Many business colleges offer specialized marketing majors in addition to the general marketing major. Given the extra resources needed to maintain multiple majors, in a time when higher education budgets are being strained, a need exists to understand how students make choices among these majors and what students perceive to be the advantages of general marketing majors versus specialized marketing majors. Using social cognitive theory, we examine how students make selections among choices in marketing-related majors, focusing on influence and compatibility factors. We surveyed 608 marketing majors representing one general and five specialized marketing majors. The findings indicate that, compared with general marketing majors, students’ choice of a specialized major is significantly more likely to be influenced by faculty and other students in the major. Also, the results show that students rate specialized majors better than a general marketing major in terms of self-efficacy, culture, and professional fit. On the other hand, students rate the general marketing major better than specialized majors in flexibility. These results have implications for supporting the priorities of students in both general and specialized majors.

除了一般市场营销专业之外，许多商学院还提供专门的市场营销专业。鉴于维持多个专业所需的额外资源，在高等教育预算紧张的时期，有必要了解学生如何在这些专业中做出选择，以及学生认为通用营销专业与专业营销专业相比的优势是什么。我们使用社会认知理论，研究学生如何在市场营销相关专业的选择中做出选择，重点关注影响因素和兼容性因素。我们调查了 608 名营销专业的学生，​​分别代表 1 个普通营销专业和 5 个专业营销专业。研究结果表明，与一般市场营销专业相比，学生对专业专业的选择明显更可能受到该专业的教师和其他学生的影响。此外，结果表明，在自我效能感、文化和职业适应方面，学生对专业专业的评价高于一般营销专业。另一方面，学生对通用营销专业的灵活性比专业专业更好。这些结果对支持普通和专业专业学生的优先事项具有影响。