Deadline: January 4, 2025
Applications open on October 1.
Early admission may be extended before January 2025. Interested candidates should apply early.
- Terry Dean’s Advisory Council Distinguished Professor, Department of Marketing
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.
Concentrations
Consumer Behavior
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.
Consumer behavior students typically work with:
Marketing Strategy
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.
Marketing strategy students typically work with:
Typical Course Sequence
Year 1
Fall
Spring
Summer
- First Year Paper
- Elective
Year 2
Fall
Spring
Summer
- Comprehensive Examination
- Second Year Paper
Year 3
Fall
- Comprehensive Examination
- 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
- Dissertation Research
- Individual Research Interest
- Proposal Defense for PhD Candidacy
- Elective
Summer
- Dissertation Research
Year 5
Fall
- Prepare for AMA job interviews (Zoom Interviews, Summer AMA Conference and Campus Visits)
Spring
- Final Dissertation Defense
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
- Dissertation Research
- 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.
PhD Student Academic Placements
Our recent PhD graduates have received campus visits / job talks from top-tier universities such as
University of Notre Dame
University of Virginia (Darden)
Ohio State University
Virginia Tech
University of Tennessee
California State University
Bocconi University
Some illustrative placements are as follows.
- Ashish Sharma, University of North Carolina (Charlotte) (graduated 2018)
- Kevin Sample, University of Rhode Island (graduated 2019)
- Jessica Babin, Ohio University (graduated 2019)
- Vincent Zhang, University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong) (graduated 2020)
- Youngtak Kim, University of Tennessee (Knoxville) (graduated 2022)
- Lana Waschka, Elon University (graduated 2022)
- Seoyoung Kim, Fordham University (graduated 2022)
- Lan Anh Ton, Texas Christian University (graduated 2023)
- Rachel Ramey, Colorado State University (graduated 2023)
- Nicole Davis, University of Kentucky (graduated 2024)
- Molly Ahearne, San Diego State University (graduated 2023)