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Narrowing the skills gap for marketers of the future

Scott G. Dacko
Warwick Business School, The University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of the research is rst, to understand, explain, and evaluate the nature and extent of marketing skill development in MBA programmes relative to the needs and desires of practitioners and students, and second, to present ndings and recommendations for increasing the effectiveness of skill development in MBA programmes for the benet of both marketing practitioners and academics. Design/methodology/approach The research design/methodology is based primarily on survey research on skill development in MBA programmes from the perspectives of both graduates and marketing practitioners. Findings This research suggests that six important skill weaknesses decision making, leadership, problem formulation, persuasion, creativity, and negotiation need to be developed among future marketers and that a marketing education framework should be based on the pillars of a project and dissertation, classroom debate and discussion, and oral presentations. Research limitations/implications Future research should focus on understanding and explaining to an even greater extent how marketing education can make more effective use of interactive, hands-on learning approaches typied by a project and dissertation, classroom debates and discussions, and oral presentations. Practical implications Implications for practice include the suggestion that practitioners must also assume responsibility for developing initiatives that facilitate marketing skill development as well. Originality/value The new and original value and contribution of the research is that it extensively characterises and quanties the extent of a marketing skill development gap the gap between what marketing skills are being developed in MBA programmes and what practitioners want and need in marketers of the future in addition to providing recommendations to close the marketing skills gap. Keywords Skills, Skills shortages, Marketing, Education, Master of business administration Paper type Research paper

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Give a man a sh and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to sh and you feed him for a lifetime (Chinese proverb). (Unless he doesnt like sushi then you also have to teach him to cook (Auren Hoffman)).

Introduction Just as marketing education has a responsibility of preparing marketers of the future with the relevant knowledge and skills essential for subsequent organisational and
The author wishes to thank Val Cox and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions in the review of an earlier version of this manuscript.

Marketing Intelligence & Planning Vol. 24 No. 3, 2006 pp. 283-295 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0263-4503 DOI 10.1108/02634500610665736

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career success (Brennan, 2004), future marketers have the responsibility of making an effort to acquire and apply relevant marketing knowledge and skills. But what if future marketers are not being given the right opportunities to acquire the right knowledge and learn the right skills? Even with a concerted effort on their part as active learners in MBA programs, they will most certainly be short-changed in their marketing careers as a result of inadequate preparation. Given the mutual aim among both marketing academics and practitioners to bridge the ongoing divide (Baker and Holt, 2004), there is clearly a pressing need to review practices in marketing education to maximise the learning and preparation of future marketers. While considerable research in marketing has the aim of increasing the relevance of marketing knowledge development for subsequent dissemination in both the classroom and in journals to reach practitioners (Crosier, 2004; Grundvag Ottesen and Gronhaug, 2004), little research attention has been given to how we do and do not teach our future marketers important how to skills that are essential for life-long success. For example, to the extent that marketing career-focused graduates lack strong written communication skills, their ability to help disseminate journal-based marketing research by clearly communicating in written business-style reports the immediate implications of such research to their practitioner colleagues will be severely limited. Extending this reasoning to the mastery of other important skills, it can be argued that much of the debate surrounding the academic/practitioner divide in marketing can be addressed to a signicant extent by marketing and business programmes preparing better the marketers of the future with broad skills essential for subsequent career and organisational success. Rather than just providing our future marketers with a steady stream of relevant substantive ndings of research in marketing (e.g. a sh to eat), why not give more emphasis to teaching future marketers the skills necessary for making the most of such ndings over a life-time career in marketing? Skills in how to write more effectively, how to orally communicate, how to manage time better, how to lead, and how to be a better risk-taker are just a few examples of key and essential skills for marketers. More effectively mastering such broad skills will enable them to be expert shermen as well as cooks that is, they will be in a far better position to write marketing plans more clearly for gaining new business, to orally communicate their companys marketing value propositions to customers for meeting their needs, to schedule and prioritise management time for ensuring the success of long-term new product development efforts, to rally internal support of employees at all levels for increasing company-wide commitment to a marketing strategy, and to evaluate trade-offs between marketing actions varying in risk and reward thereby ensuring the best use of the companys marketing resources. While relevant marketing knowledge is an essential element in marketing success, marketing career-focused graduates who are lacking in broad skills will also limit their ability to apply marketing knowledge toward ensuring future company protability and survival as well as achieving greater customer satisfaction and stronger competitive positioning. In the following sections, the literature on relevant broad skills for marketers is discussed, followed by a description of the methodology employed to understand and explain effective and ineffective skill development in marketing in MBA programmes. A discussion of the results and presentation of key conclusions is then provided.

Literature review Marketers of the future often rely on an MBA programme to develop skills deemed essential for subsequent organisational success (Burgoyne et al., 2003). A review of the literature on skill development, however, shows there is a lack of consensus regarding what skills are most useful and why as well as what level of skill, e.g. broad or specic, is most appropriate for discussion. On the one hand, it is useful to speak of the importance of broad communication skills for marketers (Shaw, 1981), but such skills can be clearly decomposed into both oral as well as written communication skills (Cunningham, 1999; Smart et al., 1999), with each having a unique importance and benet to marketers at all levels of an organisation. In their professional marketing standards framework (Chartered Institute of Marketing, 2006), the CIM views the scope of communication skill in marketing as communicating with stakeholders (www.cim. co.uk/standards) implicitly adopting a very broad view. Within the framework, there is a recognition of the need for developing competence in the areas of developing effective communications and delivering effective communications but again oral and written communications are undifferentiated. There is clear and ongoing interest in appropriate skill development in marketing in the UK, exemplied by the establishment of the Marketing and Sales Standards Setting Body (MSSSB) by the Department for Education and Skills in 2001. While the aim of the organisation is to set competence standards representing the interests of marketing and sales, a concise list of important marketing skills does not exist (Marketing and Sales Standards Setting Body, 2004). Rather, the MSSSB acknowledges the importance of broad skills for marketers including analytical and planning skills (p. 40) and leadership and people skills (p. 50). A broad search of the literature on essential skills for marketing nds a considerable number of different skills that are all potentially important for future marketers to develop in an MBA programme. Table I presents a list of 22 key skills and supporting studies suggesting their potential importance to future marketers. While useful to understand the potential scope and range of skills useful for future marketers, it is also benecial to understand the relationship between graduate and practitioner skills and the academic/practitioner divide in marketing. Empirically, there is growing evidence that marketing career-focused graduates are under-prepared in the area of skills and over-prepared in the area of knowledge (Davis et al., 2002). Duke (2002) nds that skills such as interpersonal skill and leadership skill need to be developed by marketers to a much greater extent to ensure future organisational success in marketing. Collectively and individually, a lack of sufcient skills among marketing career-focused graduates and practitioners can only contribute to the persistence of the academic/practitioner divide. The special issue of Marketing Intelligence & Planning (Vol. 22, No. 5, 2004) is replete with key examples of how insufcient skills among graduates and practitioners has and is becoming a signicant impediment to a more fruitful collaboration between marketing academics and practitioners. Reed et al. (2004, p. 509) nd there is a pressing need for a practical emphasis on interpersonal skill development in a B2B context if the education community is to address better the needs of the B2B sector of marketing. Brennan and Ankers (2004, p. 517) nd that practitioners prefer to work with consultants rather than academic researchers because they believe that this will provide them with immediately useful knowledge in digestible form and to a tight timescale. Implicit in

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Essential skill Analytical Computer Creativity Crisis management Decision making Ethical Etiquette Foreign language competence Initiative Interpersonal Leadership Negotiation Oral communication Persuasion Planning/organising Problem formulation Risk taking Stress management Teamwork Time management Written communication

Authors Carson and Gilmore (1996) and Rossiter (2001) Vlosky et al. (2000) Carson and Gilmore (1996) and Goldenberg and Mazursky (2001) Chacko (1999) Smart et al. (1999) McNeil and Pedigo (2001) and Nixon et al. (1992) Koch (1997) Koch (1997) Shaw (1981) Duke (2002) Lantos and Butaney (1985) Cunningham (1999) Divita and Dyer (1981) Houman Andersen (2001) Burk Wood (2005) Chapman (1989) Bassler (1986) Koch (1997) Cunningham (1999) Chase (2003) Gray et al. (2005)

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Table I. Essential skills for future marketers as identied in the marketing literature

such a practitioner view is the potential tremendous benet to practitioners of improving their time management and planning and organising skills. After all, managers can achieve greater success when they are able to make appropriate room in their schedules for efforts and actions that are important but not urgent and which are often crowded out by efforts that are urgent but not always the most important. Grundvag Ottesen and Gronhaug (2004, p. 524) argue that understanding marketing academics research requires it to be translated to the context in which the user is embedded and operates and that . . . managers can probably do this, but it requires motivated and competent effort. Such a view clearly suggests a need for greater initiative, analytical skill as well as written and oral communication skill among practitioners. Research by Crosier (2004) is consistent with that of Grundvag Ottesen and Gronhaug (2004) in the nding that a lack of reading ease in marketing journals clearly necessitates a need for greater analytical and written communication skills among practitioners. Recognising the challenge more broadly, Grundvag Ottesen and Gronhaug (2004, p. 527) summarise their research by suggesting that a major barrier impairing the utilisation of academic knowledge relates to the characteristics of . . . practitioners. In recognising the changing role of marketing for business, McCole (2004) suggests that new developments in marketing including retro- and experiential-marketing are suitable candidates for narrowing the gap between academia and practice but that marketers of the future are currently ill-equipped. The author argues that marketing in the twenty-rst century will be characterised by ingenuity, creativity, and innovativeness (p. 536). Clearly, there is a need for more emphasis on developing creativity skills to enable or at least consider such new practices in marketing.

Additional research by Katsikeas et al. (2004) reinforces the view that marketing practitioners and insufciently prepared in the area of negotiation and analytical skills (p. 570) and ethical skill development (p. 572), while Baker and Holt (2004, p. 558), in acknowledging an inability to show how marketing activities and costs inuence shareholder value clearly suggest a need for greater analytical and persuasion skills among practitioners. Such deciencies in key skills are in addition to a lack of planning skill among practitioners, even though the literature is replete with papers and books universally commending marketing planning (p. 561). Finally, Tap (2004, p. 584) recognises the value of socialisation or everyday comradeship in transferring and converting tacit knowledge into other forms of tacit knowledge. Given that strong interpersonal skills are essential to strong everyday comradeship, there is a clear need for strengthening interpersonal skills among practitioners to speed the generation and transfer of knowledge within and across organisational boundaries and between academics and practitioners in particular. Effective communication is essential (Brennan, 2004), but it also one of many areas facilitating knowledge use as a result of having a set of skills essential for marketing success. In the following section, a methodology aimed at identifying, understanding, and explaining the most important skills and deciencies of future marketers is presented. In addition, a methodology for identifying the most and least useful approaches for developing these skills is also discussed. Method The list of 22 key skills (Table I) identied by the literature as being important and relevant to marketers was used as a basis for surveys of marketing employers and marketing students in the MBA programme of a leading European business school. Consistent with prior research on skill development in MBA programmes (Porter and McKibbin, 1988), the skills list for this research is intended to be comprehensive yet also strike a balance in that it does not include skills that are too marketing role-specic (e.g. deliver effective customer service Chartered Institute of Marketing, 2006) or too general (e.g. numeracy skill). The list of skills also emphasises transferable marketing skills, consistent with a nding of the Marketing and Sales Standards Setting Body (2004) study that suggests employers focus less on the subject of the degree than the skills demonstrated by the individual. During the period from 2001 to 2004, a series of skills surveys were conducted involving both marketing employers and marketing career-focused MBA graduates as respondents. Views on skill development priorities were obtained from managers at world-wide marketing employers of MBA students nearing the end of the MBA programme at a leading European business school where one marketing module (market analysis) was required of all students. Using telephone and fax, managers at companies that employed and directly supervised graduating MBA students working on paid, summer-long marketing projects for their rms were asked to indicate their skill development priorities: on a scale of 1-10, where 1 is emphasise very little and 10 is emphasise very much, to what degree each of 22 different skills should be emphasised in the MBA program. In addition, marketing employers were also asked to rate students skills levels by indicating on a scale of 1-10, where 1 is very low-skilled and 10 is very high-skilled, what their views of students skill levels were for each of the

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22 skill areas, where the employers were able to directly evaluate the skill levels of the students that had worked for them on marketing projects. Views on actual skill development in the MBA programme from the perspective of graduates were obtained by e-mail surveys shortly after they nished the program. In the survey, graduates were asked about the extent that each of 22 different skills were actually emphasised in the MBA programme as well as their interest (on a scale of 1-10) in pursuing a marketing-related career. Upon obtaining these views, subsequent analysis divided graduates into marketing career-focused and non-marketing career-focused categories based on high-versus-low interest expressed in pursuing a marketing-related career. Further analyses were then performed only using the data for marketing employers and marketing students. In addition to the above surveys, a survey on the usefulness of activities and initiatives contributing to skill development were also performed where MBA students with a marketing interest were respondents. Specically, each was asked to evaluate 15 MBA programme initiatives (e.g. written examinations, participation in case studies, oral presentations) for their usefulness in developing important skills for success in their future careers. Results and discussion Participation rates for all surveys were high. About 67 per cent (36/54) of marketing employers of MBA students on marketing projects responded, representing a broad range of markets and industry sectors around the world. Survey responses also included 63 per cent (72/115) of one graduating class of MBA graduates and 79 per cent (79/101) of another class of MBAs. Of those completing the surveys, 86 were identied as marketing career-focused students as a result of their expressing above-average interests in pursuing a marketing career. Of these, 62 per cent were male, 38 per cent were female, with approximately half of each being British, the remainder being mainly from European and Asian countries. Only the responses of marketing employers and marketing career-focused MBA graduates were used in the subsequent analyses. Table II shows the results of the surveys of marketing employers as well as marketing career-focused MBA graduates, where skills are listed in the order of highest marketing practitioner priority to lowest. An analysis of Table II provides several important insights into the skills desired by marketing practitioners and the strengths and weaknesses of graduates as well as the MBA programme. First, the table shows that four skills initiative, analytical, interpersonal and decision-making skills were rated at least 8 out of 10 for importance, suggesting such skills are absolutely essential for future marketers. At the same time, 11 other skills, ranging from oral communication to negotiation, were rated at 7 or higher, suggesting a relatively high practitioner priority. Seven skills, ranging from etiquette in business to foreign language competence, were rated below 7, suggesting a low practitioner priority. Such views clearly suggest marketing practitioner views on the set of skills to build initiative to negotiation as well as those that should be either left alone or de-emphasised. Further insight is obtained by looking at marketing employers ratings of marketing career-focused students skill levels. Here, we see that, from the perspective of the marketing practitioners, these marketers of the future are exhibiting both strengths

Skill 8.32 8.10 8.07 8.07 7.94 7.86 7.81 7.79 7.74 7.64 7.59 7.47 7.40 7.36 7.11 6.76 6.57 6.50 6.42 6.40 6.11 4.41 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 7.29 7.22 7.72 6.70 7.22 6.59 6.94 7.13 7.56 7.00 7.68 6.48 7.25 6.16 6.59 7.28 6.48 7.18 5.71 6.16 6.38 7.83 Strength build Strength build Strength build Weakness build Strength build Weakness build Weakness build Strength build Strength build Strength build Strength build Weakness build Strength build Weakness build Weakness build Strength leave alone Weakness leave alone Strength leave alone Weakness leave alone Weakness leave alone Weakness leave alone Strength de-emphasise 7.08 7.16 6.92 6.69 6.92 6.31 6.73 8.39 7.02 7.59 5.20 6.08 6.98 6.16 6.06 4.53 5.78 4.45 5.49 5.39 5.78 5.33 0.001 * * * 0.009 * * * 0.002 * * * 0.000 * * * 0.004 * * * 0.000 * * * 0.001 * * * 0.063 * 0.054 * 0.904 0.000 * * * 0.001 * * * 0.321 0.001 * * * 0.012 * * 0.000 * * * 0.083 * 0.000 * * * 0.022 * * 0.013 * * 0.439 0.047 * *

Marketing employers ratings of marketing Marketing career-focussed employers skill MBA students development skill levels Comment priorities Rank Decient Decient Decient Decient Decient Decient Decient Surplus Decient Acceptable Decient Decient Decient Decient Decient Acceptable Acceptable Acceptable Acceptable Acceptable Acceptable Surplus

Marketing career-focused MBA graduates views on actual programme emphasis given to skill development Signicancea Comment

Initiative Analytical Interpersonal Decision making Oral communication Leadership Problem formulation Teamwork Planning/organising Time management Ethics in business Persuasion Written communication Creativity Negotiation Etiquette in business Stress management Computer Risk taking Crisis management Delegation Foreign language competence

Note: aRelative to employers skill development priorities, signicant differences are observed: *p , 0.1; * *p , 0.05; * * *p , 0.01

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Table II. Marketing skill development priorities, skill levels, and MBA programme performance

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and weakness on the job, although practitioner priorities show that all are not valued equally. Clearly, employers see these future marketers as relatively strong in terms of initiative, analytical, and interpersonal skills, but relatively weak in their decision-making ability something that would be evident from the strength and quality of students recommendations which are not only communicated directly to management during and at the end of their marketing project involvement but also presented in their dissertations which are given to their company supervisors as well. Additional weaknesses in skills valued by practitioners include leadership, problem formulation, persuasion, creativity, and negotiation skills. Although these practitioner evaluations were of students performance on summer projects as opposed to evaluations based on open-ended, long-term employment, the ndings nevertheless provide a basis for critical assessment of future marketers as stakeholders in important company-initiated marketing projects. In terms of bridging the academic/practitioner divide in marketing, much short- and long-term progress could be made if skill weaknesses were developed to a greater extent among future marketers in MBA programmes. Further insight on essential skill development is found by analysis of marketing career-focused MBA graduates views on actual programme emphasis given to skill development. Given that only one skill teamwork is rated at 8 or above (where 10 emphasised very much) while all others are less than 8 clearly suggests many areas of skill deciency. In addition, it is interesting to observe that marketing career-focused MBA grads ratings for actual programme emphasis on skill development are signicantly lower than employers ratings for desired programme emphasis on skill development for 18 of the 22 skills. Yet, the fact that not all skills are valued equally by practitioners enables the identication of certain skills to be appropriately viewed as acceptable in their current, albeit limited, emphasis skills such as risk taking, crisis management and delegation, for example. Overall, the ndings clearly suggest areas of deciency where marketing practitioners demand skills both strengths and weaknesses that much be built upon further in order for the marketers of the future to be suitably prepared. Interestingly, many of the important areas are skills identied in the literature as useful to bridge the academic/practitioner divide in marketing: initiative and the supporting analytical and written and oral communication skills in applying academic research to the practitioners setting (Grundvag Ottesen and Gronhaug, 2004; Crosier, 2004); interpersonal skills for transferring and converting tacit marketing knowledge to a better extent (Tap, 2004) and in understanding the B2B context in particular (Reed et al., 2004); planning/organising and persuasion skills in showing how marketing inuences shareholder value (Baker and Holt, 2004); ethics and negotiation skills for more effective cross-border buyer-seller interactions in support of global marketing strategies (Katsikeas et al., 2004); and creativity skills when adopting new marketing approaches such as retro- and experiential-marketing (McCole, 2004). The relative lack of attention in the literature to the importance of decision making, leadership, and problem formulation skills in helping to bridge the academic-practitioner divide clearly suggests a need for more research on the many benets of such skills including that of enhancing the abilities of practitioners to formulate the right questions and problems to jointly resolve, as well as adopt greater leadership in standing up to and directing organisation forces that do not

see immediate pay-offs to academic-practitioner dialogues. Finally, the benets associated with enhanced decision-making skill are evident in greater managerial ability to choose wisely from among strategic options given imperfect information as a result of being able to apply appropriate marketing decision-making models and frameworks. In the following section, appropriate and inappropriate MBA programme initiatives are identied in support of developing the skills valued by marketing practitioners and marketing career-focused MBA graduates. Recommendations for more effective skill development are provided and discussed. Constructing the future of skill development in marketing education Table III shows the results of the marketing graduate surveys on the usefulness of MBA programme initiatives for developing skills for a successful career in marketing, where initiatives are listed in the order of most- to least-useful. Organised into programme areas of high, moderate, and low usefulness for developing important skills for a successful career in marketing, the ndings clearly suggest that many of the common initiatives and activities in an MBA programme provide only a limited contribution to the development of important skills. The frequent use of written examinations, for example, does much to test students knowledge of marketing, but a lack of timely feedback with nothing more than a numerical mark in most cases clearly lacks ability to develop written communication skill. Similarly, and induction programme aimed at breaking the ice with new students by giving them group tasks to plan and manage may go some way in introducing students to an MBA programme and each other but even a week-long event can do little to improve students interpersonal skills or planning/organising skills in the larger scheme of an MBA programme.
Usefulness for developing important marketing skillsa 8.28 8.07 8.07 7.89 7.78 7.74 7.74 7.67 7.59 7.35 7.28 6.92 6.27 6.26 6.07 6.04 High usefulness Moderate usefulness

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Programme area Summer project and dissertation Classroom discussions and debates Oral presentations Cross-cultural communication and interactions Classroom lectures Individual written assignments Independent research and analyses Syndicate group work Participation in case studies Informal gatherings with classmates Independent study of course materials Organized social events with classmates Participation in computer simulations Organized guest speaker events Induction program Written examinations Notes: a1 not at all useful; 10 extremely useful

Low usefulness

Table III. Marketing MBA grads views on programme area usefulness for developing skills for a successful career in marketing

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The ndings of this study suggest that the future of skill development in marketing education should lie in maximising the benets of three main areas of an MBA programme: the summer project and dissertation, classroom debates and discussions, and oral presentations. The summer project and dissertation, required of all students, can develop a many of the skills demanded by practitioners and needed by future marketers. By undertaking a consulting project in marketing for a practitioner rm and then writing up the work at the end of the summer, written communication skill will most certainly be developed. In addition, decision-making skills are developed since the student is forced to make difcult judgments given a complex marketing environment. Oral communication skills are developed since the students learn to effectively communicate orally to multiple organizational constituents (senior managers, employees, and customers). Negotiation skills are developed since each student learns to carefully negotiate the projects objectives, scope, and success criteria with sponsor and academic supervisor. Leadership skills are developed since the student learns ways to motivate organizations management to adopt students visions and strategies over the duration of the project. Initiative skills are developed as the student quickly learns that it is up to him/her to make things happen at every step and ultimately complete the marketing project successfully according to a xed schedule. Classroom debates and discussions on a range of marketing topics that are facilitated yet not overly dominated by the instructor, can provide a free-owing, yet semi-structured environment conducive to development many important marketing skills. Decision-making skill is developed through student practice, learning decision-making skills by being put on the spot and being forced to make conclusions about the best course of marketing action, for example. Leadership skills are developed since the student learns ways to become a thought leader offering the best views and insights, and encouraging peers to adopt the students views. Oral communication skills are developed since the student learns to effectively present orally given a dynamic, debating environment. Negotiation skills are developed since the student learns what to give and take in classroom debates. Finally, oral presentations can do much to develop essential skills for marketers. Oral communication skills are clearly developed since the student learns to effectively present orally via formal preparation. In preparing their presentations, students must adopt initiative in demonstrating appropriate understanding of the problem and then make difcult decisions concerning recommendations, support their recommendations with a decision-making rationale that must not only be persuasive but also demonstrate creativity. In sum, it is evident that the three MBA programme initiatives described above can contribute greatly to the skill development of our future marketers, where the skills that are the focus of development are those that can do much to bridge the academic-practitioner divide in marketing according to the views of practitioners as well as the marketing literature. In constructing the future of skill development in marketing education, an active, interactive, hands-on approach comprising three pillars of initiatives for skill development project and dissertation, classroom debate and discussion, and oral presentation will most certainly reap dividends for marketing academicians and practitioners on an ongoing basis.

Conclusions and future research In narrowing the skills gap for marketers of the future, this research nds considerable benet in bridging the academic-practitioner divide. The key to successful bridging is identifying the right skills for the task clearly, a never-ending one and then providing the right opportunities in marketing education, where MBA programmes can provide considerable impetus. This research suggests that six important skill weaknesses decision making, leadership, problem formulation, persuasion, creativity, and negotiation need to be developed among future marketers and that a marketing education framework based on the pillars of a project and dissertation, classroom debate and discussion, and oral presentations can lead to more satised constituents in marketing and ultimately a more fruitful collaboration between marketing academicians and practitioners. While marketing career-focused MBAs are perceived as possessing a number of skill strengths including initiative, analytical and interpersonal skills, for example the deciencies in MBA programmes are clearly evident and there is also a pressing need for marketers of the future to build upon their strengths in these areas. Future research should, therefore, focus on understanding and explaining to an even greater extent how marketing education can make more effective use of interactive, hands-on learning approaches typied by a project and dissertation, classroom debates and discussions, and oral presentations. In addition, although gender-based differences in marketing skill levels were not examined in this study from the perspective of marketing practitioners, research on identifying and strengthening any gender-related skill development deciencies could also be performed along the lines of Purcell (2002), which argues that earnings differences between genders may, to some extent, be explained by skill differences. As a means to complement future research on effective skill development in marketing education, more research is needed on practitioner initiatives that may facilitate marketing skill development as well. Understanding how and to what extent practitioners can harness the forces found in consumer power could be explored, for example, as a means to encourage positive changes in marketing skills. Requiring a rms marketers to concisely communicate a companys ethical policies to customers and special interest groups can encourage the development of both oral communication and ethical business skills, for example. By also requiring a rms marketers to think through and internally communicate how each marketers decision making considers and integrates ethical policies into major decisions, the development of analytical and decision-making skills can be enhanced. In sum, for those marketing educators willing and able to commit to developing the essential skills for our future marketers as outlined in this research, and for those marketing practitioners willing to explore ways to encourage further such positive and necessary changes, there will ultimately be life-time benets for those individuals and marketing organizations seeking to cross the academic-practitioner divide and desiring to actively embrace and prepare for the rapidly changing business environment we are increasingly facing. The future vitality of marketing itself may be shaped by the extent we take up the challenge.
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