And for the comprehensive final exam, the students submit to me their answers to all the assigned questions. I give their examinations reflects my feeling that the examinations should reflect the ability of each student to find answers rather than each student's ability to memorize. I view such principles to be generalizations. If the marketer follows a stated research procedure, then the resultant information is more likely to be of use to that marketer than if that marketer does not follow the stated research procedure. There are both positive and negative aspects to seeing if students can generalize.
Some students stab at recognizing principles.
They can not find statements in the articles that are examples of principles. Even though the applications are easily seen by some of the students, others have a great deal of difficulty finding statements that show something caused something else or that something was a function of something else. In some cases the experience is quite painful. Even when they are given a sentence and told that the sentence is an illustration of a marketing principle, some students stab at stating the principle that is being illustrated. They are unable to see which words are nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs, let alone, which word is the subject and which word is the object in the sentence they are expected to understand.