International Journal of Economic Practices and Theories, Vol. 4, No. 5, 2014, Special issue on Marketing and Business Development, e-ISSN 2247–7225 www.ijept.org 783 Marketing Education: Building Capacity beyond Competencies by Bistra Vassileva Department of Marketing, University of Economics-Varna, Bulgaria bistravas@ue-varna.bg Abstract. This paper seeks to bring together the notion of marketing leadership and both individual and organizational capabilities by developing marketing leadership framework. The author presents marketing leadership as a way to respond to the changing marketing environment and to the “identity crisis” of marketing science and practice. A combined research and development process is conducted in order to derive a conceptual model of the components of marketing leadership as well as to propose a marketing leadership framework based on both organizational and individual capacity development. This process integrates a broad literature search, both within and outside marketing, followed by a longitudinal study of marketing managers/CEOs to identify the problem areas in marketing leadership and capacity development as well as to find the most important relationship between them. A sequence of qualitative interviews and brainstorming sessions are conducted in order to develop marketing leadership conceptual map. The conceptual map is presented as a framework. Three key capacity areas are identified within the marketing leadership framework namely (1) strategic intent; (2) culture / behaviour; and (3) business processes. The components comprising each of these areas are defined as well as four types of marketing leadership. The author concludes by discussing marketing leadership types and opportunities for further research. Key words: marketing leadership, capacity development, marketing leadership framework. JEL classification: M31 1 Introduction Webster (2004) claims that “marketing is undergoing an identity crisis, and it may be that its current state is not only self-created, but also self-perpetuating”. Considering further her point of view and the arguments presented one could be astonished that the same problem had been pointed out nearly fifty years ago by Felton (1956) who exposed his “plea for taking a fresh look at the complexities of marketing… not to deal with problems by simplifying, reducing to rules, or trying to “engineer” a sales program.” Many scholars (Cravens, 2006; Fodness, 2005; Webster et al., 2004; Denison and McDonald, 1995; Maclaran et al., 2010) nowadays are still looking for “a basic solution to the marketing problem” as Felton did himself (1956, p. 117). Hunt (2002) summarises that throughout its 100-plus history, one of the most recurring themes has been that there is a “gap” or “divide” between marketing academe and marketing practice. The situation at the beginning of the twenty-first century is even more complicated because both marketing science and practice face complex changes due to turbulent markets, aggressive global competition, demanding customers, rapid emergence of new technologies, and disruptive innovation. Today both businesses and academic people are re-evaluating the role and importance of marketing leadership in organisations. Opinion leaders offer very different interpretations concerning the topic under discussion from diminishing the role of marketing to “short-term revenue goals” (Webster et al., 2004, p. 39) to “looking for strategic and operational leadership from marketing organisation” (McGovern and Quelch, 2004) or proposing organisational changes in the marketing function (Marketing Leadership Council, 2007). According to Denison and McDonald (1995) besides the changing environment, marketers are confronted by general low regard of their discipline, as a consequence of a number of longstanding weaknesses associated with it. Their case studies suggested that the issues under criticism are poor image, complacency, poor integration and lack of secure knowledge base. The ongoing debates about marketing as a science, an art or somewhere in between the two