Digital Marketing Competencies for Business Education Students' Employability in Delta State

Abstract

This study investigated the digital marketing competencies required of business education students for employability. A descriptive survey research design was adopted for study. Three research questions were raised and one hypothesis was formulated. The population of the study comprises 181 final year business education students from public tertiary institutions in Delta State. Census sampling was adopted for the study. The instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire on four point Likert rating scale. The instrument was validated by three experts. The reliability of the instrument was established using Cronbach method. Arithmetic mean and standard deviation were employed to analyze the research questions. The null hypothesis was tested using independent t-test. The findings showed that business education students’ current level of competence in digital marketing skills is poor; and this as a result of poor integration of digital marketing skills into business education curriculum and grossly poor provision of necessary digital marketing resources and tools. Consequent upon the findings, it was concluded that proficiency in digital marketing skills is essential for enhanced employability in the business domain but business education students have poor proficiency in digital marketing. It was recommended amongst others that business education practitioners should adequately equip the students with the knowledge and skills in digital marketing such as search engine optimization, and content market to enable them fit into the current jobs expectancy.