Developing Cultural Competence

The growing popularity of short-term study abroad and faculty-led immersion offer scholars and educators a new opportunity to study the impact of cross-cultural experiential learning practices on fostering cross-cultural competency among business students. Rising foreign direct investment, international trade, the growing significance of emerging markets, and other socio-political elements of globalization are reshaping 21st century business practices. Pedagogies of business education, including sales and marketing education, must adapt to these changes and provide an emphasis on cross-cultural understanding and its impact on business decision making, along with fostering skills for cultural sensitivity. This article will review two relevant theoretical frameworks, transformative learning theory, and experiential learning theory, which describe the processes by which students develop intercultural competence, particularly with respect to faculty-led, short-term study immersion programs. It will outline a series of best practices for designing, measuring, and implementing such programs in higher education and conclude with brief recommendations for future research.

Teaching and Learning Cultural Metacognition in Marketing and Sales Education

Thinking about cultural assumptions, referred to as cultural metacognition, can help increase awareness, build trust, and create successful marketing and sales outcomes. The role of cultural metacognition in marketing and sales education helps students build a cultural metacognition knowledge base and promotes appreciation of its importance and effect on business enhancement. The context of this article will help amplify knowledge, ideas, and skills necessary to connect various issues of teaching and learning cultural metacognition. This article will facilitate business educators' teaching practices that foster learning cultural metacognition and its effects on marketing and sales. The ultimate goal is to help elevate teaching, learning, and assessment practices related to the topic of cultural metacognition in marketing and sales education.

Decision Makers' Mindsets in the Jewelry Capital of America

Neuromarketing is a tool of research that has showed those stimuli of marketing that affect the emotional part of buyers in the response of the brain. Their knowledge can be considered as a support in a strategy to influence increased sales levels and improve the relationship with customers. The purpose of the research is to demonstrate the relationship between the key strategies of neuromarketing and the elements of the quality in the service for sales to the final customer in commercial SMEs of the jewelry industry in Guadalajara. The methodology that was used was non-experimental of transversal character and an exploratory research and correlation. The object of the study was the commercial SMEs of Centro Joyero San Juan de Dios in Guadalajara. The analysis demonstrated that there exists a relation of the key strategies and the quality of the service in the perception of sales in neuromarketing.

Experiential Learning for Effective Knowledge Transfer and Mission Achievement

Traditional university mission statements are multifaceted. The majority focus on fundamentals: teaching, research, and service. Most core values are holistic learning, freedom of expression, and openness. However, recent trends appear to embrace a consumerist “transactional approach” emphasizing competitiveness, superiority, self-interest, and quantifiable quality with students as primary customers. At a time when students are demanding value for money, universities must endeavor to balance private interests with traditional universities' values. Hence, consideration of some form of experiential learning and knowledge transfer in universities' mission statements is expected to enrich student learning, add value to society, and also meet the transactional approach requirements. This paper explores theoretical and conceptual approaches to the learning process including theories, models, and perspectives. The United States International University's experience is used as a case study with reference to integrative learning experiences in the General Education (GE) courses, the Collaborative Active Learning Model (CALM) Approach to Learning, and the Global Executive MBA Program, and the knowledge transfer experiences in the GAME Center Living Lab, the Agent Net Work, and the Entrepreneurial Simulation.

Environmental Marketing Awareness and Consumer Purchase Behaviour

The focus of this article is to examine the effect of environmental marketing on consumer behavior in the food and beverage products in Nigeria. The population of this study encompasses all consumers of food and beverage sub-sector of the manufacturing industry in Edo State, Nigeria. Sampling techniques were adopted from other authors to select a sample of 322 consumers, and these methods were employed since the population is unknown (infinite) and the method is scientific in nature. Cronbach's alpha was used to determine the validity and reliability of the instruments used. The findings reveal that the three variables used for this study: environmental concern, social influence, and government regulation, had a significant relationship with consumer behavior. The study recommends among others that food and beverage firms in Nigeria should be conscious of the environmental nature of their product as consumer awareness about environmental products is gradually increasing.

Manufacturing Industry of the ATU Gagauzia (Republic of Moldova)

The wide range of opportunities for the development of manufacturing industry in the ATU Gagauzia (Republic of Moldova) are considered in this article. An analysis of the production and economic performance of the manufacturing industry, in connection with the problems of regional authority's regulation of the manufacturing market is made. The characteristic of production and technical potential of the manufacturing industry in the country and its use is given. Much attention is paid to creation conditions of investments in the fixed capital of the industry and the development of methods of regional authorities of the regulation of investment activities. The publication covers the foundations of the formation and management of the regional human resources. The central objective of this publication author are the analysis and presenting the basis of the stimulation of manufacturing industry development and the attraction of investments to the region, realizing that only by developing the economy through domestic and foreign investments can the good conditions be created for increasing the pace of production, improving the quality of products, and expanding the boundaries of product sales. The Gagauzian entrepreneurs pay constant attention to the activities of businesses in the autonomy and build a constructive dialogue to identify the solutions of any issues by initiating and adopting regulations to encourage entrepreneurial activity and investment in the region. The building blocks for enabling such a policy are the openness of the region to domestic and foreign investors, improving the business and investment climate, and the creation of preferential conditions for attracting investments to the main sectors of the region (including the manufacturing industry).

The Role of Business Schools in Marketing Education

Business schools play a key role in training marketing professionals. However, there is a strong divide between the expectations held by marketing professionals and those held in academia. This article considers this phenomenon from a theoretical point of view and explores its causes. The author argues that business schools are able to play a key role in bridging theory and practice in marketing. The article closes by offering several suggestions for how business schools might increase the relevance of marketing research while reducing the gap between marketing theory and practice. In particular, the article suggests the adoption of an inductive approach to research and offers a set of policies that business schools can implement in order to close this gap.

Plowing a Fertile Ground for Transformative Management Education

This article argues in favor of a holistic and ethically grounded educational framework for managers, oriented to fine-tune business with developmental requirements. Considering the multiple environmental, social, and economic challenges the world faces today, business goals are approached in terms of genuine humankind developmental obligations. Acknowledging the urgent need to prevent some eschatological scenarios, a critical and mindful methodology is used to diagnose, evaluate and reorient the role of business and management education. Sustainable development goals (SDGs) are proposed as beacons to channel and ethically assess the potential of business to contribute in concrete terms to integral development, using them as prisms through which comprehension, criticisms and transformations can be articulated.

A Proposed Model of an Intelligent Software Agent for Marketing Education (ISAME)

The purpose of this article is to illustrate the advantages of intelligent software agent technologies in order to facilitate the location and customization of appropriate marketing education resources, as well as to foster collaboration between individuals within digital environments. In order to do this, this article discusses how such intelligent and interactive software can translate into a better educational environment for marketing curriculum, particularly e-marketing courses. The authors present a conceptual model for managing marketing training and education using intelligent software agent, based on extant literature. So, this article presents some initial test of the proposed model of ISAME usage in marketing education in e-marketing class.

The Challenge of Sales and Marketing Silos in University Curricula

A mixed-methods design was used to investigate the skills required for college graduates of sales and marketing programs to be successful. Opinions were sought from campus recruiters, sales and marketing executives, and recent alumni. Online job postings and course syllabi were also examined to identify skills that are both sought and taught. While there are specific skill sets for each discipline, a problem-solving, analytical mindset will go a long way towards landing an entry level job. The curricula must satisfy the needs of both marketing and sales executives, bridging the silos that often exist in university programs between the two disciplines. Recommendations for curriculum development are discussed.