PhD in Marketing

Marketing, in the broadest sense, encompasses the entire system for bringing goods and services to actual and potential users. It includes understanding customer desires and designing, distributing, and informing potential customers of the means to satisfy these desires. Research in marketing may examine how a market operates from a socioeconomic view or it may study how consumers (either individual or institutional) respond to the marketing activities of suppliers. This, in turn, leads to questions of how to manage these activities to better serve suppliers or the community as a whole. 

The study of buyer behavior includes modeling individual and group perceptions, preferences, judgments, and choices. Research in marketing management may focus on product and service design, sales response function modeling, marketing strategy, pricing, measuring the effectiveness of communications efforts, and incentive and control mechanisms for managing channel relationships. Marketing research methods seek to improve study design as well as data collection and analysis to further organizational objectives. 

Members of the Marketing Department serve on the editorial boards and/or as ad hoc reviewers for numerous prestigious journals. 

Marketing Science
Journal of Marketing
Journal of Marketing Research
Journal of Consumer Research
Journal of Consumer Psychology
Management Science
International Journal of Research in Marketing
Journal of Interactive Marketing
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science
Journal of Retailing
The Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services
Computational Intelligence  

Major Area Course Requirements 

The following doctoral level marketing courses are normally taken by all candidates.

MARK 710 Research Methodology in Marketing

The nature of scientific inquiry and its relevance and application to research in marketing. The development and testing of marketing theory. Marketing measurement methodology. Prerequisites: Registration in the Business PhD Program or permission of instructor. Approval of the Business PhD Program Director is also required for non-PhD students. Students may not receive credit for both MARK 701 and 710. 

MARK 720 Buyer Behavior

This course is concerned with the impact of environmental factors on consumers, as well as the impact of marketing on society.  In particular, this course will provide an intensive examination of external factors including situational variables and sociocultural influences on consumer behavior. Macro issues relevant to the impact of marketing on society will also be considered, with a focus on issues relevant to mass communication and public policy. Prerequisites: Registration in the Business PhD Program or permission of instructor. Approval of the Business PhD Program Director is also required for non-PhD students. Students may not receive credit for both MARK 702 and 720. 

MARK 725 Human Judgment and Decision Making

This course will familiarize students with theories of cognitive information processing and affective processes as they relate to consumer judgments and decisions.  More specifically, the cognitive component of this course will provide an intensive examination of memory, perception, attitude formation, and behavioral decision theory.  The affect component of the course will deal with factors influencing affect formation as well as the impact of affect on attitudes and decision making.  Research methods underlying each of these streams of information will be examined. Prerequisites: Registration in the Business PhD Program or permission of instructor. Approval of the Business PhD Program Director is also required for non-PhD students. 

MARK 740 Marketing Models

This course describes theoretical and empirical models used to analyze marketing management issues in the areas of product introduction and positioning, pricing, advertising, and distribution channels.  The theoretical structure in the course comes from microeconomics of firm and consumer decision making, with special consideration of competitive issues analyzed with game theory and some applications of control theory.  The empirical work draws from conjoint analysis, choice modeling, and multivariate techniques. Prerequisites: Registration in the Business PhD Program or permission of instructor. Approval of the Business PhD Program Director is also required for non-PhD students. 

MARK 750 Marketing Theory

Recent and classic contributions to marketing theory development.  The course addresses conceptual development and current practice in marketing decision-making. Topics critically examined include marketing orientation, competitive interaction, product development and introduction, channel relationship management, customer relationship management, advertising and promotion, pricing and revenues, and sales, service and quality. Prerequisites: Registration in the Business PhD Program or permission of instructor. Approval of the Business PhD Program Director is also required for non-PhD students. 

MARK 799 Individual Research

Special studies for advanced students. Prerequisites: Registration in the Business PhD Program or permission of instructor. Approval of the Business PhD Program Director is also required for non-PhD students. 

A comprehensive examination is required in the marketing major and one of the following minors: 

Suggested Minors 

Students often choose behavioral science, judgment and decision making, psychology, microeconomics or statistics as their minor area of study. In addition, all students take the research methods minor. Either a comprehensive examination or a research paper is required in one of the minor areas. Minors ensure substantive training in fundamental disciplines pertaining to marketing, yet can be tailored to each student's primary interests. 

a) Research Methods Minor (5 Courses) 

MGTSC 705 Multivariate Analysis I

An overview of multivariate data analysis normally taken by students in the first year of the Business PhD program.  The course is designed to bring students to the point where they are comfortable with commonly used data analysis techniques available in most statistical software packages.   Students are expected to complete exercises in data analysis and in solving proofs of the major results.  Topics will include univariate analysis, bivariate analysis, multiple linear regression, and analysis of variance.  It is expected that students have as background at least (a) one semester of calculus; (b) one semester of linear algebra, and (c) two semesters introduction to probability, probability distributions and statistical inference.  Prerequisite:  Registration in Business PhD Program or written permission of instructor.   Approval of the Business PhD Program Director is also required for non-PhD students.  

MGTSC 706 Multivariate Analysis II

A continuation of the overview of multivariate data analysis begun in MGTSC 705.  Topics include categorical data analysis, multivariate linear regression, discriminant analysis, canonical correlation, multivariate analysis of variance, principal component analysis, factor analysis, cluster analysis and logistic regression.  Prerequisite:  MGTSC 705 or consent of the instructor.  Approval of the Business PhD Program Director is also required for non-PhD students. 

BUS 715 Experimental Design for Behavioral Research

This course teaches the principles of experimental design for the study of human behaviour. Experiments may be administered through surveys and on the Internet as well as in laboratory settings. Behavioural texts on experimental design rely heavily on weak between-subjects designs, whereas statistics texts favour engineering applications that are inherently simpler than the study of human behaviour. After explaining the principles of randomization and of efficient design, the course concludes by illustrating how more powerful designs can characterize human learning without confounding it with subjects’ naive responses. 

BUS 715 is integrated and coordinated with BUS 716 - Computer-Based Experiments for Behavioral Research. However, it may be taken separately by arrangement with the instructor. Prerequisites: Registration in the Business PhD Program or permission of instructor. Approval of the Business PhD Program Director is also required for non-PhD students.  

BUS 716 Computer-Based Experiments for Behavioral Research

The learning goal for this course is the acquisition of the skills required to design and implement computer-based experiments for research in the behavioral social sciences.  Students develop an understanding of the conceptual issues relevant to computer-based experimental research.  They get an overview of the available software platforms, and obtain advanced skills in connection with one particular general-purpose platform.  The course has a significant hands-on component that allows students to apply their acquired knowledge in the implementation of actual experiments that they plan to conduct. Prerequisites: Working knowledge of experimental design for behavioral research. (The recommended preparation for this course is BUS 715: Experimental Design for Behavioral Research.) Registration in the Business PhD Program or permission of instructor. Approval of the Business PhD Program Director is also required for non-PhD students. 

BUS 717 Bayesian Modeling of Human Behavior

This course teaches how to model human behavior using Bayesian computer software. The motivation for Bayesian data analysis is pragmatic — Bayesian modeling allows researchers to analyze data on human behavior in a manner consistent with behavioral theory, whereas traditional statistical analyses place greater restrictions on the types of data and models that can be analyzed. Programming is not involved, but it is necessary to describe, in terms of statistical distributions, a model of the data generation process. Prerequisites: Registration in the Business PhD Program or permission of instructor. Approval of the Business PhD Program Director is also required for non-PhD students.

        b) Cognate Minor (4 Courses plus a Research Paper)