The Digital Era Has Changed Marketing: A Guide to Using Industry Certifications and Exploration of Student Perceptions of Effectiveness

The digital era has changed marketing dramatically and marketing jobs have shifted as well. Thus, marketing faculty face a difficult challenge in preparing students for the marketplace. Industry certifications can be a great way to prepare students for a career in the digital era. We present a design for using certifications with suggestions for the sequencing order as well as example instructions. This article describes the findings of a qualitative study and a quantitative study. The qualitative study focuses on content knowledge for several industry certifications. The quantitative study focuses on the effectiveness of using certifications.