Journal of Marketing Education

Marketing doctoral programs have evolved to sustain and improve the contributions of the marketing discipline. This research reviews the state of marketing doctoral programs and reports the results of a survey of marketing doctoral directors. The global survey of 251 directors provides a benchmark for describing and evaluating the composition of doctoral programs. Reporting the number of methodology courses and substantive marketing seminars in programs provides the opportunity to reflect upon the importance of each area in preparing students to make a contribution to the discipline. Consumer behavior is the dominant area of concentration with digital marketing and marketing strategy a distant second. The results provide an important foundation in assessing current doctoral programs for directors and all stakeholders to evaluate their program content relevant to the findings.

This study investigates the scholarly impact of marketing faculty across career stages. We examine citation counts and research metrics of attendees of the AMA Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium over a 22-year span. We find that students completing their degrees at highly-ranked PhD programs outperform peers early in their careers, but this advantage fades over time. We introduce the “Grand Slam” paper—the single most-cited publication of each scholar—which is generally responsible for a large share of total career citations. It is typically produced early in a scholar’s career and often published outside of the “premier” journals. We introduce the Grand Slam Outlier Effect (GSOE) as a measurement of this phenomenon. Overall, our findings provide new tools for the evaluation of research impact and provide valuable benchmarks for faculty research assessment, institutional comparisons, and career progression, and suggest strategies for faculty members and administrators.

A strong sense of belonging can meaningfully enrich students’ academic and social experiences. This study investigates the key academic and social factors that contribute to marketing students’ sense of belonging and examines how that sense of belonging affects critical academic outcomes, focusing primarily on the mediating role played by sense of belonging. Based on survey data from 526 undergraduate marketing majors, results show that faculty support, peer support, institutional support, and perceived fit significantly strengthen students’ sense of belonging. In turn, sense of belonging functions as a mediating mechanism that reduces dropout intentions and increases students’ likelihood of recommending their major and college. These findings highlight the processes through which support and fit shape critical academic and behavioral outcomes. They also offer actionable recommendations for improving retention and support by activating on-campus stakeholder groups that contribute uniquely to marketing students’ sense of belonging.

The rise of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is reshaping higher education, particularly in marketing, where creativity and strategic thinking are essential. To ensure its meaningful integration into learning environments, it is crucial to understand how students engage with GenAI. Drawing on Self-Regulated Learning Theory, this study examines (a) students’ motivations to integrate GenAI into the learning process; (b) the role of self-esteem and academic anxiety in shaping these motivations; and (c) how these factors affect students’ satisfaction with GenAI-supported learning. Using a mixed-methods approach, Study 1 qualitatively explored students’ motivations through a classroom project; Study 2 surveyed 250 students to test the impact of self-esteem and academic anxiety on motivations and satisfaction. Results show that students with high self-esteem perceive GenAI as enhancing creative thinking and enjoyment; they also report improved perceptions of academic performance, greater dependence on GenAI, fewer concerns about the legitimacy of AI-assisted work and automation risks. In contrast, students with high academic anxiety, while recognizing benefits in creative thinking and enjoyment, express heightened concerns about academic legitimacy and automation fears, potentially viewing GenAI as a threat. These findings underscore the importance of tailoring AI integration strategies to students’ psychological traits and motivations in marketing education.

This study explores how a structured comparative assignment, “You do it, GAI does it, you compare and reflect,” can support reflective learning in marketing education. Drawing on a dual methodology of systematic literature review and thematic analysis of student reflections, the article examines how students respond to generative artificial intelligence (GAI) when asked to compare their own environmental scan with one produced by GAI. The findings suggest that students are not passive users of GAI, but rather engage with it as a dialogic partner, one that challenges assumptions, prompts refinement, and deepens insight. The study identifies five key constructs that emerged from integrating insights from the literature and student reflections: reflective dialogues, situated judgment, model-based scaffolding, ethical engagement, and meta-learning. These constructs describe how students reflected on their learning, evaluated the role of context and human reasoning, recognized the value of structure in GAI output, and considered the ethical and metacognitive dimensions of using GAI in academic work. The study offers a conceptual model for understanding reflective engagement with GAI and outlines future research directions to build on this work. It concludes by highlighting the importance of designing assignments that promote critical reflection alongside technological integration.

This exploratory study examines how language use in student sales role-plays may reflect learned behaviors and adaptability, key components of sales performance that are often overlooked by rubric-based assessments. Drawing on social learning theory and adaptive selling theory, we analyze transcripts from undergraduate sales role-plays using five Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) dictionaries—Absolutist Thinking, Communion, Masculinity, Money, and Politeness —to explore potential relationships between language patterns and evaluator-assigned performance scores. Our results reveal that students who used more absolutist language received lower overall communication scores, while money-related language positively correlated with product discussion and solution quality. These findings suggest that certain word choices may signal cognitive rigidity or situational confidence, which impact evaluator perception beyond process completion alone. We argue for greater attention to adaptive communication in sales education and propose that linguistic analysis offers a promising tool for assessing how students internalize and apply sales concepts in dynamic, conversational contexts.