Affinity for Quantitative Tools: Undergraduate Marketing Students Moving Beyond Quantitative Anxiety

Marketing students are known as less likely to have an affinity for the quantitative aspects of the marketing discipline. In this article, we study the reasons why this might be true and develop a parsimonious 20-item scale for measuring quantitative affinity in undergraduate marketing students. The scale was administered to a sample of business majors at a midsized university. The scale developed yielded a four-factor solution: Confidence, Enjoyment, Marketability, and Importance. Using multivariate analysis of variance, we test whether there are significant differences in quantitative affinity by gender, major, internship completion, class standing, and class completion. The findings suggest that marketing majors are less likely to enjoy the quantitative aspect of their major, but on completing a marketing research course their appreciation for the importance of quantitative tools increases. Internship completion has no effect on the undergraduate marketing students' quantitative affinity. Our study complements extant literature by providing a parsimonious scale for assessing quantitative affinity specially adapted to the marketing students and analyzing the characteristics associated with students' scores. Suggested teaching strategies, based on the findings, are included.