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Wee-Liang Tan, Singapore Management University
Mummalaneni Venkatapparao, Virginia State University

Abstract

There have been tremendous developments in recent years in the field of entrepreneurship education. Courses and programmes in this area have bloomed and flourished. The design of the programmes is mainly driven by the training objectives as determined by the trainers in line with the conventional wisdom on training and development. The customer was only a consideration in the minds of the developers of programmes, in terms of his/her training needs. Whilst this approach, which is prescriptive in nature, is apt when the field of entrepreneurship is at the initial stages of growth, one can ill afford to not consider the customers' views when entrepreneurship subjects and courses have become a regular feature in most universities. In the field of marketing research, various methods have been devised to scientifically ascertain the attributes of products or services that the customer desires. These methods could be applied to the development of training programmes. This paper reports an exploratory study on the role that conjoint analysis methodology can play in the design of entrepreneurship course development. It reports the findings from a sample of some 190 participants from tertiary institutions enrolled in entrepreneurship courses in Singapore.

 Applying Customer Focus to Entrepreneurship Course Development