A Phenomenographic Approach for Exploring Conceptions of Learning Marketing among Undergraduate Students

This paper describes ongoing research investigating students' conceptions of learning
marketing. This empirical study was conducted using a phenomenographic approach to
analyze data from individual semi structured interviews with twenty-four Taiwanese
university students. The six categories of conceptions of learning marketing were identified,
including learning marketing as 'memorizing,' 'testing,' 'applying,' 'gaining higher status,'
'understanding' and 'seeing in a new way.' In contrast with other learning domains, the results
illustrate that 'applying' was conceptualized as the major feature of learning marketing for all
interviewed students. Moreover, most of the students consider 'applying' and 'understanding'
to be closely related when learning marketing.