Marketing Inclusion: A Social Justice Project for Diversity Education

Abstract

Challenges related to marketplace diversity present an opportunity to prepare students to successfully engage with diversity through innovative curricular approaches. The present research develops a semester-long course project designed to enhance students’ awareness and understanding of diversity and inclusion issues from a social justice perspective. We discuss the context of diversity issues in business schools and identify key issues affecting marketing educators. Our review of the pedagogical literature on diversity highlights the importance of a social justice orientation. Social cognitive theory is used as a conceptual framework to guide the design of a problem-based experiential project. We detail project implementation and assess evidence regarding the impact of the project. Findings suggest an experiential, problem-based class project can support students understanding of diversity from a social justice perspective. We discuss the project benefits and challenges and highlight pedagogical issues for educators who want to integrate diversity content into a broad array of marketing courses.