DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION PRACTICES IN MARKETING EDUCATION: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND OVERVIEW OF THE SPECIAL ISSUE

Introduction

Individuals in societies across the globe are challenging long-standing cultural, gendered, racial, ethnic, and other stereotypes as is evident from protests ranging from women’s rights in Iran and Afghanistan to the “Black Lives Matter” and the “Me Too” movements (Amnesty International, 2022). Furthermore, these calls for change have been incorporated into the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/), specifically gender equality (Goal 5), reduced inequalities (Goal 10), and responsible consumption and production (Goal 12). Thus, marketing managers need to be prepared to examine and reflect on their organizations’ past marketing practices, identify areas where they could do better, and strategize future marketing strategies that are indeed inclusive and respect diversity (De Ruyter et al., 2022). In doing so, organizations will be ready to meet these social challenges head on. Consider, for instance, Unilever’s Dove brand’s “Campaign for Real Beauty.” Since 2004, this campaign tried to reform how the global cosmetic industry, including many other Unilever brands, portrays and advertises their beauty products. By exposing manipulated content in cosmetic advertising (Campbell, Plangger, Sands, & Kietzmann, 2022), Dove is breaking down longstanding cultural stereotypes of what defines beauty. The brand’s most recent campaign against social media beauty filters employs Deepfake technologies to expose young consumers to the dangers of misleading online beauty advice (Kiefer, 2022). Inclusive marketing campaigns such as Dove are pushing industry leaders and policymakers to set new standards for how businesses communicate with their customers.

An important part of this shift toward more diverse and inclusive marketing is educating marketing practitioners. For example, Diageo, the global beverage conglomerate with brands such as Guinness, Johnnie Walker, and Crown Royal, has directed that all its over 1,200 marketing staff to take part in inclusive design training to remove unconscious bias from future marketing campaigns that will be accessible for all consumers (Stewart, 2022). These changes in marketing practice integrate inclusive and diverse strategies that need to be reflected in marketing education and pedagogy to train the next generation of business leaders (Kipnis et al., 2021).

Marketing education and pedagogy require two connected reforms that enable inclusivity and respect diversity in the classroom and the marketplace. First, educators need to use novel instructional methods that demonstrate the effectiveness of embedding diverse and inclusive business policies in marketing practices (Crittenden, Davis, & Perren, 2020; Rivera, Arrese, Sádaba, & Casado, 2020). Second, educators need to eliminate both conscious and unconscious bias of groups, especially those that are underrepresented to not only make marketing education accessible for all but ensure that everyone has equal opportunities to gain from educational experiences (Brennan, Lu, & von der Heidt, 2018; Gurrieri & Finn, 2023). In this light, this special issue of the Marketing Education Review titled “Diversity and Inclusion Practices in Marketing Education” seeks insight into how marketing practice can achieve these reforms. Its six articles present educational practices that create and promote an inclusive and diverse experience that improve students’ academic performance and, more importantly, create responsible marketing and business professionals that are more aware of the diversity and inclusivity demands of the marketplace (see Table 1).

Table 1. Special issue contributions to diversity and inclusion practices in marketing education.

Authors	Educational context	Inclusive marketing education framework
		Environmental factors	Pedagogical elements	Student outcomes
Ferreira et al.	The need for the marketing classroom to mirror marketplace diversity	X	X
Everett et al.	Transformational learning through experiential assessment design	X	X	X
Hass et al.	COVID’s impact on minority marketing students	X		X
Saavedra Torres et al.	Personal relevance and racial priming in a diverse marketing classroom		X	X
Scott and Sandell	Developing students’ intercultural competencies		X	X
Achenreiner and Nasif	Stereotypes and data-focused assessments	X	X

Using a process approach, this article develops and conceptualizes an Inclusive Marketing Education Framework that maps out how marketing education can create marketers that are able to contribute to more inclusive and diverse marketing strategies. Specifically, our framework delineates three environmental factors (i.e., social movements, socially sustainable consumer behavior, diverse and inclusive marketing strategies) that impact three pedagogical elements (i.e., curriculum design, educational delivery, learning assessment) which produces three student outcomes (i.e., academic performance, cross-cultural competences, responsible marketing awareness). From this framework, we close by suggesting potentially fruitful avenues for further academic enquiry into inclusive and diverse education, but first, we provide an overview of the six articles published in the special issue.

An Overview of the Special Issue Contributions

After ten author teams answered our call for research into diversity and inclusion issues in marketing education, a competitive review process left six submissions that make up this special issue (see Table 1). First, Ferreira, Robertson, Reyneke, and Pitt (2023)’s Inside-out: Using the marketing classroom to mirror diversity and inclusion of the marketplace presents a review of the education literature in the area of diversity and inclusion to underscore the importance of embedding inclusive teaching strategies in marketing education. Applying experimental learning lens, these authors propose teaching practices that will encourage transformative education experiences that equip students with the necessary capabilities and cultural competency skills. They then conducted marketing educator interviews and found several important themes, including pedagogical discomfort and digital inclusion in education, as means to encourage students to identify cognitive bias and achieve organic classroom engagement. These authors close by presenting a framework that provides educators with curriculum design and classroom engagement recommendations that incorporate social realities into marketing practice.

Second, in a contribution coauthored with several undergraduate students, Everett, Gunduc, Junjunia, Kroener, Maise, Scott-Hyde, Salem, and Simsek (2023)’s Transformational learning: Using equality and diversity marketing client briefs to foster awareness, application and action examines student outcomes of marketing consultancy project with an equality and inclusion remit. Aided by comprehensive literature review, evidence from focus groups that included current and past students plus the client suggest that there is a long-term impact on the development of future responsible marketers. This article concludes with guidelines for marketing educators considering designing their own social-justice focused assessments.

Third, Hass, Hass, and Joseph (2023)’s Emergency online learning and the digital divide: An exploratory study of the effects of Covid-19 on minority students contributes by examining accessibility and socialization issues in the pandemic. These authors review the online learning literature to develop insights into digital social divide, achievement gaps between social classes, and the need for social connection. Armed with these insights, they conducted a survey of minority university students and found that despite accessibility not having a significant impact on students’ outcomes, the support and empathy provided by educators did. The article closes by suggesting both further investment on inclusive educational technologies and also the adoption of learning approaches that reinforce the sense of belongingness.

Next, two articles examine assessment tools that include diversity and inclusion issues to further develop students’ cultural competencies. Drawing on the racial priming and personal relevance literature, Saavedra Torres, McLeod, and Houghton (2023)’s Personal relevance matters: Reducing racial priming on discussion boards about racial issues in marketing courses develops a theoretical model to reinforce engagement in discussing sensitive marketing issues while addressing students’ discomfort. These authors conduct an assessment experiment by manipulating students’ deliberate or automatic cognitive processing. Their findings suggest that the sequence of questions in the task trigger students’ personal relevance and increase willingness to engage in controversial discussions. In the same vein, Scott and Sandell (2023)’s Increasing intercultural competency in study abroad marketing classes: Implementing the intercultural development inventory apply a measure of students’ intercultural competency to assess international study trips. Their empirical evidence shows the increase in intercultural competency scores after partaking in the international experience. Both these articles conclude with guidance on how to integrate diversity and inclusion issues in marketing courses.

Last, Achenreiner and Nasif (2023)’s Stereotype threat triggered by data focused assessments for marketing students: An exploratory study addresses issues of

psychological safety and gender-bias-free assessments. After reviewing literature on marketing and stereotypes, these authors report the results of a classroom experiment where data for an assessment was manipulated by altering the gender of consumer names. Their findings suggest that marketing students are impacted by the inclusion of gendered data in the assessment brief creating implicit bias. They encourage educators to provide less critical demographic information to contribute to an inclusive in class environment.

These six contributions in this special issue provide our inspiration for developing a broader overviewing framework for marketing education that is more diverse and inclusive.

Conceptualizing an Inclusive Marketing Education Framework

The literature has only recently begun to explore inclusive pedagogy and diversity in marketing education. Some of these articles critique current practices (e.g., Brennan et al., 2018; Kipnis et al., 2021) or advocate innovations in curriculum design (e.g., Rivera et al., 2020; Stern, 2008) and others focus on specific components of the marketing curriculum (e.g., Chang, 2020; Kurpis & Hunter, 2017; Rosenbaum, Moraru, & Labrecque, 2013) or student outcomes (e.g., Pierce & Longo, 2020). Yet, there lacks a broad conceptual overview of how inclusive and diversity issues in society and the marketplace impact pedagogy and student outcomes. Building on these contributions and those contained in this special issue, this article’s Inclusive Marketing Education Framework provides marketing academics with a broad perspective on their inclusive or diversity innovations in educational practice (see Figure 1). The next three sections outline the three components of the framework: environmental factors, pedagogical elements, and student outcomes.

Figure 1. An inclusive marketing education framework.

Environmental Factors

Marketing education needs to reflect the society and marketplace in which it is situated; thus, we identify three environmental factors that shape the educational needs of marketing students: social movements, socially sustainable consumer behavior, and marketing strategies that incorporate inclusivity and diversity issues. As mentioned in the introduction, the recent past has witnessed many social movements in societies across the world that have measurable impacts not only on politically active citizens and policymakers but also on some consumers’ attitudes, behavior, and consumption choices. These consumers prioritize purchases that deemed as ethical, fair, and are consistent with their impression of the societal responsibilities of business (Yoganathan, Osburg, & Akhtar, 2019). Business executives have taken note of the rise of this type of consumer and have already implemented, or actively designing, novel marketing strategies that include diversity and inclusion issues. Thus, to remain relevant, marketing classrooms need to integrate these social trends into experiential educational experiences (Achenreiner & Nasif, 2023; Everett et al., 2023; Ferreira et al., 2023; Hass et al., 2023).

Pedagogical Elements

These environmental factors in society and the marketplace challenge marketing educators to innovate pedagogical elements of their practice, including curriculum design, educational delivery, and learning assessment. First, marketing curricula in many institutions need to be updated to reflect these environmental factors and create inclusive classrooms. The marketing education literature offers some guidance when redesigning curricula to be more inclusive and diverse, including reimagining course structure (Everett et al., 2023; Scott & Sandell, 2023; Stern, 2008; Watson et al., 2021) and incorporating critical inclusive subjects such as social justice in marketing (Grier, 2020) or gender in advertising (Achenreiner & Nasif, 2023; Gurrieri & Finn, 2023).

Second, after redesigning marketing curricula to be more inclusive and diverse, educators need to consider how they deliver on these curricula in the classroom. The literature provides some innovations that often revolve around activities that immerse students diverse situations, such as social justice projects (Achenreiner & Nasif, 2023; Grier, 2020), diversity walks (Stern, 2008), photovoice inclusivity trainings (Pierce & Longo, 2020), multicultural servicescapes (Rosenbaum et al., 2013), consultancy projects (Everett et al., 2023), or international study trips (Scott & Sandell, 2023).

Third, an essential aspect of education is learning assessment; however, traditional ways of assessing students using exams or essays present inclusivity and diversity challenges (Brennan et al., 2018). Marketing studies that address these diverse and inclusive issues in assessments are scare; however, many of this special issue’s contributions provide marketing educators with practical guidance and many useful assessment tools (e.g., Achenreiner & Nasif, 2023; Everett et al., 2023; Saavedra Torres et al., 2023; Scott & Sandell, 2023).

Student Outcomes

After innovating pedagogical elements considering environmental factors, marketing students should realize several outcomes: improved academic performance, enhanced cross-cultural competences, and increased awareness of responsible marketing. As a chief concern for themselves, their parents, educators, and universities, students’ academic performance has been shown to improve when marketing education is more inclusive and diverse (Brennan et al., 2018; Hass et al., 2023; Saavedra Torres et al., 2023; Spais & Paul, 2021). Part of this education that carries on to marketing practice is cross-cultural competences (Kurpis & Hunter, 2017; Scott & Sandell, 2023) and awareness of responsible marketing (Chang, 2020; Everett et al., 2023).

Inspiring Future Research on Diverse and Inclusive Practices in Marketing Education

As business schools are actively seeking to innovate their curriculum design, educational delivery and learning assessment to meet the needs of diverse communities and the rise of inclusive marketing practices, there is a call for additional marketing education research to lead thought on best practice. While the contributions of this special issue are an important step, our inclusive marketing education framework highlights several areas that provide both opportunities and challenges for educators that require further investigations: professional responsibility skills, program co-development, accessible education, and educational technology (see Table 2 for potential research questions).

Table 2. Agenda for future research into diversity and inclusion issues in marketing education.

Theme	Potential research questions
Professional responsibility skills	How can we define, describe, or classify professional responsibility skills? What educational experiences are the most successful at developing professional responsibility skills? What educators’ training is required? How can professional responsibility skills be integrated into the marketing curriculum? How can they be assessed fairly? How should graduates best communicate their professional responsibility skillsets to potential employers?
Accessible education	How does the course material create psychological safety for students to address yet at the same time challenge them to broaden their intellectual horizons? How can educational delivery be more inclusive of different students’ needs to address mental health accessibility issues? What can educators do to design curricula and assessments to ensure accessibility for those with neurodiversity conditions or physiological limitations? What types of support are needed to better engage underrepresented social groups in marketing classrooms?
Program co-development	How to meaningfully incorporate the views of diverse practitioners or other stakeholders in inclusive marketing program design? What are the best practice principles using experiential experiences co-developed with underrepresented groups to demonstrate the value of diversity? What are the key considerations in co-developing learning assessments with diverse external partners that educators need to account for to facilitate fair assessment?
Educational technology	What are the implications of generative artificial intelligence applications (e.g., ChatGPT) for inclusive marketing education? How can alternative reality technologies (e.g., augmented reality, virtual reality) support diversity and inclusion in marketing education? What diversity and inclusion opportunities and challenges will marketing education in the metaverse bring? How can we ensure that these experiences are inclusive? Which technological experiences in marketing classrooms are more inclusive? Which best facilitates diversity in education? What methods need to be applied or developed to ensure academic integrity when providing alternative assessments to address inclusivity or diversity issues?

Businesses are looking for graduates that can help them navigate the murky ethical waters that they often find themselves in; thus, educators need to have insights into how to develop professional responsibility skills. These skills will help them not only to deal with pressing or arising issues at workplaces but also, more importantly, allow them to champion diversity and inclusion, as well as lead their organizations to a responsible future. We call for future scholarship on how these skills are best developed and on their usefulness in the workplace.

While the literature has many accessible education insights concerning students’ protective characteristics (e.g., gender, ethnicity, national origin, sexuality), there are other under-researched characteristics that may provide a more inclusive and diverse approach in marketing education. We call for further investigation on accessible education strategies that account for students struggling with mental health, neurodiversity conditions, and physiological limitations, as well as additional scholarship examining underrepresented social, ethnic, and other groups.

Moving the focus away from students, many business schools seek to develop programs either with the needs of prospective employers in mind or actively engaging with these employers to co-develop marketing programs. We call for future investigations that examine when and how to engage a more diverse range of stakeholders that will allow students to experience the value of diversity and inclusion in society.

As technologies are advancing at an ever-increasing pace, marketing educators need to consider how, or if, they should implement new technologies into education. There are many unexplored questions regarding how these new technologies can help or hinder the goals of inclusive marketing education; thus, we call on scholars to research this area.

Concluding Thoughts

Marketing education needs to be more inclusive and champion diversity, not only to mirror the practitioner world, but also because it is the right thing to do. The contributions contained in this special issue offer tangible pedagogical recommendations for educators to improve students’ outcomes, as well as prepare them to become responsible business professionals. This editorial offers a broad conceptualization of inclusive marketing education that we hope will inspire instructors and researchers to innovate and explore how to create responsible marketing professionals that know the value of diversity and inclusion.

Acknowledgments

We are very honored to serve as guest editors for MER special issue on this very important topic. The special issue would not have been possible without an outstanding team of reviewers that provided kind and constructive comments on submissions whether those ended up being accepted in this special issue or required further development for publication elsewhere. We would like to acknowledge Dr. Barbara Wooldridge, MER’s former Editor-in-Chief, for supporting the idea of the special issue on diversity and inclusion in marketing education, as well as aiding the development of the call for papers. Last, but not least, we would like to thank Dr. Seung Hwan Mark Lee, MER’s current Editor-in-Chief, for his timely guidance and assistance during the review process.