From Consumer to Marketer: Taking a Constructivist Approach in First-Year Marketing Education With Reflective Learning

First-year undergraduate students often face significant challenges when entering tertiary education, including reduced motivation and a lack of perceived relevance in their initial mandatory courses. For many business students, marketing is one such course, because those not intending to pursue a marketing career may struggle to see its value. Interestingly, students engage with marketing daily as active consumers, yet may overlook its relevance to their personal and professional lives. To address this disconnect, we designed a constructivist reflective assessment (CRA) for first-year business students to help them recognize the subject’s relevance and enhance their motivation. We assessed the effectiveness of the CRA through pre- and post-assessment questionnaires that collected qualitative and quantitative insights. Our findings suggest that applying constructivist principles were associated with higher levels of intrinsic student motivation, more positive attitudes and heightened interest in the course among respondents. They offer potentially valuable implications for marketing and business educators, suggesting that integrating students’ personal experiences into learning may help create more relevant, impactful learning experiences that resonate with students and support their engagement in their learning.