Establishing the Relationship between Marketing Specialization and Personality Traits among Management Students

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to investigate the relationship between personality traits and marketing specialization preferences among management students. Specialization should be selected on the basis of personality types and Holland’s RAISEC framework is an ideal tool for knowing the same. A right match between personality and specialization selection may help an individual for giving his/her best to the profession. The ‘Ten Item Personality Inventory’ method was used to collect responses, along with some demographic information such as gender, work experience and intended major specialization from 200 management students through surveys. A logistic regression analysis was conducted to analyze the data. The findings reveal that out of five personality traits (Big Five), only the extraversion trait has significant contribution in choosing marketing as a specialization. They also show that gender and work experience do not have a significant impact on students for choosing their management specialization. The research was conducted in one business school and only for marketing, and hence, the results cannot be generalized. The article demonstrates the importance of personality assessment before choosing a management specialization and will be useful for management students aspiring to select ‘Marketing’ as their specialization. It may also help teachers and career counsellors while assisting students during the career selection process.

Keywords

Specialization preferences personality traits management students logistic regression career counselling marketing

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