Program Overview
The PhD in Business Administration with a focus in Marketing provides students with both strong empirical skills in econometrics, psychometrics, and statistics and strong theory development in consumer behavior, psychology, and strategy.
The department and its faculty consistently rank high in terms of research productivity. The department is ranked 15th worldwide based on publications in the premier American Marketing Association (AMA) journals in 2010 – 2019. The department is also ranked 11th among all U.S. public schools in the UT-Dallas Business School Research Rankings 2019-2022. Faculty have won multiple research awards and serve on the editorial boards of prestigious academic journals.
Doctoral students work with faculty at all phases of the research process—from research question formulation, research design, and data analysis to writing up the study. The culture is collegial and informal, with students viewed as colleagues and coauthors. Moreover, students are encouraged to work with multiple faculty, not just their chosen advisor or dissertation chair.
Student Profile
What kind of students are we looking for?
Consequently, the department looks for the following traits in PhD students:
- Motivated, excited and intellectually curious about problems and issues
- Disciplined and committed to think deeply about research problems and solutions
- A willingness to learn econometric, psychometric and statistical skills
- A willingness to learn about theoretical and conceptual issues in the field
- Creative problem solvers
- Business experience useful, but not a requirement.
Consumer behavior students typically work with:
- Marcus Cunha
- Tari Dagogo-Jack
- John Hulland
- Charlotte Mason
- Julio Sevilla
- Rosanna Smith
- Sarah Whitley
Marketing strategy students typically work with:
- Neil Bendle
- Sundar Bharadwaj
- Anindita Chakravarty
- Hua Chen
- Tatiana Dyachenko
- John Hulland
- Son K. Lam
- Pengyuan Wang
- Elham Yazdani
Typical Course Sequence
Consumer Behavior Track
Year 1
- Fall
-
Spring
- Summer
- First Year Paper
- Elective
Year 2
- Fall
- Spring
- Summer
- Comprehensive Examination
- Second Year Paper
Year 3
- Fall
-
Comprehensive Examination
-
Oral Marketing Candidacy Exam
-
Assuming the passing of comprehensive exams, students in Year 3 focus on making progress on existing research projects, beginning lead-authored work, and framing their dissertations.
-
- Spring
- Dissertation Research
- Summer
- Dissertation Research
Year 4
- Fall
-
Dissertation Research
-
Individual Research Interest
-
Elective
-
-
Spring
-
Defend Dissertation Proposal
-
Individual Research Interest
-
Elective
-
- Summer
- Dissertation Research
Year 5
- Fall
- Prepare for AMA job interviews (AMA Summer Educators' Conference)
- Spring
- Final Dissertation Defense
Marketing Strategy Track
Year 1
- Fall
- Spring
- Summer
- First Year Paper
- Elective
Year 2
- Fall
- Spring
- Summer
- Comprehensive Examination
Year 3
- Fall
- Spring
- Dissertation Research
- Summer
- Dissertation Research
Year 4
- Fall
- Dissertation Research
- Individual Research Interest
- Elective
- Spring
- Defend Dissertation Proposal
- Individual Research Interest
- Summer
- Dissertation Research
Year 5
- Fall
- Prepare for AMA job interviews (AMA Summer Educators' Conference)
- Spring
- Final Dissertation Defense
All the marketing departmental courses are required courses. Electives chosen will need the approval of the Graduate Coordinator.
Concentrations
Consumer behavior research focuses on how consumers decide what and how much to consume and how consumers integrate different pieces of information (both consciously and unconsciously) to make predictions and judgments about their environment and target stimuli to inform their consumption decisions. Consumer behavior students take additional courses in psychology and sociology.
Marketing strategy research focuses on the components of marketing capabilities and resources such as brands, consumer relationships, innovation, sales force management and their impact on brand, business unit, customer, firm and sales force and salesperson performance. Marketing strategy students typically take additional courses in economics, econometrics and statistical methods as well courses in corporate finance, management strategy, sociology and social psychology.
PhD Student Academic Placements
Our PhD students have been successfully placed at research active universities. Some illustrative placements are as follows.
Year of Graduation |
Name of PhD Student |
University Placed |
2017 |
Atanas Nikolov |
Washington State University |
2017 |
Keith Smith |
Northeastern University |
2018 |
Ashish Sharma |
University of North Carolina (Charlotte) |
2019 |
Kevin Sample |
University of Rhode Island |
2019 |
Jessica Babin |
Ohio University |
2020 |
Vincent Zhang |
University of HongKong (HongKong) |
2022 |
Youngtak Kim |
University of Tennessee (Knoxville) |
2022 |
Lana Waschka |
Elon University |
2022 |
Seoyoung Kim |
Fordham University |