Marketing Education Research: Credit for the Advancement of our Own Profession?

Abstract

While the relative emphasis on teaching and research clearly differs from university to university, pressure from a variety of sources has raised questions as to whether these should be treated as mutually exclusive dimensions. One way to combine these activities is to conduct research on business education. Questions have been raised regarding the legitimacy of marketing education as a research field. If such concerns are prevalent, the professional credit researchers receive for conducting education research should reflect the concerns. This research examines three key questions. First, is research appearing in education journals rewarded to a lesser extent than research appearing elsewhere? The results show less credit is awarded to research appearing in education journals. Second, is education research rewarded to a lesser extent than non-education research appearing in the same or comparable journals? The results show less credit is given to education studies relative to other research in similar journals. Finally, does the reward system provide motivation for education researchers to target higher tier journals? The results suggest that while researchers do receive more credit for education research in top tier journals, the incremental gain for such research is significantly less than the incremental gain for non-education research. Discussion of these findings and directions for future research are offered