Future Marketers: Future Curriculum: Future Shock?

transcript

Journal of Marketing Management 2002, 18, 579-596

ISSN1472-1376/2002/5-600579+17 £4.00/0 ©Westburn Publishers Ltd.

Martin Evansa1, Clive Nancarrowb, Alan Tappb and Merlin Stoneb

Cardiff Business Schoola, Bristol Business Schoolb

This paper explores implications for marketing education curricula of developments in marketing practice. Research from a variety of sources is drawn together and suggests that many marketing graduates are not being well equipped for ‘the new marketing’. Marketing curricula should be reconsidered with respect to the nature of the learning outcomes, skills and knowledge that are required by graduates. Specifically, a range of marketing research and information issues are raised, together with implications of the new marketing metrics and the nature of marketing’s wider role (via alliances and partnerships) in Knowledge Management strategies. This is furthered by the need to revisit the marketing concept itself in terms of its wider social responsibilities.

Keywords: marketing education, new marketing, data driven marketing, marketing research, strategic marketing, knowledge management, marketing’s social responsibility, marketing research and information, CRM Introduction In 1995 O’Brien and Deans found many students are attracted to marketing by its popularity and image without necessarily knowing what they will be studying. In that research project students held positive preconceptions of the subject. These preconceptions, however, are not always accurate reflections of the type of marketer that is now needed in practice in the new millennium (Evans and Preece 1997). Indeed, as Elias et al. (1999) point out, as new areas of work emerge, new graduates have to carve out career routes rather than follow in the footsteps of their predecessors and they have to ‘compete with a much larger group of equally qualified contenders’.

1 Correspondence: Martin Evans, Cardiff Business School, Aberconway Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff, CF10 3EU

580 Martin Evans, Clive Nancarrow, Alan Tapp, and Merlin Stone

This paper explores a range of emerging issues that marketing curricula need to address in the context of how marketing itself is changing.

These include:

• substantial changes to the role and nature of marketing research and information,

• the dramatic shift towards data-driven marketing and • the importance of marketers having both a broader view of, and

contribution to, those strategic issues that are spanning not only marketing sub-functions, but also other organisational functions which increasingly cross traditional organisational boundaries

• issues related to the social responsibility of the ‘new marketing’.

It is hoped that this paper will provoke discussion of the future direction of marketing education as well as suggest some solutions.

Marketing Research and Information

Changes in the Marketing Research Industry The basic proposition that marketing is concerned with the synergistic

compromise between what customers want and what the organisation is able and willing to offer has not really changed. In order for this to be operationalised, marketing needs information about its customers and markets. Most marketing curricula include the basics of marketing research but there is now evidence for a need to rethink this provision.

For example, Barker, Nancarrow and Spackman (2000) in their extensive review of industry data, research reports and their own empirical research amongst over three hundred members of the Market Research Society, concluded:

“there is sufficient evidence at all stages of our research to suggest there is a move towards a way of doing, using and thinking about market research which is quite different in character and application from what has gone before. This may represent both a shift toward the interpretivist pole of the continuum and more interestingly (and healthily) reflect a tangential shift towards a more eclectic industry - something we might call informed eclecticism”.

Eclecticism that is informed means quite simply a real understanding of different perspectives and an appreciation of the risks associated with eclecticism and how to handle these (Sayer 1992, Slife and Williams 1995). Critical evaluation is key:

“As competition from outside the core market research industry increases, so will the need to draw from outside the traditional intellectual confines of the industry, and to walk the talk of informed eclecticism.” Barker et al. (2001)

Future Marketers: Future Curriculum: Future Shock? 581 This research also demonstrated the growing appreciation of the need to be more informed about theories, models and existing knowledge (eclectic), to develop mini theories rather than just meta-theory and to be more flexible with regards to methodology (bricolage: in the sense of building as complete a picture as possible using the most appropriate mix tool(s) - see Denzin and Lincoln 1994).

Indeed a theme of this paper is that the new marketer needs to a much more rounded individual and this is certainly reflected in the research and information area as indicated by this work on informed eclecticism and bricolage. Barker, Nancarrow and Spackman (2001) suggest that large organisations should consider recruiting across disciplines for their Knowledge Management, Planning and Research functions and these disciplines would often include marketing and business studies but also those from psychology, popular culture and cultural studies, economics, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, semiotics, statistics, modelling and computer systems.

Smaller organisations and independents need to consider alliances to tap into different expertises. The formation of non-competitive alliances with clients who have much in common in terms of marketing context and problems is cited by Barker, Nancarrow and Spackman (2001) as a relatively new development. An example of this is a Round Table run by Martin Oxley of NFO Interactive. The group comprised major international food, toiletries, alcohol, household products and financial services as well as a university professor. Topics covered included CRM and customer understanding, innovation and marketing research, diffusion of innovation and research through the medium of the Internet. Organisations can share their learning through such round tables running workshops and seminar groups.

This concept of ‘alliance’ is another theme of this paper and again serves to broaden the marketing curriculum as is discussed under ‘Strategic Implications’. But just in terms of this ‘research’ area, curricula would need to address more than the usual client-agency relationship issues and extend to organisational issues of culture and fit.

Related to the ‘broader skills’ requirement cited above, Vir, Salkeld, Barker and Nancarrow (2002) argue that many researchers and clients are guilty of applying standard narrow research solutions and so missing crucial nuggets of insight. One issue is seen by Barker et al. (2001) to be an essential condition but also one of the more challenging initiatives, that is, to shift from a risk-averse to a risk-taking culture where researchers immerse themselves in life of those who must use the insight and data. Rewards should go to those willing to engage with their internal or external clients. However, the risk-taking is more than just entrepreneurial empathy; it is also about creating a spirit of adventure and inspiration in research and theory

building - “one of the toughest nuts to crack”.

There are further areas to which marketing research curricula need to respond. The history of business schools’ lack of focus on qualitative marketing research has been noted (Nancarrow et al. 1997, Catterall and Clarke 2000). An examination of almost any “Marketing Research” text book reveals the problem. It is no wonder that few marketing students enter industry with anything other than a belief that quantitative research is marketing research. Qualitative research is more often than not limited to standard groups and depth interviews and seen as merely useful for exploratory research.

Qualitative research is becoming more important for other reasons and these are included in the discussion within the next section. Essentially it concerns the shift to data driven marketing, which, according to some database and CRM practitioners is usually sufficient in itself. Some argue against the need for qualitative research but our proposition is that there is probably a greater need than ever for this form of research. Data might provide information on what is bought by whom and when, but it can not necessarily explain that behaviour and if the data-driven approach focuses on purchasers and responders, there is a further role for other research methodologies to understand the non-responders. This is explored in the next section. Metrics and Data-Driven Marketing In recent research conducted for the Chartered Institute of Marketing (2001) a major skills gap was uncovered. The purpose of that research was to explore how technological change is affecting marketing, how marketers should respond and indeed how they should be skilled. The research involved extensive executive interviews with senior marketing managers with the emerging themes validated via Delphi Groups of experts drawn from the depth interviews.

The research found that the new marketer needs to engage with quantitative analysis, IT and measurement/accountability metrics.

For example, it will come as no surprise to many Marketing Educators that a substantial proportion of students tend to shy away from financial/statistical based subjects. This has been found by O’Brien and Deans (1995) and by Evans and Preece (1997) yet there is a substantial body of research (some reported in this paper) that clearly shows that much marketing is increasingly being pressed to be more accountable and ‘data-driven’.

Gnoth and Juric (1996) are also concerned about the misconception of marketing as a ‘No-maths’subject and the likely negative impact this can

Future Marketers: Future Curriculum: Future Shock? 583 have upon on performance in marketing jobs.

Respondents to the CIM (2001) project felt that there is a real need for marketers to know, at least something, about IT and ‘metrics’. They felt that unless marketers can talk the same language with IT and data mining people they have little chance of influencing IT or even segmentation and targeting decisions within companies:

‘How many times have marketers actually got outside their comfort zone and really got their hands dirty with this new technology? Unless you know how difficult it actually is, it’s easy to under-estimate the time and effort in getting these things off the ground. I know because I’ve been a one-man band for the last ten years, but most marketers just hand over a brief to IT. And then when IT turn round and say no, marketers don’t know enough to challenge it.’ Internet company consultant

Indeed marketing roles are already being affected by this lack of skills. Another recent CIM survey (www.cim.co.uk) of UK marketing professionals indicated that marketers are now responsible for less than half (47%) of company web sites whilst 24 months ago they were controlling 70%.

Conversely, as one respondent to the CIM (2001) research argued, IT people often exaggerate their business awareness and, especially in a big meeting, tend to deny any gaps in their knowledge. Does this represent ignorance on both sides? Probably, it seems that IT people are starting to educate themselves more about marketing. Several respondents, unprompted, pointed out a ‘new breed’ doing mixed IT/Marketing Masters courses. There is, it is proposed here, a significant skills gap in this respect and marketing curricula need to be revised in order for this to be addressed.

Strategic ‘metrics’ include allowable costs, gross margin per customer over time (LTV: lifetime values), Recency, Frequency and Monetary Value (RFM) analysis and ultimately Return on Investment (ROI). The precise nature of this planning, evaluation and control then permits tests of various resource allocation decisions. The perceived need to be more accountable and to deliver (short term) shareholder value are clearly the drivers here.

Most respondents to the CIM (2001) research agreed that measurement was crucial in re-defining the culture of marketing. They saw the visibility of strategic measures (customer satisfaction, repeat purchasing, ROI) as key to re-directing marketers’ focus from tactics to strategy. Again, though, marketing curricula must fully tackle the nature of these metrics, even if students opt for marketing modules on the grounds of their interest in advertising and the mis-conception that marketing is a ‘soft’ subject that has only a peripheral need for numeracy.

Marketers may not have to ‘do’ the actual number crunching but it seems important for them to be familiar with the principles in order to interact

effectively with the number-crunchers – otherwise there is a danger that marketers will be left out of the loop.

This point has been made before, for example in Carson’s (1999) research in USA, where marketing practitioners spoke of analytical skills and statistics as

‘areas in which their education was lacking…..(and marketers need to)… know how to do the numbers and prove their financial contribution to the bottom line’. So, marketing curricula have an important paradigm shift of their own to

focus on. Whilst many marketing students avoid quantitative modules when possible, in order to be properly trained they need to be more numerate. Some companies are apparently recruiting geographers because they are regarded as more able to think strategically as well as being more attuned (through their intensive exposure to Geographical Information System (GIS) and related issues) of technical and statistical issues.

It is worth relating this discussion back to the earlier coverage of research and information. Those entering industries that talk ‘metrics’ probably become even less inclined to embrace what they see as the flaky side of research: qualitative and non-conventional sources of inspiration and insight, not helped by the lack of depth and breadth of coverage of these by business schools.

An additional problem is that there is sometimes a tendency to measure what is easy to measure rather than what is insightful, for example measures of customer retention. The root of the problem seems to be little evidence of consideration by managers as to the multifaceted nature of many phenomena and so no clear definitions of what should be researched (Aspinall, Nancarrow and Stone 2001)

The CIM (2001) research reinforces the problem. ‘Measures’ can be taken but what do they really mean? The overwhelming tone was summed up in the following quotes:

“They just don’t know what the connection is between what they measure and what they are trying to achieve” Consultant, IT

This is further compounded by a degree of ‘rejection’ by some practitioners of anything other than the pure behavioural, based on the metrics of biographical data.

Mitchell (2001) quotes a director of one of the largest retailers in UK:

“We’ve given up trying to understand our customers…helping us cut a lot of complexity from our business”

Future Marketers: Future Curriculum: Future Shock? 585 The point is expanded upon:

“The academic’s instinct is to gather a large amount of information, formulate a theory and apply it to a situation…(this) creates waste in the form of the wrong information at the wrong time, leading to the wrong decisions…or…fruitless attempts to predict or alter customer behaviour.”

The favoured approach by this company, ‘sense and respond’ (Haeckel 2001) is to react quickly on the basis of customer contact via call centres, internet, interactive digital TV and infomediaries. This is understandable in the current context of short-termism. For example, the pressure to achieve short term profit in order to provide shareholder value, again in the short term, can lead to a subordination of the key components of the marketing concept itself, namely customer satisfaction.

Other organisations are rejecting ‘affective’ research in favour of purely behavioural data. For example, the JIGSAW consortium, composed of Unilever, Kimberley Clark and Cadbury Schweppes, has been pooling transactional data on their respective customers in order to grow product categories and to combat the power of intermediary retailers. This consortium has decided not to use attitudinal customer data any more and base their marketing decisions on the massive amount of behavioural transactional data they, collectively, possess. (Anon 2001)

Surely depth of customer insight will suffer here. There is, therefore, not only need for marketers to be more numerate but to also be aware of the contributions that qualitative research can make.

We appear, therefore, to be moving towards a (quantitative) data-plentiful culture that is perhaps not an ‘information or knowledge-rich’ culture.

So, we have a paradox that new marketing curricula need to address. On the one hand marketers remain remarkably poor at the key quantitative skills, understanding the nature of the phenomena to be studied, defining what therefore needs to be researched, data interpretation skills, and lack acumen about what to do with the data. This means that if marketers are not equipped to engage with the new metrics of marketing measurement then others surely will. However, to counterbalance this, there is a danger of the balance shifting too far in the direction of metrics and ‘response rate’ measurement. Prompted by these issues, Gordon (1999) discusses the need for “Prosearch” to more effectively examine the marketing “possibilities” of the future, based on more than just statistical modelling.

Thus, ‘old fashioned’ understanding of customers, in the sense of understanding the behavioural underpinning and the value and nature of qualitative research is extremely important in providing marketers with the substantive skills that should again help to dispel the ‘winging it’ perception. The latter is a real perception of many as, for example, Shaw’s (1996) research amongst engineers found.

Strategic Curricula A decade ago. Middleton and Long (1990) found that employers had no clear idea of the particular skills which they needed in marketing personnel and also some employers could not distinguish between the performance of marketing and non-marketing trained entrants to their companies either at the stage of recruitment or when they are in post.

The central assumption of their research was that there are distinctive marketing skills however their findings showed that only one, perhaps two attributes, are really marketing specific. Also about one-third of those attributes seen as important were difficult to operationalise educationally.

The coverage of research and information in the previous section suggests that industry requirements are somewhat clearer now and this is further underpinned by significant research programmes during recent years.

For example, marketers can be seen to concentrate proportionately too much on ‘today’s campaign’. Doyle (1995), Christopher (1996) and Piercy (1997) all make the point that marketing should consist of a process of activities that leads to the delivery of superior value to the customer. They advocate a change in the mindset of traditional 4P’s/marketing communications driven marketing departments. In this paradigm, marketers become facilitators of customer orientated practice within the firm, for example by influencing part time marketers (Gummesson 1991).

The implication of this (a broader role for marketers within the organisation) is reinforced by the CIM (2001) research which found that new technology is breaking down functional divides and cross functional work by marketers was getting more and more important. Unfortunately, it was found that marketers didn’t see their roles in this way. This is even more of a concern when one considers an even wider form of cross boundary interaction, as discussed in the next section. Networks and Alliances As discussed under ‘research and information’ an important strategic development is that relationship marketing is broader than organisation-customer interaction and involves interactions beyond customers, the marketing department and even the company. Respondents to the CIM (2001) research agreed that strategic alliances are becoming more important but that they involve difficulties of ‘fit’ and integration:

‘(Marketers) are going to have to understand process, data, metrics and analysis in a way not known before. The 4Ps will always stand as a Marketing template, but the level of detail we can get to now is much finer, and knowing the relevant

Future Marketers: Future Curriculum: Future Shock? 587

mix and limits will be crucial – knowing the customer will be a necessity. I also think branding is evolving from company image to company personality as the balance of power shifts towards the consumer. Service will become more of a marketing issue for the same reason. Marketers will also need to understand far more about forming partnerships and alliances.

‘the net is changing big strategy /head office decision making – making it much harder especially things like partnerships…who do we partner up with and so on….” Consultant

In practice, it was acknowledged, it is difficult to make networks/partnerships work at more than a transaction level:

‘most projects fail for business rather IT reasons.…not having the right practical vision, not having the right leadership back-up for change…and imagine having to do these complicated changes in partnership with other companies…’ Executive consultant, IT sector

So there are further curricula implications arising from this. Issues that might otherwise be covered in business policy type courses rather than mainstream marketing courses, such as the analysis of the ‘alliance’ process’, determining the most appropriate partners and again implementation issues. This broadens the relational paradigm within marketing education which is often explored in a relatively narrow context of customer-organisation interaction to a much broader one that extends up and downstream in terms of supply chains and channels and also across functions and even organisations.

All too many marketing modules are still rooted in the traditional 4Ps Marketing Paradigm which can be seen as rather simplistic (O’Malley and Patterson 1998) and from the above analysis, somewhat limited. Further implications of this are discussed in the ‘CRM’ section, later. Knowledge Management The new marketer, then, needs to be less insulated from other functions and even from the informational advantages and consequences of data shared with other organisations. For example, Depres and Chauvel (2000) distil literature from academics, consultants and practitioners on this issue and demonstrate how information can be transferred from the individual across groups (eg the marketing communications function) and to the organisation (other functions, even outside the marketing function). They discuss the ‘process’ that essentially reinforces the importance of ‘sharing’. A simple practical example will help here. In a research project into the use of multi-step flows of communication in the motor market, Evans and Fill (2000)

found that Motor Company Public Relations Managers make heavy use of motoring journalists as opinion formers (attempts are made to influence what these journalists say about new cars) but they are less able to make use of opinion leaders amongst car buyers. The problem is one of identifying these and then targeting them. However, the research revealed that in many of these companies there is also a database department that records details of those who have purchased a new car early in its life cycle. These ‘earlier adopters’ include a high proportion of opinion leaders. But the worrying part of the research was that the PR mangers usually claimed that this database was not shared with them and that marketing and PR are ‘separate’ Evans and Fill (2000)

There are some positive signs that those in involved in marketing training and curriculum design are building in Knowledge Management (KM). The Market Research Society is considering introducing a KM module in its Postgraduate Diploma and this is no doubt being echoed within marketing awards in some Universities.

This is an important development and was perhaps triggered by the widespread adoption of business process re-engineering with its emphasis on continuous processes and IT-led change. It has been widely adopted by practitioners who have led academics in developing the area, so it is important for marketing academics to keep abreast of industry developments in order for this to inform their curricula. Much of the interest in KM has been come from the large management consultancies (McKinseys, Ernst and Young et al) who have used it in their own internal organisations to a considerable degree.

Knowledge Management has been defined as ‘the process of creating, capturing, and using knowledge to enhance business performance’ (CIM Project 2001). An example of an IT led rational approach to KM is making use of an internal ‘database of knowledge’ which employees both make contributions to (possibly incentivised to do so) and use. A manager working in a consultancy is, perhaps, trying to find the best solution for a client, and can access the KM system to check out the collective past experience of workers in the area. Although these issues have crept into some marketing curricula, the submission here is that they become mainstream, not as modules separate from the marketing ones, but within marketing modules.

One of the problems in KM is been the over concern with IT-led ‘solutions’. These issues can be understood by examining the nature of knowledge itself, with possible implications for marketing curricula in what would be a radical departure. Knowledge Management should be a vital component of marketing curricula. However, marketers’ use of this at present is not convincing, perhaps because their overall business focus remains narrow.

Future Marketers: Future Curriculum: Future Shock? 589 One respondent to the CIM (2001) research made the point that the intranet/KM system is increasingly important as an influencer of decisions in companies. But in his view marketers weren’t engaging with the debate, let alone leading it. Other respondents implied that the culture of (marketing) amateurism – ‘winging it’ – prevails in marketing prevents us from making proper use of such systems. New Strategic Models of Organisation-Customer Interaction There is some evidence that the shift of control from marketer to customer is likely to have future impact. Traditional models of e-commerce are the conventional Business to Business and Business to Consumer. However, as consumers band together in loose but cooperative buying groups, they begin to wrest greater levels of control over the buying process, and at the same time engage with marketers even more, hence the Consumer to Business model. The Consumer to Consumer ‘Community’ model is relatively new but is a powerful example of control shifts toward the consumer and could facilitate a greater degree of (mutual) relationship building than other models.

‘Cyberspace has become a new kind of social terrain, crowded with ‘virtual communities’, in which people come together for sexual flirtation, business, idle gossip, spiritual exploration, psychological support, political action, intellectual discourse on all kinds of subjects-the whole range of human interests and needs’ (Anderson 1999). Rheingold (1993) has observed that ‘the future of the Net is connected to the future of community, democracy, education, science, and intellectual life- some of the human institutions people hold most dear, whether or not they know or care about the future of computer technology’. It seems clear to us that this should move marketing education in a rather more sophisticated and eclectic direction.

These new strategic models are impacting on leading edge sectors such as music. One respondent to the CIM (2001) project who knew this sector well, summarised the issues that are likely to be noticed across many sectors:

‘The product can be delivered electronically; Consumers can ‘do it for themselves’, so C2C power shifts may take place; It’s an entertainment sector, so there’s plenty of chance for chat rooms to flourish; The fragmentation of the music sector into segments plays to the web’s strengths of multiple linkages; With fragmentation comes a need to gather data so that you know what the degree of fragmentation is; Affiliate group marketing has already been shown to be successful’

But marketers need to implement strategy as well as acknowledging these shifts.

The implications for marketing curricula, here, include the importance of exploring the ramifications of management by customers rather than the management of customers and the importance of not merely devising strategies but focussing on implementation issues. These also involve the internal political and cultural aspects of marketing implementation, so marketing curricula should be broadened, in many cases, to cover organisational behaviour issues. CRM Another area emerging from this is the much hyped ‘1 to 1 relationship marketing’ paradigm. This is something of a myth in reality and marketing education must address the issues. For example, data driven interactive marketing might facilitate personalised targeting but this is not based on real understanding of each individual consumer. Data provides plenty of evidence of what they have previously bought and on their profile characteristics but individuals are still aggregated into segments that are far from being 1 to 1. Dibb (2001) explores other aspects of this and points out that ‘at the heart of segmentation strategy is the notion that customers will allow themselves to be managed. Indeed the use of the word ‘management’ in CRM might signal that ‘relationship management’ is an oxymoron. It implies power and that that power is one-way. So again we have evidence for the need for a much wider and more eclectic marketing curricula.

As implied by our earlier analysis, ‘behaviour’ is not a surrogate for what used to be a cornerstone of the marketing concept; satisfying customer needs. Gofton (2001) for example, reports that the UK consultancy firm, Qci, found that few organisations distinguish between the satisfaction levels of their most and least valuable segments;

“Only 16% (of the 51 blue chip companies interviewed) understand what the main drivers of loyalty are…30% never look at this and only half carry out some research to identify loyalty”.

Indeed a study amongst pharmaceutical companies found that when asked what the key challenges are for the introduction of CRM, only 6.5% of the issues mentioned related to improving customer satisfaction (Clegg 2001). The implications of the above, then, are that purely behavioural response does not necessarily equate with an understanding of consumers. Taking this further, if the ‘behaviouraI’ responders become the central focus then aren’t we storing up trouble for the future in attending less to why the others are

Future Marketers: Future Curriculum: Future Shock? 591 non responders?

All in all, then, there are some concerns over the practicalities and operationalising of relational marketing. It is surely the case that the data driven approach will continue but will this lead to true organisation-customer relationships rather than just repeated exchange interactions? Even by 2001 there were signs that the bubble might have burst: ‘ corporate disillusionment and downright hostility to the whole CRM bandwagon is reaching feverpitch’ (Mitchell 2001). Perhaps marketers should be more honest – they want to track customer spending in order to target people with what would be hoped would be offers more likely to produce a purchase response. The problem with the ‘R’ word is that it has too many associations with human relationships but organisation-customer interaction is not the same.

Another rather cynical note comes from research by Kennedy and Ehrenberg (2000) who suggest, with reference to ‘brands’; ‘good old-fashioned mass marketing approaches to branding are what have made brands’. Could this bring further doubt onto the sustainability of the (ersatz) relational paradigm in some sectors? Wider Social Impact of the New Marketing In an era of greater consumer power and fast strategic change, the ability to stay very close to the customer is vital. But the pressures to be more accountable and measurable are perhaps leading to an over-emphasis on short term returns for shareholders. If this is subordinating the central tenet of the marketing concept (customer satisfaction) then it is not surprising that consumers themselves are increasingly cynical about marketing (Evans et al. 2001). Marketers need to be aware of and be equipped to deal sensitively with privacy concerns of customers, as technology has the potential to invade their lives too much. Implications for marketing curricula include greater integration of the coverage of marketing’s social responsibility and possible coping strategies on the part of marketers, for the obvious dilemma here.

Marketing curricula have increasingly been incorporating aspects of marketing’s social responsibility, especially ‘green’ and environmentally sustainable marketing , but the point being made here refers specifically to a range of consequences of data-driven marketing. Perhaps curricula need to address for following social responsibility issues (Evans 2000):

• Data collected for social purposes are used in the domain of database marketing (eg census data and medical details)

• Data for marketing purposes go to the state (eg some marketing-compiled financial and loyalty card data to the Inland Revenue)

• Data for marketing purposes being potentially accessed for criminal

use • Exclusion based on RFM analysis and implications of this for

disadvantaged consumers and the ‘Societal Marketing Concept’ (Lavidge 1970 and Lazer 1969).

In order for consumers to develop a more relaxed sense of engagement with marketing, one of the ways forward is to shift the locus of control over consumer-organisation interaction as discussed earlier. But government and regulatory bodies (statutory and voluntary) can also play their part - together with the wider community, as long as there is sufficient knowledge of the issues. So again we suggest a significant broadening of marketing curricula to address these wider dimensions. Conclusions This paper aimed to stimulate debate over how marketing curricula should develop, in particular, as a result of likely effects of technological change. It has deliberately not explored all aspects of marketing curricula, but has focussed more on what we refer to as the ‘new marketing’ especially the implications of the dynamic nature of data and information within the strategic and tactical practicalities of marketing.

Informed eclecticism and bricolage, in the sense of building as complete a picture as possible using the most appropriate mix tool(s), a are perhaps central themes for the entire paper, but especially within the marketing research area, and we have suggested how marketing curricula need to be broadened beyond the traditional ‘survey research’ coverage and to become more multi-disciplinary than is often the case.

Information for the new marketing is now increasingly based on data based metrics and although these require much more curriculum coverage than appears in most Universities. Data driven marketing requires marketing curricula to equip graduates with appropriate skills and at least an understanding of the same language that data miners use. We also temper this by warning that metrics can not be a substitute for understanding and real insight. We explore the nature of strategic marketing in terms of a more expansive domain. The development of alliances, partnerships, outsourcing and sharing of information requires broader marketing curricula that go beyond the marketing (sub) functions into Knowledge Management and strategic alliances.

Curricula also need to ensure graduates can think beyond ‘today’s campaign’ and to be able to integrate approaches across sub functions and

Future Marketers: Future Curriculum: Future Shock? 593 more generally to be more strategically aware. This involves greater pragmatism over CRM and the implications of being ‘managed by customers’ rather than managing customers.

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About the Authors Martin Evans is Senior Teaching Fellow at Cardiff Business School. He previously held professorial posts at the Universities of Portsmouth, Glamorgan and West of England. His industrial experience was with Hawker Siddeley and then as a consultant to a variety of organisations over 25 years. Martin’s specialist areas include marketing research and information, consumer behaviour and direct marketing and he has over 100 publications plus 6 books, mostly in these areas. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and an academic prize winner at the International Marketing Communications Conference and the Academy of Marketing/Institute of Direct Marketing.

Clive Nancarrow’s area of specialism is marketing research and research methodology. With an academic background in psychology he pursued a

career in market research on both the research agency and client side before joining Bristol Business School. He continues to be involved with the marketing research industry and is retained as advisor by NFO WorldGroup. He serves on the Professional Standards Advisory Board of the Market Research Society. He has also recently carried out ad hoc research projects for Christian Dior, Consignia and the National Lottery Commission among others and has published widely on marketing research related topics.

Alan Tapp has a track record of publications in direct marketing, branding, and sports marketing. He is the author of the UK’s best selling direct marketing textbook Principles of Direct and Database Marketing, now in its second edition. His work with direct and database marketing and CRM dates back to 1987 when he worked as UK direct marketing manager responsible for high value consumers at BT. As a former international athlete, Alan has long had close links with the sports sector. He maintains close links with Premier League clubs. His work recently led to a number of national and local radio appearances.

Merlin Stone is the IBM Professor of Relationship Marketing at Bristol Business School, Business Research Leader with IBM and a director of QCi Ltd, Swallow Information Systems Ltd and Viewscast Ltd. He is the author of many articles and twenty books on marketing and customer service, including Up Close and Personal – CRM @ Work, Customer Relationship Marketing, Successful Customer Relationship Marketing and CRM in Financial Services. He has consulted to companies in many sectors on CRM and customer service. He is a Founder Member of the Institute of Direct Marketing, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and on the editorial advisory boards of many journals. He has a first class honours degree and doctorate in economics.

Future Marketers: Future Curriculum: Future Shock?

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