Is the branch of science, which is concerned with the organization, and the market environment of businesses. Business studies uses context-based, multi-disciplinary methods in order to consider the practical issues which affect businesses – both internally and externally – in a scientific manner. At university-level, this means considering the methodology of business studies. However, a business scientist is not only trained to carry out research into all kinds of business phenomena. Designing, advising on, implementing and evaluating policies, solutions and concepts are equally as important in practice, in all types of organizations.
Published in Chapter:
The Evolution of Consumerism in the Marketing Education: A Critical Discussion Based on Mezirow's Critical Reflection
George S. Spais (Graduate Technological Educational Institute of Western Greece, Greece)
Copyright: © 2014
|Pages: 33
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-5880-6.ch003
Abstract
The chapter examines how consumerism- one of the primary key themes in marketing and business courses- has evolved the last decade and envisages the shape of these set of courses in the future. From the 1,935 words for 20 key-concepts counted in 141 online course descriptions in English of the last 10 periods delivered by Business and Management Schools or Business/Marketing Academic Depts. of 88 Universities and Colleges, “Marketing,” “business,” “ethics” and “social responsibility” were included in 100% of the course descriptions analyzed, indicating their coverage by all courses. In order to investigate the five (5) research objectives, HCA was adopted for an exploratory analysis based on single-linkage clustering method to reveal natural groupings of the key concepts within a data set of word counts that were not apparent and then multiple linear regression analyses were conducted. The trend analyses indicated prospects for the increasing focus around specific topics. The interpretation of the research results based on the assumptions of Mezirow's critical reflection provided very strong recommendations.