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Undergraduate sales education is somewhat unique in that it prepares students for a career which functions mostly outside of traditional corporate management structures. Concurrently, the demand for well-qualified salespeople has intensified partly due to high turnover. This article contends that there may be a disconnection between student expectations of a sales job when they leave school and what they actually experience on the job. Using salesforce socialization as a theoretical foundation, this study compares students' versus salespeople's perceptions of sales jobs in terms of realism and congruence with outcome and behavior-based job performance indicators as well as perceived ethical control. When considering job performance and ethics, the results show that students have a highly idealistic perception of sales when compared to those in the actual field of sales. For marketing educators it is imperative that efforts are focused on helping students form more realistic expectations for a sales career. Such efforts and suggestions are provided in the implications.

Interviews with six experts in international business and a survey of 48 international business practitioners indicate that practitioners would like college business students to graduate with more specific skills and characteristics related to actual job experience. The findings provide insights for educators for curriculum development and highlight the importance of internships for international master's in business administration (MBA) programs. (Author/MSE)

The impact of interpersonal communications of African American teenage girls, on word of mouth sports marketing, is examined.

In a majority of firms, marketing managers are evaluated on the basis of improving the productivity or efficiency under their purview. However, in the contemporary highly competitive environment, there is greater demand from consumers as they always are pursuing immediate access to products high in quality but low in price. This puts even greater pressure on efficiency in marketing.

Researchers have found that personal value structures determine how young people respond to AIDS prevention programs. Those college students that score high on the external scale - more apt to allow themselves to be influenced by their environment and more liberal in their attitudes - are less likely to modify their behavior. The goal of preventive health messages, then, is to stress the idea that liberalism does not preclude safe sex.

While mall intercept interviewing is one of the most frequently used data collection methods in marketing research, it is also one of the least studied areas. Little, if any, published [...]

Synthesizes existing knowledge regarding the communication effects of animation and empirically assesses some of these effects. Results of this confirm that animation can be a viable method of advertising. (SRT)