A structural model of the drivers of online education is proposed and tested. The findings help to identify the interrelated nature of the lectures delivered via technology outside of the traditional classroom, the importance of mentoring, the need to develop course structure, the changing roles for instructors and students, and the importance of designing and delivering course content on the enhancement of the online learning experience. The results support an integrated, building-block approach for developing successful online programs and courses.

Online education has created a “virtual community” learning environment. Effective assessment of this new learning environment is paramount to providing quality education and may provide insights to effective management of virtual communities in the business world. A model of online education effectiveness is proposed and then empirically investigated. Dimensions included in this model are student-to-student interactions, student-to-instructor interactions, instructor support and mentoring, information delivery technology, course content, and course structure. Measures of these dimensions were then analyzed and found to be significant predictors of the variance in students’ evaluations of the global effectiveness of the online educational experience.

The interactivity of the new electronic media requires that a database-driven segmentation approach to communication strategy be employed to take advantage of its uniqueness. To accomplish this, firms must develop ways of collecting information at the individual level by traditional and/or electronic means, and of using that data to create informationintensive customer communication strategies. These strategies should then employ the new media to generate interaction with customers. We term this approach 'Interactive IMC'. In this article we propose and illustrate an interactive IMC process model.

Customer relationship management (CRM) technology provides a strategic opportunity to better understand customers. Virtually unexplored is research targeting CRM adoption by small businesses. This exploratory study investigates the factors that influence the adoption of CRM technology by small entrepreneurial retail firms. A key premise is that `entrepreneurial' retail store owners can be differentiated from `owner-managers' through their adoption of CRM. A preliminary model is developed and tested through a sample of 386 small hardware retailers responding to a mail questionnaire. The findings show that CRM adopters had higher product class knowledge, a greater risk orientation, saw a stronger relative advantage, perceived higher environmental complexity and hostility, and had a more open business change orientation.

The growing field of marketing ethics research is investigating the many aspects of marketing that have an ethical dimension. This article provides a systematic review of this research by (1) developing a categorization scheme for marketing ethics research, and (2) by analyzing—via content analysis—all journal articles, which have been revealed by a major search engine for the time span 1981 to 2005, in terms of quantity, nature and scope, topical areas, and publication outlets. While the results indicate an increase in the number of publications, marketing ethics became less represented in the mainstream literature. Much progress has been made in areas such as improving our understanding of marketers' values, marketers' ethical decision-making processes, and cross-cultural related issues. Societal issues and basic normative questions attracted substantially less interest from researchers.

The Journal of Marketing Education (JME) was launched almost 35 years ago. In this invited article, we review JME's long and distinguished history. For historical perspective, we will lean heavily on the words of JME editors (including special issue editors); this focus adds context for the past and helps project the future. As a descriptive tool, we highlight key trends as they emerged over the years, and we offer a categorization rubric for simplifying cross-era comparisons. We also spotlight the most active authors over the years, note JME outstanding articles of the year, and highlight the most frequently cited articles. In presenting this historical review, we first discuss the methodology used for creating categorical areas and then present the findings for each of the four eras. We then provide an overview of each area and cross-era trend assessment. And finally, we conclude with future research directions. Keywords course content, marketing education issues, methodology, marketing careers/advising, skills/traits development in marketing education, education administration issues, learning approaches and issues, experiential learning techniques, ethics, technology in classroom, principles of marketing

With many business schools paying lip service to the concept of professional training, this article attempts to provide some direction for moving from an academic or liberal-arts-oriented marketing department to a professional marketing program. The transformation to a professional school perspective can be facilitated by marketing programs examining other professional schools to identify how these programs differ from their current programs. A professional school approach to marketing education meets the needs of both students and employers while providing the department with a comparative advantage as the business education environment becomes more competitive and challenging.

Relationship marketing, a concept that focuses on attracting, maintaining, and building business relationships, has enhanced the profitability of businesses. The core of the relationship marketing approach in business is that resources are directed toward strengthening ties to existing customers on the proven premise that maintaining existing customers is less costly than is attracting new ones. Relationship marketing models have been developed in a wide range of settings and evidence exists suggesting that it is a successful approach. This article explores the concept of adapting the business relationship marketing framework to the challenges of college student retention. The student retention and relationships marketing literatures are reviewed and parallels are drawn. The relationship marketing model presents a different way of viewing student retention, provides a different perspective on retention strategies, and provides an economic justification for implementing retention programs. Retaining students in post secondary programs has been a national concern for decades (Braxton,