Using Marketing History in the Modern Classroom: An Abstract

Abstract

Marketing history is often underrepresented in modern marketing curricula, where case studies and textbooks typically focus on modern examples and developments. Thus, the authors treat this deficiency in marketing education as an opportunity in which an instructor may enhance student education by relating marketing history to current ideas. The included classroom activity integrates a well-known projective research experiment from marketing history into the classroom using modern pedagogical methods. In regard to pedagogical theory, research has demonstrated that active learning techniques, which encourage student engagement through experiential exercises, are an effective method of instruction (Drea et al. 2005; Vander Schee 2007; Mazon 2017). Such exercises are capable of helping students reach the highest level, the “creation” phase, of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Education Objectives (revised) (Anderson and Krathwohl 2001; Bloom et al. 1956). Thus, the authors integrate an active learning exercise based on psychologist Mason Haire’s (1950) “Projective Techniques in Marketing Research” into the classroom. Students are asked to participate in a similar experiment, discuss the results, and prepare their own projective research experiment. During the course of classroom discussion, Haire’s experiment is fully explained and discussed. The exercise can be adapted for individual or group work and can be adapted for several marketing or management courses. The added benefit of this exercise is that while students are learning about marketing research—specifically projective research—they are also learning about a well-known application of marketing research from the history of marketing. The exercise and discussion can help students more fully understand the relationship between theory, research, and how the results of research have practical applications for businesses. The exercise also demonstrates that research techniques from 70 years ago can still be relevant and useful methods in modern times.