DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION PRACTICES IN MARKETING EDUCATION: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND OVERVIEW OF THE SPECIAL ISSUE

Abstract

Individuals in societies across the globe are challenging long-standing cultural, gendered, racial, ethnic, and other stereotypes as is evident from protests ranging from women’s rights in Iran and Afghanistan to the “Black Lives Matter” and the “Me Too” movements (Amnesty International, 2022). Furthermore, these calls for change have been incorporated into the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (www. un.org/sustainabledevelopment/), specifically gender equality (Goal 5), reduced inequalities (Goal 10), and responsible consumption and production (Goal 12). Thus, marketing managers need to be prepared to examine and reflect on their organizations’ past marketing practices, identify areas where they could do better, and strategize future marketing strategies that are indeed inclusive and respect diversity (De Ruyter et al., 2022). In doing so, organizations will be ready to meet these social challenges head on. Consider, for instance, Unilever’s Dove brand’s “Campaign for Real Beauty.” Since 2004, this campaign tried to reform how the global cosmetic industry, including many other Unilever brands, portrays and advertises their beauty products. By exposing manipulated content in cosmetic advertising (Campbell, Plangger, Sands, & Kietzmann, 2022), Dove is breaking down longstanding cultural stereotypes of what defines beauty. The brand’s most recent campaign against social media beauty filters employs Deepfake technologies to expose young consumers to the dangers of misleading online beauty advice (Kiefer, 2022). Inclusive marketing campaigns such as Dove are pushing industry leaders and policymakers to set new standards for how businesses communicate with their customers. An important part of this shift toward more diverse and inclusive marketing is educating marketing practitioners. For example, Diageo, the global beverage conglomerate with brands such as Guinness, Johnnie Walker, and Crown Royal, has directed that all its over 1,200 marketing staff to take part in inclusive design training to remove unconscious bias from future marketing campaigns that will be accessible for all consumers (Stewart, 2022). These changes in marketing practice integrate inclusive and diverse strategies that need to be reflected in marketing education and pedagogy to train the next generation of business leaders (Kipnis et al., 2021). Marketing education and pedagogy require two connected reforms that enable inclusivity and respect diversity in the classroom and the marketplace. First, educators need to use novel instructional methods that demonstrate the effectiveness of embedding diverse and inclusive business policies in marketing practices (Crittenden, Davis, & Perren, 2020; Rivera, Arrese, Sádaba, & Casado, 2020). Second, educators need to eliminate both conscious and unconscious bias of groups, especially those that are underrepresented to not only make marketing education accessible for all but ensure that everyone has equal opportunities to gain from educational experiences (Brennan, Lu, & von der Heidt, 2018; Gurrieri & Finn, 2023). In this light, this special issue of the Marketing Education Review titled “Diversity and Inclusion Practices in Marketing Education” seeks insight into how marketing practice can achieve these reforms. Its six articles present educational practices that create and promote an inclusive and diverse experience that improve students’ academic performance and, more importantly, create responsible marketing and business professionals that are more aware of the diversity and inclusivity demands of the marketplace (see Table 1). Using a process approach, this article develops and conceptualizes an Inclusive Marketing Education Framework that maps out how marketing education can create marketers that are able to contribute to more inclusive and diverse marketing strategies. Specifically, our framework delineates three environmental factors (i.e., social movements, socially sustainable consumer behavior, diverse and inclusive marketing strategies) that impact three pedagogical elements (i.e., curriculum design, educational delivery, learning assessment) which produces three student outcomes (i.e., academic performance, crosscultural competences, responsible marketing awareness). From this framework, we close by suggesting potentially fruitful avenues for further academic enquiry into inclusive and diverse education, but first, we provide an overview of the six articles published in the special issue. MARKETING EDUCATION REVIEW 2023, VOL. 33, NO. 1, 1–6 https://doi.org/10.1080/10528008.2023.2173846