Marketing education in Sarawak: some issues and challenges from the employers' perspectives

In the state of Sarawak, East Malaysia (Borneo), marketing education has seen a tremendous growth over the years. However, literatures on marketing education in Sarawak (also Malaysia), is not found in any academic journals. Therefore this paper is the first to explore the effectiveness of marketing education in meeting the organisational needs in Sarawak from perspectives of employers. This is a qualitative paper using methods, which includes interview (face-to-face and telephone), informal discussions, and email communications with managers, personal observations by the authors, and a review of literatures in the area marketing education. The findings will be useful for curriculum design of marketing courses. It will also assist marketing educators in understanding the organisational needs of marketing knowledge, skills and abilities required of a graduate. This paper is expected to provide the framework and prospect for conducting future in-depth quantitative research in marketing education in Sarawak.