"Ladies and gentlemen I give you the top metal band - 'the poor'" : the virtues of using an educational drama convention to facilitate student learning in international marketing

Meetings' is a form of dramatic convention whereby an imaginary and improvisational gathering is held with a view to arriving at a solution to a problem (Neelands, 1998). This paper documents the case of marketing students conducting an industry think-tank in roles associated with the music industry. Interpretive research, in the form of a 'sentence completion' exercise and reflective diaries, was used to examine the contribution of educational drama in terms of student perceptions of learning within a role playing experientially-based marketing unit at an Australian University. Findings reveal that 'Meetings' and the music exporting case was rated very beneficial to student learning in the context of international marketing, and that this pedagogical approach was seen to have other virtues to students that are simply not available through the normal lecturing format.