J. Holton Wilson

Required Internship Programs in Marketing: Benefits, Challenges and Determinants of Fit

Although research indicates that internships offer numerous benefits to students, very few marketing programs require their students to complete one. This paper outlines and discusses the key issues marketing departments should consider when deciding whether or not to establish an internship requirement. In particular, the paper discusses the benefits of internships, the challenges departments are likely to face if they require one, and the key determinants of whether or not an internship requirement represents a good fit for a particular department.

A Comparative Analysis of Decision Trees Vis-à-vis Other Computational Data Mining Techniques in Automotive Insurance Fraud Detection

The development and application of computational data mining techniques in nancial fraud detection and business failure prediction has become a popular cross-disciplinary research area in recent times involv- ing nancial economists, forensic accountants and computational modellers. Some of the computational techniques popularly used in the context of - nancial fraud detection and business failure prediction can also be eectively applied in the detection of fraudulent insurance claims and therefore, can be of immense practical value to the insurance industry. We provide a compara- tive analysis of prediction performance of a battery of data mining techniques using real-life automotive insurance fraud data. While the data we have used in our paper is US-based, the computational techniques we have tested can be adapted and generally applied to detect similar insurance frauds in other countries as well where an organized automotive insurance industry exists.

Computer Attitudes and Marketing Education

This article examines the computer attitudes of marketing majors. Class standing, course, and the number of computer-using courses students take are found to have a positive effect on computer anxiety, computer confidence, and overall computer attitude, but class and course do not affect computer liking or perceptions of computer usefulness. GPA has a positive relationship to aU attitude scales except computer liking. Age and gender do not appear to be related to any of the computer attitude measures evaluated.

Antecedents of Student Attitudes toward Computers

The purpose of this study was to examine the causal impact of different hypothesized antecedents of student attitudes toward computers. The results indicate that, although student attitudes toward computers are significantly affected by both confidence/non-anxiety and perceived usefulness, confidence/non-anxiety has a stronger relationship.

Teaching Forecasting: Marketing Faculty Opinions and Methods

This article reports the results of a survey of marketing faculty concerning the teaching of forecasting. Results show that multiple and simple regression methods are rated as the most important of the 16 methods included in the study; Box-Jenkins and autoregressive methods are rated as the least important. Importance ratings are also evaluated by grouping objective and subjective methods as well as by computer users and nonusers and by level at which forecasting is taught.

Affinity for Quantitative Tools: Undergraduate Marketing Students Moving beyond Quantitative Anxiety.

Marketing students are known as less likely to have an affinity for the quantitative aspects of the marketing discipline. In this article, we study the reasons why this might be true and develop a parsimonious 20-item scale for measuring quantitative affinity in undergraduate marketing students. The scale was administered to a sample of business majors at a midsized university. The scale developed yielded a four-factor solution: Confidence, Enjoyment, Marketability, and Importance. Using multivariate analysis of variance, we test whether there are significant differences in quantitative affinity by gender, major, internship completion, class standing, and class completion. The findings suggest that marketing majors are less likely to enjoy the quantitative aspect of their major, but on completing a marketing research course their appreciation for the importance of quantitative tools increases. Internship completion has no effect on the undergraduate marketing students’ quantitative affinity. Our study complements extant literature by providing a parsimonious scale for assessing quantitative affinity specially adapted to the marketing students and analyzing the characteristics associated with students’ scores. Suggested teaching strategies, based on the findings, are included.

Forecasting for the Small Retail Business: Operational Recommendations

Often small business owners/managers feel they haveinadequate time for formal forecasting and/or that they lack the expertise to do so. Since forecasting is an important decision‐aiding tool, managers in small retail establishments can benefit by implementing a simple forecasting process. Doing so will enable them to better anticipate the firms future level of sales and lead to more successful operations. We suggest the use of relatively simple quantitative methods that have proven to work well in a wide variety of situations. Exponential smoothing, basic regression methods, and time series decomposition can be employed with relative ease in the context of a small retail business. Inexpensive computers and forecasting software make it possible for small retailers to utilize these forecasting methods in a cost effective and timely fashion.

The Influence of Staffing and Scheduling Factors on the Recruiting Effectiveness of the Marketing Principles Course

This study examined the impact of scheduling and staffing decisions on the recruiting effectiveness of different sections of marketing principles. Results of a path analysis indicate that recruiting effectiveness is directly affected by course evaluations and time format and indirectly affected by the instructors education level and the class size.