Marketing Program Requirements

You must complete at minimum 40 degree credits covering the major area, methods, and supporting/minor areas. 

Of the required credits, 

• At least 24 credits must be
  • all marketing PhD seminars in your chosen track of specialization (behavioral or quantitative)
  • at least 6 of the 24 seminar credits must be from the other track (behavioral or quantitative) 
• At least 16 credits must be
  •  supporting field/minor coursework
  • 12 of the 16 credits must be in methods courses (can overlap with the 16 required supporting field courses)

Course descriptions:

Mktg 8809: Consumer Behavior Research Methods

Topics related to conceptual theories/arguments about experimental design and statistical analysis of experiments. How to design experimental research for testing hypotheses and drawing conclusions.

Mktg 8810: Consumer Behavior Special Topics

Theories of consumer categorization. Literature on brand categories, category measurement, brand extensions/dilution/affect. Theoretical analysis.

Mktg 8811: Consumer Attitudes and Persuasion I

Theories and research in consumer behavior and related disciplines of social and cognitive psychology. Perspective primarily from information processing or social cognition. Consumer categorization, memory, beliefs, attitudes, and attitude change.

Mktg 8812: Consumer Attitudes and Persuasion II

How people process information for making judgments. How people acquire and mentally organize information and how such data are related to prior knowledge; how this knowledge or the processes performed on it guide judgments.

Mktg 8813/14: Consumer Judgment & Decision Making I & II

(I) Different theoretical approaches taken in judgment and decision-making research. Heuristics/biases, affect in decision making, judgments/decisions over time. (II) Draws from work on prospect theory and its derivatives. Anomalous choice; emphasizes applications in marketing theory, from inter-temporal choice to regret and counterfactual thinking in consumers/managers.

Mktg 8831: Seminar in Inter-Organizational Relations

This course looks at inter-organizational networks comprised of interdependent institutions involved in the task of moving goods and services from the point of production to the point of consumption. It examines historically important streams of research in the functional and institutional tradition that focuses on the behavioral school to understand key concepts. A review of the transaction cost, relational contracting, and analytical literature is also covered.

Mktg 8842/8843: Quantitative Modeling I & II

Advanced readings covering quantitative research in marketing; topics from theoretical/empirical research in marketing , econometrics and industrial organization.

Mktg 8890: Marketing Topics Seminar

This seminar introduces students to various approaches to studying marketing, how they are used, and the limitations of each approach.

Rather than require a first-year examination, the Marketing Department now does a more comprehensive progress review/evaluation of its doctoral students at the end of the first year.

Every year, if you are a student rising into the second, third, fourth or fifth year of the program, you will work with a faculty mentor during the summer on a research project.

At the end of the Summer, you will present your research to faculty and PhD students at a research camp organized by senior PhD students.

After completing your second year in the program, you will take a written area of concentration exam, which assesses your breadth of knowledge in the area in which you intend to specialize.

The oral exam usually occurs within one semester of passing the written exam. It is usually based on a presentation of the second year research paper.

This should occur no later than 2 semesters before you plan to graduate or go to placement.