Linking Practitioner Dilemmas and Research Metrics Across an Integrated Marketing Curriculum

Observations from faculty who teach marketing indicate that a relatively small percentage of students have strong interest in quantitative analysis and many come into the marketing major out of the misperception that it is light on math. In reality, over 98% of marketing professionals use data during their decision-making processes, while 80% of marketing-related problems use data at least in part to be solved. This article outlines a teaching model for analytical decision-making that links marketing problems with marketing research. It is stressed that while only a small percentage of marketing students become marketing researchers all will become consumers of information that is generated by research. Outlined herein is a dual-stage curriculum approach focused on preparing students to be knowledgeable consumers of research by incorporating a problem and metric-based pedagogy. This design is supported by data from 185 marketing professionals who contribute commonly asked “on the job” problems along with frequently used metrics that marketing students should learn as they train to be future marketing professionals.