BizEd, the magazine of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), reported in the May/June issue that universities that treat students as customers are more likely to have students that are less connected to learning, and student performance suffers. The results of this study do not surprise me; I argued in my blog, Tannerisms On Tuesday, more than two years ago, that the student/professor relationship is far more important than the customer/service provider relationship. What is surprising, at least to me, is that this study was done by psychology professors (Louise Bunce and Amy Baird of the University of Winchester and Siân Jones at the University of London). Further, I’m disappointed that I didn’t think to study the question myself. A quick read, though, suggests that there is still fertile ground to be plowed here and I hope someone will pick up the topic and submit something. Their original study was published in Studies in Higher Education, 2016.
Another point to that observation is that BizEd is a likely secondary outlet for MER. I will be looking for articles that would appeal to BizEd, but I hope you will also think of secondary outlets and send those to me. For example, maybe Selling Power would welcome a short blurb on something we’ve done in MER.
The first article in this issue is by Lynn Metcalf, Stern Neill, Lisa Simon, Sharon Dobson, and Brennan Davis, all at California Polytechnic University. Their article focuses on a peer mentoring innovation that they developed in response to declining student performance in principles of marketing. In this study, we see the effects of AACSB’s work to encourage assessment and continuous improvement. What we also see is a rigorous evaluation of peer mentoring, in a quasi-experiment. This study is a highly practical and thorough examination of peer mentoring that can be applied beyond principles, such as to niche majors or tracks.
The second article takes on the difficult task of evaluating and rewarding teaching performance. Don Bacon (University of Denver), Yilong (Eric) Zheng (State University of New York at Binghamton), Kim Stewart (an independent scholar), Carol Johnson (University of Denver) and Pallab Paul (University of Denver) ran a pair of studies applying conjoint analysis to teaching performance data to derive a model acceptable to the Denver faculty. They account for variation in load, such as the effects of new preps. We will be examining performance evaluation processes in my college this fall, so I will ask the committee to read this piece.
Bela Florenthal (William Paterson University) contributes our third article, an examination of interactive online exercises that accompany textbooks. In this piece, she introduces us to the Uses and Gratifications theory, and demonstrates how this approach applies to understanding, designing, and using interactive exercises. While her work focuses on interactive exercises presented in an online environment, I think she identifies some fairly universal characteristics of good and bad exercises that we would all do well to keep in mind.
The final article in this issue comes to us from Finland, and is an interesting study on several accounts. The study interests me because Harri and Minna-Maarit Jaskari use a field case study in sales management, a process I’ve long used to leverage students’ internships and work experiences more completely into the sales management classes I teach. But even if you don’t teach sales management or used field case studies, the comparison of experiential learning in traditional and online formats helps to identify some interesting challenges specific to field experiences.
This journal is the outcome of a partnership – a partnership between reviewers and authors. Society for Marketing Advances (SMA) may own the journal, Taylor & Francis may print it, and there may be an editor, but without reviewers and authors working together, there is no journal. We have received nearly 40 submissions in the first six months of this year. I haven’t gone back and compared to previous years, but I feel like it has to be higher than normal because it has been so hard to get reviewers. If you’ve not reviewed for the journal but would like to, please let me know. If you have reviewed, thank you. This journal is much stronger because of your work.
I hope you can enjoy the balance of your summer and crank up for a wonderful fall. Please look me up at either Marketing Management Association or SMA this fall!
John F. (Jeff) Tanner
Editor
Old Dominion University