The marketing research curriculum: Closing the practitioner–academic gaps

Abstract

As an industry, marketing research has enjoyed decades of systemic growth. Unfortunately, dissatisfaction with the return on marketing research investments has also been consistently voiced. Part of this complaint may be due to the inadequate way marketing research is being taught. In this article, we review what practitioner–academic gaps have been found in the literature and also present the results of a survey among alumni of a US university. We identify several key gaps including (1) understanding of business issues, (2) ability to define a marketing research problem, (3) ability to design marketing research, (4) ability to analyze data, (5) ability to interpret the results, (6) ability to translate results into actions, (7) ability to effectively interact with clients, and (8) expertise on specific research studies such as customer satisfaction research, branding, and new product development research.