When Were the Good Old Days? Revisiting Perceptions of Marketing Students’ Prior Preparation

This study determines whether marketing professors’ perceptions of the preparedness of marketing majors have improved during the last decade. In 1985, Budden concluded that marketing professors perceived marketing majors as inadequately prepared to effectively pursue marketing curricula. This study reexamines those perceptions. The same questionnaire was administered to 600 marketing faculty members, and the results are very similar to the earlier study: communication and quantitative skills of marketing majors continue to be regarded as deficient by marketing faculty. Rankings by both groups of respondents of 10 high school subject areas in order of their importance to effectively prepare students for the marketing curriculum were also compared.