Phd in Business Administration Marketing Concentration
The field of marketing ranges from strategic marketing decision-making to examining the role of selling and sales management. Other critical marketing functions might include service quality and service recovery, social media, supply chain management, branding, and sustainability. Scholarly research in the area of marketing has developed important marketing strategy and consumer behavior insights for large corporate entities, entrepreneurs, and family-owned businesses. These insights have enabled marketers to develop efficient and effective techniques that improve the performance of for-profit companies as well as non-profit organizations. Marketing scholars also have made contributions to understanding how to better serve stakeholders, become first movers in emerging markets, and achieve meaningful competitive advantages, both strategic and tactical.
Students in the marketing track of the MCOB PhD program gain exposure to many of the primary research areas in marketing, both current and emerging, and regularly conduct research with faculty and other students. As with other MCOB PhD concentrations, marketing students present their research at premier regional, national, and occasionally international conferences, and a number of them have been recognized with best student paper conference awards.
Typical Research Areas
The emergence of the digital world has likely had the most impact on the field of
marketing. While traditional media continue to play and important role, digital social
media platforms are rapidly changing the way we communicate with stakeholder, most
often with consumers but increasingly with employees, shareholders and competitors.
Research in this area covers topics such as psychological ownership, brand
engagement, brand authenticity, artificial intelligence and big data, reputation
management, blockchain methodologies for interacting with customers, online brand
communities, among other factors that influence strategies to communicate with
consumer and business markets.
Students interested in supply chain management study the varying policies and
practices that impact the effectiveness and efficiency of moving products from the
manufacturing level to the ultimate consumer. This research ranges topics such as
logistics, power in the channel of distribution, supply chain transparency, supply
chain
sustainability, lean management, information integration, supply chain agility, channel
intermediaries, supplier selection and retention, strategic partnerships, and strategic
information sharing.
Services marketing has been a major area of research for many years. Examples of
research in services marketing include complaining behavior, likelihood of re-patronage
following service quality incidents, effective service recovery initiatives, customer
satisfaction and loyalty, value creation through services strategies, effective service
recovery strategies, and the role of services training for front-line employees.
This topic has been a major area of research for many years. Examples of research
include sales ethics, including sales ethical subculture, social networking sites
and
blogs for sales communication, social selling, virtual selling strategies compared
to in
person, recruitment and selection of salespersons, customer satisfaction and loyalty,
and motivation of sales personnel.
Strategic marketing is the study of organizational level strategies that are designed
to identify and penetrate current and emerging market segments. This area investigates
topics such as brand strategies, effect of mergers and acquisitions on brand
management, and other firm-level processes that impact organizational strategies to
improve performance.
Opportunities for Marketing Concentration Graduates
Academia
Several recent graduates accepted tenure-track and clinical positions in four-year
universities. Some of these include:
- Louisiana State University
- Troy University
- Southeastern Louisiana University
- Middle Tennessee State University
- California State University, Riverside
- California State University, Bakersfield
View the course sequence for Marketing.