Abstract
To be honest and upfront, I start this writing without an answer to the question that is the title of this editor’s corner, nor do I know if I can ever answer that question. I have been thinking about this question a lot, though—or maybe I am intermingling my own future in marketing education with the future of marketing education in general. It might be that we cannot sort out the future of marketing education in general without convoluting that thinking with our own future as marketing educators as we might (or not) be helping to shape that future. With the future at the forefront of my thinking these days, I naturally began to dig into others’ thoughts on the future of education.
As is the norm for anytime I begin to dig into a topic online, I was immediately enthralled with some of what we tend to refer as the popular or trade press. In a post on Educationise, Shabbir (2020) noted the rapid change in the world of education and offered eight predictions for the next decade:
Online learning will continue to grow;
Personalized learning will be the norm;
Artificial intelligence will revolutionize education;
Virtual and augmented reality will transform education,
Learning will be lifelong;
The role of teachers will change;
Competency-based education will gain traction; and
Education will become more global.
As I thought about each of these predictions, my mind went to some of the articles that we have published over the past several years in the Journal of Marketing Education (JME). The award-winning article by Schlegelmilch (2020) immediately came to mind in terms of Predictions 1, 5, and 8. In that article, online learning is at the forefront of what Schlegelmilch refers to as a paradigmatic change in business education. Layering on the growing influence of Asia and the reemergence of European business education, we see business education that has become more global. With the online learning and business model competition, Schlegelmilch offers a radical idea which he refers to as “degrees for rent.” In this bit of radical thinking, lifelong learning takes place in a subscription (rental) model where the opportunity for learning never ends.
This got me to thinking harder about the eight predictions and the JME, all while continuing my online reading about the future of education. I ran across an article in Forbes, and the word “fun” captured my attention. In the article, Phillips (2023) wanted educators to remember that joy and excitement (aka “fun”) are vital components of learning. In today’s world, building joy and excitement into the educational system means that educators need to be innovative and resilient. Phillips (2023) suggested that innovation and resilience can occur by educators leaning into the technologies and learning environments that emerged during the pandemic. This, of course, brought to mind the #pandemicpedagogy special issue of the JME edited by Mitchell et al. (2022). As well, the journal has been at the forefront of publishing articles about technology, with a double issue on digital disruption in 2019 and numerous regular issue contributions. Looking back, in terms of the technology-related Predictions 3 and 4, Crittenden et al. (2019) referred to the digitalization in business as a fast-moving tsunami and suggested that artificial intelligence and virtual and augmented reality (among other technologies) were altering the marketing mix and would play a prominent role in facilitating learning.
As my contemplative and reflective thinking goes with the writing of these editor corners, it hit me that this current issue of the JME also falls squarely within the third and fourth predictions. This was, of course, serendipitous as the Table of Contents for this issue evolved prior to my reading the post by Shabbir (2020). Once again, I am made proud of the contributions our academy of educational scholars continues to make to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in marketing education.
This Issue
Leading off this current issue, Abhijit Guha, Dhruv Grewal, and Stephen Atlas, in “Generative AI and Marketing Education: What the Future Holds,” argue that generative AI can significantly shape and improve marketing education. Not only will learning experiences be enhanced (could that infer fun, joy, or excitement and maybe even some personalization as per Prediction 2?), but marketing educators will also better prepare students for future marketing jobs. Is this possibly where competency-based education (Prediction 7) will become mainstream in marketing education?
Continuing with the technology integration, Margaret Keiper, Jon Nachtigal, Joshua Lupinek, and Rusty Stough investigate marketing faculty’s intention to use marketing analytics technology. The marketing analytics tools explored in “Marketing Analytics Curriculum Integration: An Exploration of Resource Availability for Faculty” include data acquisition (e.g., Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, MTurk) data analysis (e.g., R, SPSS, SAS), web-based (e.g., Google Analytics, SEO, ChatGPT), dashboards (e.g., Tableau, Qualtrics, Google), customer relationship management and email (e.g., Salesforce, HubSpot, Constant Contact), and social media (e.g., Facebook, TikTok, YouTube). Key implications for the use of marketing analytics technologies in the classroom focus on the need for time, technical, and administrative support for faculty members. Interestingly, findings from the research may allude to the Prediction 6 that the role of teachers will change. Are we as marketing educators prepared to change and integrate technology into our teaching and, importantly, are our institutions of higher education committed to supporting this change?
In “Digital Marketing and Analytics Education: A Systematic Review,” Christine Ye, Yuna Kim, and Yoon-Na Cho continue with the technology integration focus by reviewing past pedagogical research. Their findings suggest that marketing faculty have already changed by introducing important skill sets into the marketing curriculum. These three educational scholars anticipate that advancements in technology will go so far as to eliminate boundaries within the business school as well as across the entire institution. Thus, it seems that technology has changed, and will continue to change, the role of teachers in our classrooms (Prediction 6) as the classroom becomes more inclusive of students with different backgrounds.
The next two articles in this current issue continue with the spotlight on social media marketing. Sally Laurie, Kathleen Mortimer, Matthew Holtz, and Billy Little suggest, in “Enhancing Students’ Understanding of Social Media Marketing and the Use of Advertising and Public Relations Terminology within IMC: A Participatory Action Research Project,” that the rapid growth of social media marketing has created a challenge for both industry and academia to stay current. The turf war resulting from this challenging growth often leaves our students in a state of confusion. Are marketing educators afraid to question conventional wisdom and reimagine the possibilities as alluded to by Phillips (2023), and what does this imply in terms of Prediction 6?
Nicole Beachum and Alexandra Krallman also refer to the need to bridge the gap between industry and academia in “Simulations or Client Projects? Aligning Social Media Skills Development to Industry Expectations.” Their results show the critical need for both social media meta-skills and technical skills and that client-based projects do a better job with the meta-skills than simulations alone. Importantly, the authors offer practical implications for helping marketing educators prepare their students for entry-level jobs. Are the authors implying that a competency-based approach (Prediction 7) should gain traction in marketing education?
Wrapping up this issue is the commentary by Janna Parker and Kevin James, “Social Media Marketing: A Commentary on Teaching and Learning.” In their commentary, the authors provide an overview of years of research in marketing education that shows marketing educators have embraced digitalization in our curriculum. They end their commentary by issuing a call for marketing educators to continue to stay at the forefront of teaching and learning in all things related to digital marketing. In reading this commentary with Shabbir’s (2020) predictions in mind, I was struck by the evidence suggesting marketing educators are fulfilling the predictions and they are publishing the educational scholarship to share the knowledge gained through their educational research efforts.
Conclusion
While my intent when I began writing this editor’s corner had not been to follow the eight predictions so closely, the stories we tell in our scholarship of teaching and learning in the JME began to fit quite nicely within these predictions. As I read and reflected on the future of education, in general, and marketing education, in particular, a Journal of Marketing editorial by V. Kumar came to mind. In this editorial, Kumar (2018) referred to the important phenomenon of transformation occurring in the marketing discipline. This transformation is rooted in data and innovation, and Kumar said that our teaching community plays an important role in this transformative process. Three key areas identified by Kumar (2018) within the teaching community are (a) curriculum—reevaluating marketing topics covered in the class to ensure needed adaptation to changing marketplace, (b) continuing education—regular updating of our marketing knowledge base (e.g., short course, certificate programs, digital badges), and (c) self-learning (e.g., ready reference-like resources online, online user groups, practitioner forums).
While I do not have an exact answer for my original question about the future of marketing education, I think our contributors in the JME have shown that we strive to be transformative marketing educators. It is clear that our agility as marketing educators is critical for the future of marketing education. When looking back at the popular/trade press articles that shaped my thinking in the editorial and then framed within the transformation phenomenon, I think I can safely say that our transformation as marketing educators is rooted in our collective abilities to be innovative, agile, and fun.