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INTEREST CATEGORY: TEACHING AND LEARNING
POSTING TYPE: Calls: Journals

Posted by: Scott Cowley

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Journal of Marketing Education

Special Issue Call for Papers

Market-Relevant Education: From Digital Native Students to Digital-First Organizations

Submission Deadline: January 15, 2026

Marketing educational scholarship is inexorably shaped by trends in academic research embedded within the broader landscape of marketing practitioners and company practices. The perennial challenge of educational research is to maintain a relevant place among the conversations and transformations occurring outside of academia. The Journal of Marketing Education has made quality efforts to spotlight such research with recent special issues on topics such as artificial intelligence, social media marketing, and digital disruption. Educational research often lags innovative industry practices and non-pedagogy research (Parker et al., 2024), but the most relevant educational scholarship should acknowledge and be informed by the environmental realities in which that education is situated.

What are the present realities in marketing? Two recent surveys of chief marketing officers offer clues (Gartner, 2025; The CMO Survey, 2025). Today, marketing is decidedly digital-first, data-abundant, AI-generated, resource-constrained, and talent-scarce. People spend more time with digital media relative to traditional media, and a majority of marketing budgets is now spent on digital marketing. Marketing leaders report feeling even more pressure to increase productivity and show the value of marketing investments. Paradoxically, CMOs plan to reduce labor costs through AI and automation while also reporting difficulties finding expertise with the right skillset—all while confessing an inability to train their own marketers. A 2024 Burning Glass Institute study showed that marketing graduates are more likely than other business disciplines to be underemployed 5 years after graduation. Each of these realities has downstream effects on the marketing profession, on marketing students, and on educators.

This special issue of the Journal of Marketing Education invites researchers to contribute to the urgent mission of delivering Market-Relevant Marketing Education, focusing on converging trends, forces, opportunities, and challenges faced by the marketing profession, students, and other stakeholders.

We encourage contributors to consider how to best conceptualize and operationalize market-relevance to enhance both its generalizability and impact. A variety of potential qualitative and quantitative approaches can help inform the question of relevance. We encourage potential contributors to consider submissions addressing market-relevant:

• Short- and long-term marketing career preparation
• Experience- and skill-building pedagogy
• Digital-first strategies, channels, tools, technologies, software, and platforms
• Creative and content creation skills
• Analytical decision-making and marketing measurement skills
• Digital ethics, consumer wellness, and societal responsibility

All submissions must be made through the JME editorial manager on the Journal of Marketing Education website, which also contains the journal style guidelines. Potential contributors are welcome to contact the special issue editor with any questions:

Prof. Scott Cowley

Western Michigan University
scott.cowley@wmich.edu

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