Marketing communication education in developing countries: Post-pandemic insights from India and South Africa

ABSTRACT

In two developing nations, technology enhanced marketing communication education in the classroom, both during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in what ways did enhancement occur, and to what ends? This research examines the reasons for and impacts of digitalisation on academic delivery of marketing communication education across two BRICS nations: South Africa and India. We use a comparative, narrative-based approach that challenges the ways that marketing communication educators often describe the significant teaching and learning agencies and incidents involving the place of technology in classroom learning. We show how the concepts of technological augmentation and paradox, the `TikTok effect´, and symbiotic pedagogies explain and help present a post-pandemic theory of marketing communication education in developing nations. We highlight the active learning and student-centred learning styles as symbiotic pedagogies that were regarded as best practice. Our findings show that educators were able to skilfully move across both styles depending on student need and skills required. We discuss how educators’ flexibility across contexts allowed them to maintain best practice technology-mediated teaching and learning strategies during the pandemic.

KEYWORDS:

• BRICS
• digitalisation
• student-centred learning
• active learning
• TikTok effect
• learning agencies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Approval no. of project: 2022SCiiS041. Dated approved: 29 August 2022.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Holly B. Cooper

Holly B. Cooper is a research fellow at Deakin University, Australia. Her research interests include consumer psychology, brand heritage and narrative inquiry. She has published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Psychology & Marketing, the European Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Marketing Communications. She completed her PhD at Griffith University.

Michael T. Ewing

Michael T. Ewing is Executive Dean of the Faculty of Business, Law & Arts at Southern Cross University. He received his doctorate from the University of Pretoria. His research interests include marketing communications, the marketing-technology interface and brand management. He has published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Information Systems Research, the International Journal of Research in Marketing and Social Science & Medicine (amongst others).

Laknath Jayasinghe

Laknath Jayasinghe is Professor of Marketing at O. P. Jindal Global University, India. He received his PhD in consumer anthropology from the University of Melbourne, and much of his research applies a sociocultural lens to examine brand and advertising engagement. His work has been published in the Journal of Consumer Research, Marketing Theory, the Australasian Marketing Journal, and other outlets.

Ilse Struweg

Ilse Struweg is an Associate Professor in the Department of Marketing Management at the University of Johannesburg. She received her PhD from the University of Pretoria. Her research interests include consumer behaviour, IMC and brand management. She has published in Public Relations Review, European Business Review, Lecture Notes in Computer Science and Prism (among others).

Marius Wait

Marius Wait is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Marketing at the University of Johannesburg. His research interest span marketing and sales education and his work has been published in Acta Commercii, Africa Education Review, the South African Journal of Higher Education, and the Australian Journal of Environmental Education. His PhD is from the University of Johannesburg.