Market-Relevant Critical Thinking and Creativity Skills: Current Research and Future Directions for Marketing Education

The marketing profession has undergone significant change over time as technology has enabled more sophisticated approaches to promotion, personalization, and customer satisfaction. These advances necessitate revisiting marketing strategy, updating skills, and mastering new technologies to enhance efficiency. Moreover, there is an increasing professional expectation that marketing graduates will enter the profession with the requisite skills and competencies. However, many marketing graduates’ employment status is not commensurate with their educational credentials. As a result, marketing educators need to provide academic experiences that prepare marketing students for gainful employment. A significant consideration is how marketing students are trained to use artificial intelligence. This paper contributes to the marketing education literature by providing a taxonomy for addressing expectations within the marketing profession. The taxonomy focuses on two knowledge domains: critical thinking and creativity. Each domain is supported by several skills for students to develop and by tools for marketing educators. Based on a structured literature review, the paper presents a research agenda regarding critical thinking and creativity in marketing education. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research to enhance our understanding and to provide direction for each domain, with a focus on the utilization of artificial intelligence.