A review of the evolution of marketing practice in the web 2.0 era has marketing education remained relevant? Observations from practitioners, academics and students.

Abstract

Web 2.0 technologies have transformed the marketing industry and the more closely consumers become connected to digital technologies, the greater the power of the information channel for marketers. When the immediacy and accessibility of digital media is combined with metrics, analysis and customer profiling / segmentation, the online world becomes even more powerful for marketing purposes. Exploratory research was used to generate ideas/hypotheses about this research topic, initially through secondary data analysis, and subsequently through qualitative research, namely in depth, semi-structured interviews with marketing practitioners. The final phase of the primary research, the survey, used descriptive research to describe, uncover and compare the opinions of marketing practitioners, marketing academics and post-graduate marketing students on the evolution of marketing practice in the web 2.0 era and the relevance of marketing education through quantitative research. As the digital revolution charges on and the number of smart devices and machines connecting to mobile networks rise dramatically, companies need expertise in social media and community management, content marketing, mobile marketing/apps development, search engine optimisation and web analytics. This research discovers recruiters find that top talent in these areas is difficult to obtain and demand for these skills will only increase in the future. As employment in marketing jobs becomes increasingly technical and data-driven, this work recommends marketing education evolves correspondingly.