Service-Learning in Higher Education Marketing Courses: The Use of a Marketing Plan

Introduction

The understanding of how marketing and society should collaborate to create value is the essence of marketing definition. With this idea in mind, we propose a way to establish a learning process based on the development of individual service orientation, social understanding, and the necessary fundamental concepts of marketing to train future managers and employees. Therefore, in this proposal, we show how service-learning (SL) is useful in developing key marketing skills and concepts.

The objective is twofold. First, we test if the implementation of SL helps to develop marketing skills and knowledge, and second, we present a “road map” for university teachers, with a particular emphasis on marketing instructors, to help them implement SL in their marketing courses through the use of a marketing plan, which in this instance, was the basis of a project to help various charities.

The data and results we present are based on the experience implemented in Marketing Management II, a third-year degree course for Business Administration and Business Administration and Law students in Pablo de Olavide University, Seville.

This document outlines how to plan and execute a teaching experience based on SL methodology. Specifically, this chapter examines:

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  The importance of including SL methodology in a university marketing course.

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  The marketing plan as a focal learning point using SL methodology.

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  The preliminary planning of the experience.

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  Implementation during the course, schedule of activities (to be carried out by students in groups) and grading system.

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  Conclusions from the experience

Moreover, we present the scales used to test the success of the experience in terms of service orientation, social dimension, and marketing knowledge. The results show that students participating in the service-learning experience learnt the key concepts of marketing and were able to successfully apply them to real-life cases, whilst simultaneously developing social understanding and increasing their levels of service orientation.

The chapter is structured as follows; we first explain the connection between marketing and service learning, and how service orientation is key for the success of marketing management. Subsequently, we present the marketing plan as the main tool to guide the service-learning experience and learning process of marketing courses. An explanation of the planning and implementation in a marketing management course is provided, as well as the method used to test the success of the implementation. Activities and rubrics used to develop the service-learning experience by using a marketing plan have been added in the annexe.