planning,
Consumer behaviour,
Marketing Communication,
Marketing research.

I have looked at subject descriptions for additional courses such as Services
marketing, New product marketing, Sales force management, International
marketing, Strategic marketing, Relationship marketing, E-Marketing, Marketing
law, Social Marketing.  This list is not exhaustive and they are all
interesting and educational but whether they should be regarded as essential
is up for debate.

Possibly I am ignorant of a key set of internationally recognised core skills
or benchmarks for marketing excellence. If this is the case I ask your
indulgence and please let me know where they are in order that I can chase
them down.

As a follow up to this enquiry I would like to make sure that my students have
access to the best and most evidence based marketing theory available.
Therefore I would appreciate help on developing a list of universities that
would be running courses that would be that would be recognised as world's
best practice in the field of marketing education, from which I can take a
lead.

George Bell
Marketing Lecturer
School of Business and Information Management
Australian National University
Canberra ACT 2601
Australia
+61 (2) 61254854

RESPONSE #1

Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 15:34:59 +0530
From: "R.Nargundkar" <rnargundkar at iiml.ac.in>

Ours is a top Indian Business school. I can give you our (my?) view on the
marketing skills necessary for survival in the jungle out there (of course
with the caveat that courses are not always guranteed to build skills-they
could be entirely theoretical and the student could be nonplussed when he
encounters an actual decision situation).

We (I) feel that marketing has/needs a context. Core concepts are universal,
but application has to be tailored to the context. For instance, a high-tech
service channel may be accepted in the U.S. but may find few takers in West
Africa or India.

The core courses of course include the Standard Kotlerian curriculum
(whether or not you use the text), and usually electives have an overview of
Branding, Channels, Sales, Direct Marketing, Packaged Goods Marketing,
Durables Marketing, B to B marketing, Challenges (context-based) of
International Marketing, Rural versus Urban marketing, Media, Marketing
Research (currently we also include analysis using SPSS in this), CRM
applications, Analytical skills useful for planning and (even more so for)
implementation of plans, drivers of profit and loss (for example credit
policy, stockouts), and consumer behaviour (stated, predicted and actual)
and its drivers. The titles of electives vary based on the person teaching
it. About 5 electives are recommended for a student concentrating in the
marketing area. We hope that skills are built through team projects in every
course and through field research for the marketing research course.

Not sure if that answers your query. Hope it helps.
Regards,
Dr. Rajendra Nargundkar
Associate Professor of Marketing
Indian Institute of Management
Prabandh Nagar, Off Sitapur Road
LUCKNOW 226 013
email: rnargundkar at iiml.ac.in

RESPONSE #2

D

ate: Wed, 02 Apr 2003 11:59:04 -0500
From: "Richard Plank" <richard.plank at wmich.edu>
Subject: RESPONSE - Intl Standards for Mkting Education
I think you raise some interesting points.  However, as a point of
discussion I think needing empirical verification (if I can use that
term) there is probably more skill building around then you think
and I think it has been going on for a lot longer then you think.
For example, in professional selling programs around the country
(probably about a dozen and growing), I would argue that all of my
colleagues are explicitly focused on the skills.  My perception is
that virtually all of us still buy into the traditional paradigm
from the liberal arts, many of us see our roles as both traditional
"plus".

At WMU which has some 5000+ undergraduate majors in the BBA, there
is some focus directly on skills in most programs.  And yes we
change how we do things much as you suggest.  However, our students
are interested in learning skills and yes you are right some don't
take criticism very well, but giving and taking criticism is, in
fact, a skill and something some of us have explicitly considered.
How do we get our students to want to learn skills?  Like the old
cliche vote early and often, we address this issue early and often.
Employers who recruit our students also stress it.  Most of our
employer partners recognize the value of both the liberal arts and
the skill piece to business education.  Education is a process more
similar to other processes then different and we get synergistic
value by working together, coordinating and synchronizing things,
and yes we don't agree either, but something is better then nothing
and over time we make improvements as we come together on issues.

I know you have been hitting on this student evaluation process,
and I agree in principle with you, but as a full prof I really don't
worry much about any more, as our measures are typical and don't
measure learning. However some of our younger folks who are more
concerned about these measures are doing quite well in spite of some
heavy does of skill building, so I guess it is how you do it.  It is
possible in this environment to do this.

I would be interested to see comments from our colleagues across
the country on this, needless to say it is a provocative topic.

Dick Plank
Professor of Marketing
Western Michigan Unversity

RESPONSE #3

Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2003 08:34:52 +1000
From: Nick McClaren <nicmac at deakin.edu.au>
Subject: RESPONSE - Intl Standards for Mkting Education

When doing some teacher training, some time ago, I was given a reading
about "Sabre-Toothed Tiger Hunting". I can no longer recall the author, but
it went like something like this:

In the cave person days, the sabre-toothed tiger presented a huge problem.
Basically, these animals ate cave people at will, especially the younger
members of society. A committee of cave persons finally decided that
something had to be done. Since skills training was thought to be required,
a skills programme was developed and implemented to train the population in
sabre-toothed tiger hunting.

Over time, the sabre-toothed tiger attacks on the cave people were less
successful. This decline in the number of attacks was helpful since it
allowed more time for those more-experienced teachers to research the
habits of the sabre-toothed tiger. Greater knowledge and understanding of
the sabre-toothed tiger led to improved skills in the hunting of them.
These skills and knowledge were passed from generation to generation.
Sabre-toothed tiger hunting became firmly embedded in the curricula.

One day, a teacher had the audacity to ask: "Why is sabre-toothed tiger
hunting on the curricula?"

The responses ranged from: it has always been on the curricula; we could
not image it not being on the curricula; it is central to the way we teach;
our other programmes were developed from the earliest sabre-toothed tiger
hunting programme; look at the knowledge we now possess about sabre-toothed
tigers; it is important for us to pass on skills; these skills are useful
in other ways; etc, etc, etc. But nobody said it was still taught because
there might still be sabre-toothed tigers

.

I always find J. Scott Armstrong's contributions insightful and useful.  I
hope mine was too.
Nick McClaren
Deakin University

RESPONSE #4

Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 10:56:42 -0400
From: "Elizabeth J. Wilson" <liz.wilson at bc.edu>
Subject: RESPONSE - Intl Standards for Mkting Education

I agree with Scott Armstrong's conclusion (posted on ELMAR 4/1/03) "In
short, skill training is not welcome in schools that use teacher
evaluations and student grading."  I have been teaching UG Marketing
Research for several years; the primary reason why I like teaching this
course  is because I can help students learn skills - methodology,
analysis, interpretation, stats, SPSS, etc.  Skills are practiced and
learned via a semester long project  as well as other writing/data
analysis assignments.

And as Armstrong observes, students (on average) do not respond on the
teacher evaluation item (of the course evaluation) as positively as my
institution expects.  BUT, I have had numerous students contact me after
the course (a semester or two later) letting me know how useful the
course/project experience was in helping them land a job because they
had skills above and beyond other applicants ... Because the student
evaluation is (seemingly) the dominant indicator of teacher performance
at my university, I've added a new section to my teaching portfolio in
an attempt to quantify/track these results for the future. 

Elizabeth J. Wilson, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Marketing
Carroll School of Management
Boston College
617.552.3142 (phone)
617.552.6677 (fax)
http://www2.bc.edu/~woodsiel/