Enhancing Students’ Role Identity As Marketing Majors

An undergraduate student’s major often becomes an important part of his or her self-definition. A student’s major identifies him or her with respect to certain classes, places on campus, behaviors, aspirations, and with certain other people. When a student selects marketing as a major, he or she is choosing not just to receive the attributes and benefits of the major but also to become something through a process of role-identity development. The more effectively this identification process takes place, the better the outcomes for the student and, potentially, for marketing educators. This article identifies and empirically demonstrates variables that marketing educators can influence to facilitate the role-identity development process. As marketing educators work to attract more and better undergraduate students to marketing, it may be time to pay greater attention to enhancing the identification process that links students with marketing.