ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on executive education specifically in business marketing. In the 1960s and 1970s, business marketing education primarily centered around training professionals, mainly “engineers,” to think like “marketers.” The sales function did the bulk of the marketing, with most of the people hired into the sales function having technical backgrounds. Technology entrepreneurs brought products and services to the business-to-business domain that no longer fit the narrow definition of “industrial” products. Telecommunications, information, and computing technology changed the face of many industrial products. Traditional executive programs include focused programs that are built around a topic such as sales force management, new product development, etc., and general programs that provide a broad coverage of several topics in the field of business marketing. In spite of the rapid growth and availability of new approaches and concepts, as is the case in other areas of management, their successful implementation in business marketing executive education has been limited.
