Considering a Marketing Degree? Student Perceptions of General Versus Specialized Majors

Abstract

Many business colleges offer specialized marketing majors in addition to the general marketing major. Given the extra resources needed to maintain multiple majors, in a time when higher education budgets are being strained, a need exists to understand how students make choices among these majors and what students perceive to be the advantages of general marketing majors versus specialized marketing majors. Using social cognitive theory, we examine how students make selections among choices in marketing-related majors, focusing on influence and compatibility factors. We surveyed 608 marketing majors representing one general and five specialized marketing majors. The findings indicate that, compared with general marketing majors, students’ choice of a specialized major is significantly more likely to be influenced by faculty and other students in the major. Also, the results show that students rate specialized majors better than a general marketing major in terms of self-efficacy, culture, and professional fit. On the other hand, students rate the general marketing major better than specialized majors in flexibility. These results have implications for supporting the priorities of students in both general and specialized majors.

Exploring Students’ Motivation to Participate in Entrepreneurial Marketing Education

“…What is accepted is that there is increasing importance placed on analytical skills (Hopkins et al, 2011; Kurtzke & Setkute, 2021; Schlee & Karns, 2017) and it is suggested that improvements to marketing curricula could be afforded through greater application of key skills demanded in the work environment (Hartley et al, 2019; Hopkins et al, 2011) which includes both the “hard” factual side of marketing alongside “softer” skills (Lemken & Siguaw, 2021). The need for marketing curricula to evolve and remain relevant to students and employers is frequently emphasized (Atkin et al, 2022). Indeed, ME, in both a business and non-business student context, suffers from a perceived gap between what is taught and what is practiced (McArthur et al, 2017), and many researchers have lamented its lack of impact on other disciplines (Harrigan & Hulbert, 2011).…”