BRIDGING THE MARKETING-FINANCE GAP BY INTENSIFYING QUANTITATIVE PREPARATION AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL

Educating tomorrow's marketers is a dynamic process, requiring consistent reconnecting with industry to bring back to the classroom the tools that effectively prepare marketers to meet the expectations of senior-level management.

In the past decade, there has been an explosion of literature in marketing theory about validating marketing's impact, yet we find the marketing education literature lacking. Much to the benefit of the consumer, marketing and operations departments are clearly working together more effectively. Now, senior level management expects the same cohesiveness between marketing and finance departments, anticipating benefits to the shareholder.

The lack of attention paid by marketing educators to the topic of training marketers in the influential aspects of financial accountability suggests an opportunity to develop a structured approach to teaching the quantitative techniques required to garner the finance department’s cooperation, respect and support for growth initiatives. Undergraduate students need solid quantitative preparation as future marketers who can effectively present their innovations, product development strategies and financial impact within organizations. They need to confidently work with financial management using models and tools that satisfy the metric requirements of both functions, in support of the overall business strategy.

This paper first validates marketing’s theoretical acknowledgement of the importance of a strong and effective relationship with finance. Next, we investigate potential reasons for educators’ reluctance to elaborate on advanced quantitative preparation. Finally, we suggest an approach to a teaching framework that enables marketing students to work within a reasonable, yet persuasive, mathematical and statistical framework for finance.

Ultimately, we aim to ensure the student’s confidence in communicating concepts to financial management, detailing resource requirements, producing requisite metric validation, and measuring the impact of their work.