Reflections on Holixec Education: A Macromarketing Response to Contemporary Educational Challenges?

This commentary reflects on the ‘holixec’ education framework proposed by Batat (2024) in relation to macromarketing scholarship, especially the wider marketing pedagogy literature. We suggest that holixec education codifies rather than revolutionizes current practice and is applicable to work within existing educational structures (rather than critiquing, challenging, or transforming them), thus resonating with the developmental school of macromarketing through (rather than the critical school). Further, ‘holixec’ education remains largely grounded at the individual level without concrete guidance to address systemic complexities. On a broader level, we identify what we see as perhaps the most obvious challenge ‘holixec’ education and similar models must overcome—that they are of little practical use without empirical scrutiny, while such scrutiny can go against the ethos of holistic education. This challenge leaves instructors with little guidance to navigate and manage the messiness that arises from systemic complexities.