Marketing, Management, and Entrepreneurship Education

Introduction

Marketing Education is the commonly accepted name of the educational program that addresses concepts and skills critical to a broad range of careers and industries. These various careers and industries have in common the application of the marketing concept executed through the marketing functions. Marketing education programs are designed to teach marketing concepts and skills and the underlying business foundations required for the understanding and development of marketing.

Nationally, Marketing Education is offered in more than 7,000 high schools (140 in Wisconsin) and most community/technical colleges, reaching more than 1 million students with diverse ability levels who obtain education in marketing subjects annually.

Marketing

Marketing is a critical business function, a process that utilizes a variety of activities to:

• Identify customer needs and wants
• Plan and create ideas, goods or services to satisfy needs and wants
• Establish pricing that results in profitable transactions
• Promote ideas, goods or services to an identified target market
• Manage distribution and logistics strategies
• Create
• Communicate
• Deliver value
• Manage customer relationships

These activities create exchanges that satisfy individual as well as organizational objectives. All marketing activities are designed to influence behavior or ideas, or to facilitate the delivery of a product or service to a would-be buyer.

Career opportunities in marketing can be found in domestic and international businesses, organizations, and agencies of all types and sizes; both for profit and not for profit. Individuals employed in marketing may specialize in one marketing function (e.g., selling, market research, advertising) or they may assume many positions that utilize a broad range of marketing skills.

Marketing is a critical, ongoing business function that applies economics, psychology, and sociology. Its successful performance depends on the application of mathematics and English principles, the use of scientific problem solving, and the application of computer technologies to marketing situations and problems.

Mission of Marketing Education

The mission of marketing, management, and entrepreneurship education is to enable students to understand and apply marketing, management, and entrepreneurial principles; to make rational economic decisions, and to exhibit social responsibility in a global economy.

Why Marketing Education?

The following is presented as evidence to the value that marketing, management and entrepreneurship education brings to the schools and of its effectiveness in preparing students for life after high school.

• Marketing, Management, and Entrepreneurship Education is the primary provider of pre-baccalaureate preparation for marketing careers.
• Marketing is one of the major areas of employment in the United States, accounting for nearly one-third of all occupations.
• Marketing provides extensive entry points into the labor force and, perhaps more importantly, multiple career paths with significant reward structures (e.g., promotion potential, compensation, flexibility).
• Marketing skills are highly transferable from industry to industry and from one locale to another.
• Core marketing skills are relatively stable and, therefore, have long-lasting career impact on student learners.
• Marketing curricula are appropriate for both college-bound and employment-orientated student, with unique and substantive opportunities available to each.
• Marketing Education programs are strongly endorsed by industry.
• With Marketing Education comes opportunity to join the Career and Technical Student Organization (CTSO) DECA, which provides it's members with leadership development, community involvement, civic consciousness, career understanding and social intelligence.

For more information see DECA Homepage

Marketing Careers

Marketing Education is historically rooted in the preparation of retail merchandising and sales personnel. However, contemporary curricula view retail as one of many segments of the economy in which graduates might utilize their marketing skills. Therefore, the curriculum has evolved significantly during the 80's and 90's to its current focus on core business, management and marketing skills with more specialized foci (e.g., retail management, hospitality, entertainment, e-commerce) integrated into the core curriculum as appropriate for individual situations.

Ultimately, marketing education graduates find careers in a wide range of industries, in specialized positions or departments focusing on specific marketing applications such as advertising, distribution/logistics, selling, marketing research, market information management, product management or pricing. Others find careers in settings that require broad applications of these and other skill sets, retail management, business owner, marketing manager, hospitality management (restaurant, hotel, sports and entertainment) real estate sales and management, etc.

The Marketing cluster includes career opportunities whose processes create, communicate, and deliver value to customers and manage customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.

Specific examples of career applications include general marketing management in virtually any industry that might include such applications as:

Assistant Media Buyer	Public-Relations Specialist/Manager/Director	Media Buyer/Planner
Copywriter	Marketing-Communications Manager	Account Executive
Marketing Specialist	Marketing Manager	Product/Brand Manager
Marketing Director	Assistant Market Analyst	Market Research Analyst
Market Research Manager	Marketing Research Director	Buyer Trainee
Assistant Buyer	Buyer	Merchandising Assistant
Merchandising Coordinator	Merchandise Division Manager	Sales Agent
Sales Respresntative	District Sales Manager	Regional Sales Manager

Given the highly transferable nature of core marketing skills and the increasing degree to which marketing permeates most cultures, it is particularly challenging to quantify or even to adequately define the application of Marketing Education in terms of specific career opportunities.

Curriculum Introduction

You are what you teach; curriculum defines the discipline. The following assumptions are true about the Marketing Education curricula:

• The discipline of marketing must be the content base of instruction.
• Curriculum should be positioned within the context of employment.
• Instruction should develop saleable skills and concurrently, position students for further education.
• Instruction should foster professional development and leadership skills throughout the program.
• Curriculum should address all aspects of the industry.
• The program should develop near-term employability skills.(i.e., for employment during or immediately following high school)
• And mid-term employability skills.(i.e. for seeking more advanced positions following more education and employment experience)
• Curriculum should be infused with the national cluster framework.

These assumptions establish some of the initial parameters for a Marketing Education Program. They say to us that there must be practical, useful skills that result from instruction. They encourage us to think beyond basic, entry level jobs and to help students prepare not just for immediate employment but for promotions and leadership opportunities throughout their careers in business.

Premises of the Marketing Education Curriculum

In addressing the Marketing Education mission statement, the curriculum should:

• Encourage students to think critically
• Stress the integration of and articulation with academics
• Be sequenced so that broad-based understandings and skills provide a foundation to support advanced study of marketing
• Enable students to acquire broad understandings of and skills in marketing so that they can transfer their skills and knowledge between and among industries
• Enable students to understand and use technology to perform marketing activities
• Stress the importance of interpersonal skills in diverse societies
• Foster a realistic understanding of work
• Foster an understanding and appreciation of business ethics
• Utilize a variety of types of interactions with the business community.

Wisconsin's Academic Standards for Marketing Education

In 1998-99 a group of marketing professionals developed content and performance standards for Marketing Education. The group of educators and business people identified what students should know and what they might be asked to do to give evidence of the standards. These content and performance standards were identified for students to achieve by the end of the fourth grade, by the end of eighth grade, and by the end of the twelfth grade as well as for students enrolled in marketing education.

Content and performance standards were identified for the following nine areas:

• Entrepreneurship: Students in Wisconsin will assess the essential role entrepreneurship ventures within the free enterprise system.
• Free Enterprise: Students in Wisconsin will demonstrate knowledge of the role of marketing within the free enterprise system.
• Global Marketing: Students in Wisconsin will be able to apply marketing concepts and practices in a global economy.
• Marketing Functions: Students in Wisconsin will know and apply the functions of marketing-distribution, financing, product/service planning, marketing information management, pricing, promotion, selling, buying and risk management.
• Critical Thinking: Students in Wisconsin will develop problem-solving skills that involve critical and creative thinking.
• Marketing Applications: Students in Wisconsin will experience, know and apply marketing activities in specific fields of marketing.
• Lifework Development: Students in Wisconsin will explore, analyze, and define where their talents, traits and abilities can best be applied, given their interests within the broad range of occupational and educational options.
• Marketing Technology: Students in Wisconsin will apply appropriate technology that assists in marketing-related processes.
• Organizational Leadership: Students in Wisconsin will apply the principles of leadership in school, community, and marketing related settings.

A complete listing of these standards can be found on the Department of Public Instructions Web site, Academic Standards

National Marketing Education Standards

Two years after the publication of the Wisconsin Standards, the Marketing Education Resource Center (MarkED) provided the leadership for the development of national standards. They support and further enhance the Wisconsin standards

The national standards focus on what students should know and be able to do as a result of instruction in Marketing Education. They recognize the critical roles of academic concepts and technology applications through the curriculum.

The national standards are divided into two broad areas. The first called Foundations, addresses those fundamentals of business that provide the critical context within which marketing is taught. The Foundation Standards are:

• Business, Management, Marketing and Entrepreneurship
• Communications and Interpersonal Skills
• Economics
• Professional Development

The second broad area of the Marketing Education Standards consists of the marketing Functions-those skills that are used to implement the marketing concept:

• Channel Management
• Market Research
• Market Planning
• Pricing
• Product/Service Management
• Promotion
• Selling

Specific day-to-day planning is aided by the identification of industry validated performance indicators. These performance indicators are derived from MarkED's continuing analysis of marketing activities within a wide range of industries and settings, incorporating a range of responsibilities (entry level jobs thorough management careers.) Performance indicators are concepts or skills critical to performing specific marketing responsibilities.

For a complete detailed listing of the National marketing Education Standards including the performance standards see the Marketing Education Resource Centers home page at: MarkEd's Homepage

DECA, An Association of Marketing Students

DECA is an organization of high school students actively involved in the study of marketing. DECA is unique among student organizations in that it is co-curricular and viewed as an integral part of the total academic program for all marketing students.

All Career and Technical Student Organizations (FFA, FBLA, FCCLA, Skills USA-VICA, HOSA, and DECA) are considered co-curricular because by definition their role is to support and enhance instruction for the given career area. DECA has a particularly strong record of accomplishment in this arena, providing many different opportunities for students to extend and reinforce their learning in economics, marketing, management and the application of information technologies. It is through this positioning that DECA adds value to Marketing Education and earns the right to be considered an integral part of the overall instructional program.

Specifically DECA has positioned itself to support the learning processes as marketing students develop:

• Occupational competencies in marketing, management and entrepreneurship
• Leadership abilities and interests
• Mature interpersonal skills, including social and business etiquette
• Understanding and appreciation of civic responsibility
• Ethical behavior in both personal and business relationships
• Economic understandings as they relate to a free enterprise environment.

Work-Based Learning

A very important component of every marketing education program is work-based learning. It is the planned, managed partnerships that can be as simple or complex as appropriate, aligning the needs of the student with those of a business partner. Each work-based strategy has in common the need for careful planning and management of the experience. Each must be fully integrated with the curriculum.

Work-based learning activities have the potential to make significant differences in a student's learning. Study after study has shown that students of all ages respond favorably when academics are taught in context. Work-based experiences provide additional context, add value thorough real-life applications, and bring to the classroom additional support in the forms of mentors, sponsors, and other industry-based resources.

Meaningful work-based learning is based on these and other basic premises:

• Win-win partnerships
• Variety of Experience
• Managed Experiences
• Differentiation

Marketing Education through the years has provided leadership to cooperative education (Co-op.) Co-op is a win-win strategy for the student, school, and business. All partners benefit from this quality work-based program.

Wisconsin has developed the State Certified Cooperative Education Program to provide student with the opportunity to earn an industry based skill certificate. For more information about the programs offered see Co-op Skills Standards

Wisconsin State Staff

Sara Adornato
Marketing, Management, & Entrepreneurship Education Consultant and State Advisor
(608)267-9253 FAX (608)267-9275
sara.adornato@dpi.wi.gov

Denise Byrd
Operations Office Associate
(608)266-8837 FAX (608)267-9275
denise.byrd@dpi.wi.gov

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For questions about this information, contact Sara J. Adornato (608) 267-9253

Last updated on 2/25/2008 1:28:40 PM