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Employers would like university graduates applying for entry-level marketing jobs to be familiar with current subjects, including sustainable development, digital marketing, big data, analytics, and the application of artificial intelligence in both classical and modern marketing jobs fields. Since most of today’s state-of-the-art technological developments have a strong connection with marketing, marketing educators need to rethink how they equip marketing students to transition into the technology-facilitated world and work environment.
The authors suggest that marketing educators reimagine their instruction of basic marketing principles to account for the technology-enhanced marketing age. Such reflections are broad-based across many domains, such as how courses are structured, what is taught, how assignments are designed, and how technology AI, and generative artificial intelligence, specifically, will reshape future marketing careers. The authors also provide ideas on how instructors can adapt and rethink current marketing courses to get students ready for a successful career in technology-facilitated marketing positions, as illustrated with some example class assignments.
Advances in marketing jobs technology, especially those facilitated by artificial intelligence, have initiated debates on how and what instructors can do to prepare students to enter the workforce needed in a rapidly changing, technology-facilitated world. Employers actively look for students possessing technology-connected knowledge and expertise, as revealed by a 2024 survey of 781 hiring managers that found 77% of them felt AI-related skills are especially beneficial and a survey of business executives, 90% of whom mentioned ChatGPT abilities as valuable for job candidates.
The majority of hiring managers report that they would employ candidates with AI abilities in place of more qualified candidates lacking those abilities. The earning premiums are also substantial positions that specifically value AI skills can pay candidates a maximum of 25% more.
The New Age of Technology
Exchange marketing jobs has always been a basic building block of all societies since the dawn of man gathering and converting resources. From bartering to elementary exchange, the age of simple trades held sway over early economies. However, the Industrial Revolution brought about the era of production, which emphasized the effective manufacturing of products. With production more efficient and products abundant, companies brought in the era of sales and started competing for buyers.
In search of differentiation, companies then entered the marketing era, freelance digital marketing, virtual marketing assistant, remote marketing jobs, chief marketing officer, content marketing manager which emphasized strategic choices regarding products, price, distribution, and promotion, also referred to as the 4Ps. As competition for consumers increased, companies shifted towards the value era, embracing greater customer-oriented decision-making and switching from seeking out transactions to maintaining customer relationships.
Notably, technology has in each era played a role and accelerated the shaping of marketing jobs practice e.g., customer relationship management systems were crafted during the value era. However, the escalating rate of technological innovation has greatly increased the position of technology within today’s marketing practice. So, the era of value-based marketing has given way to an entirely new one: the era of technology-augmented marketing. Production, selling, strategic choices about the 4Ps, and building relationships are still all required in the practice of modern marketing.
Core Topics for Marketing Education
Over the past decade or so, several technological jobs advancements and paradigm changes have rocked marketing, customers, and society, with waves washing up on all the shores of marketing education. Marketing instructors are thus pressed to be able to instruct students in learning more than rudimentary marketing. In this, we address five topics that are worth thinking about as marketing instructors design their classes. To begin, AI, including predictive AI and gen AI, can prescribe how marketers choose, connect with, engage with, and harvest value from customers.
Second, as robots become ubiquitous, it will be critical to determine how different forms of robots will affect consumer and firm behavior, supply chain management distribution centers, delivery, retailing, and service activities that are today carried out by human associates. Third, as strategies and tactics connected with digital marketing continue to increase in significance, it will significantly expand its reach in marketing plans.
Fourth, analytics and big data have come to the forefront, not just because of expanding volumes of data but also the rising functional capability enabled by the integration of greater computing power and AI. Fifth, sustainable development has emerged as the center of much in marketing jobs practice, and technological developments provide new solutions for coping with its complexity and interdependencies, thus shedding light on possible ways toward attaining sustainable development.
Robots
Advances in AI have engendered a proliferation of robots in the marketplace jobs. The expanding deployment of robots allows marketers to experiment with various ways to enhance consumer experiences. For example, on the customer service frontline, robots have served as check-in staff at a hotel in Japan, and the LoweBot currently helps Lowe’s shoppers find products in large home improvement stores. In restaurants, particularly in Europe and Asia, robot waiters bring dishes right to customers’ tables. Off the frontline, robots also monitor inventory, sweep stores, and serve security patrols.
Flippy, Miso Robotics’ robot intelligence, network marketing jobs, email marketing manager, online marketing job, sales and marketing jobs, junior marketing manager, affiliate marketing jobs beginners performs repetitive, hazardous cooking procedures in fast-food joints, such as sprinkling fries into hot oil. The New York City Police Department stationed a K5 security robot in the subways, though not without a bit of controversy. The social robot ElliQ has been successful in its deployments; for the older adults it is targeted at, the robot offers substantive and more social interactions.
Digital Marketing
Even though it is not new, digital marketing jobs, or the act of leveraging digital technologies to gain customers and establish customer preferences, drive brands, hold on to customers, and drive sales, has also been boosted by the emergence of robust AI tools. Consequently, digital marketing is set to take over advertising budgets and campaigns. Already, global entities allocate over half of their budgets to digital initiatives, especially social and mobile marketing jobs. In 2023, digital advertisement accounted for 64% of total expenditure but is projected to increase significantly by 2028, when digital advertisement will constitute 76% of total expenditure.
Digital marketing’s potential effects have broad marketing applications, and the potential effect of digital marketing is to lower consumers’ cost of search, ensure efficient movement, and permit customization and precise targeting. Significantly, online marketing often depends on two other relatively recent technologies, i.e., social media and smart devices. Expenditures shifting towards social media indicate several factors, such as decreased TV viewing, particularly among young customers, relatively higher engagement and interaction on social media, higher potential for using influencers and user-generated content, and higher accuracy in ad targeting. The simultaneous movement away from marketing jobs on conventional media and towards marketing on cell phones is also quite striking.
Big Data and Marketing Analytics
Big data marketing jobs have been described according to two types volume and velocity, but in the eighth edition of their textbook Marketing, Grewal and Levy advocate introducing two more Vs: value and veracity. Whether by the above definition or not, big data is revolutionizing marketing in three different ways. First, big data enables more targeted marketing by laying out exactly what steps each customer takes before buying something. Previously, companies could glance over their sales and ad expenses and try to spot connections; nowadays, marketers can know fairly early on which of their particular efforts triggered which reactions from which consumers.
This level of exactness allows them to aim their marketing and pricing efforts more precisely. De Luca et al. call this big data-facilitated ability marketing ambidexterity, whereby marketers can target existing markets and customers while at the same time probing new markets and prospective customers who are receptive to their marketing efforts. Second, big data can facilitate more anticipatory responses to prevent customer pain points beforehand. For instance, cart abandonment is a baffling phenomenon in e-commerce.
Statistics indicate that carts are abandoned by as much as 88% of online consumers. Customer browsing patterns data could unveil the places where customers drop products from their carts instead of buying them. The information can guide marketers to know and resolve, in advance, the reasons that cause item/cart abandonment. Big data improves the performance of a firm because it unveils significant customer behavior trends.
Marketing Research
Learning to teach marketing jobs research involves students being introduced to the practice definitions, basics, types of data, sample design, how to construct surveys, focus groups, experiments, rudimentary data analysis, and report writing, as well as how they can utilize technology in augmenting such efforts. For instance, in learning the basics of focus groups, students can be taught to conduct a focus group using AI technologies like ChatGPT, a rapidly becoming standard procedure in the field.
These lessons should cover the benefits, drawbacks, and boundary conditions for using a gen AI tool compared to conducting a conventional and costly focus group. Gen AI can replicate human decisions, and it generates patterns that are consistent with well-documented consumer behaviors, such as their willingness to pay. On this level, it already provides an effective tool to pilot product and marketing jobs concepts. Evaluative information, initiated by requesting gen AI agents to assess new products or concepts, can be created in seconds, days, or weeks for human data gathered and costs essentially nothing hundreds to thousands of dollars for human data.
Conclusion
Technology, and in particular AI, has revolutionized marketing jobs practices. Marketing has progressed from the era of sales and the marketing era to what we call the technology-augmented era of marketing. Therefore, marketing education must also progress and change, and marketing teachers must reexamine the subjects and teaching methods they utilize in their marketing courses. Marketing companies anticipate that university graduates possess AI-related skills, particularly for gen AI tools, and most especially if they hold a marketing degree.
Of the \ most valued by employers, four are widely known soft skills, such as teamwork; the remainder all relate to data literacy and experience with AI. Conversely, it observes that each university DMI polled had at least explored offering AI-related programs or courses.
In integrating these student and employer trends and expectations, we also provide recommendations for how the teaching of core latest marketing concepts must change in these initial days of the technology-enhanced marketing age.
We have sketched out some of the most important themes that capture how advanced technology is influencing marketing practice, not just AI, big data, and digital marketing but also robotics and sustainability. These trends align with recent pedagogical trends, such as experiential learning and instructional modality. We therefore suggest some concrete strategies that marketing educators can use to adapt or re-design their marketing courses, e.g., marketing strategy, research, and sales, and thus prepare marketing students more effectively for a technology-enabled world. The course changes we offer are exemplary and outline a blueprint for modifying other courses as well.