Ph.D. Program

Doctoral Research Seminars in Marketing

REQUIRED SEMINARS:

Behavioral Foundations in Marketing

The course provides a social scientific framework within which to pursue the study of market behavior. It examines consumer behavior theories drawn from social and cognitive psychology, sociology, anthropology, and economics. Principal topics to be covered in the course include macro perspectives in consumer behavior and specific micro-level theories and perspectives on choice, information processing, motivation, attitudes, personality, etc. There are three primary objectives: 1) a broad understanding of the various perspectives used in the marketing discipline to study and interpret consumer behavior; 2) a deeper exploration of a specific topic within the field, involving critical evaluation of current approaches and identification of literature gaps that should/could be addressed in further research on the topic; and 3) explore the implications of existing theories and perspectives of consumer behavior for new information technologies.

Knowledge Systems

A major objective of this course is to enhance the skills of theory construction among doctoral students. The course is designed to encourage independent constructive criticism of existing theories or knowledge and development of a personal point of view or philosophy about one’s discipline. The philosophical underpinnings of theory and research are explored by analyzing both traditional and non-traditional paradigms in the social and physical sciences. Logical positivism/empiricism and postmodern approaches are discussed and students examine the distinctions between inductive and deductive reasoning. These topics are examined in the context of business research in general as well as through the investigation of theory development within specific business disciplines.

Marketing Strategy

The objective is to provide an overview and understanding of marketing strategy, covering areas such as brand management, new products, product positioning, price formation, advertising and promotion development, channels structures, and e-marketing. As such, the course is positioned around achieving three pedagogical objectives: 1) increase students’ knowledge of theory development by analyzing, critiquing, synthesizing, and extending conceptual frameworks, and forging future research; 2) increasing students’ comprehension of methodological approaches, specifically by discussing the rationale for methods used, dissecting the methods themselves, reviewing feasible alternative methods, and delineating appropriate methods for future work; and 3) increasing students’ understanding of the managerial relevance in marketing research, and increasing students’ ability to link managerial questions with conceptual frameworks and methods.

Research Methods

This course reviews methods and issues in observation research, survey research; experiments; panel and scanner data, moderators and mediators; reliability; validity; measurement scale development; statistical power and effect size; hypotheses testing; regression analyses; structural equation modeling; cluster and factor analysis. Issues of methodology and interpretation are treated as well as issues of research impact.

RECOMMENDED SEMINARS:

Price Seminar

Course objectives are to: (1) expose students to the variety of pricing research streams, (2) assist students’ develop research opportunities by identifying issues and inadequacies in current pricing literature, and (3) enhance students’ proficiency in the development of sound research methods. Literature is drawn from the price, economic, managerial, and modeling domains to develop students’ understanding of consumers’ reactions to price and related variables. Specific topics include consumers’ price awareness, their use of price as an indicator of quality, and the influence of reference prices, price promotions, odd-numbered pricing, mental accounting and framing effects. Emphasis is on behavioral concepts relating to consumers’ information acquisition, perception, memory, use of decision heuristics and choice.

Qualitative Research Approaches

Examination of philosophies and methods for conducting qualitative research in fields such as marketing, organizational behavior, and information systems. This seminar introduces the field of qualitative research. It helps participants understand the main knowledge systemic underpinnings of such research. It also reviews the main research design strategies for qualitative research and explores ways of collecting and analyzing qualitative materials. Finally, the seminar reviews applications of qualitative research in various fields.

Relationship Marketing

While the core of relationship building is the customer, the research topics in this course go beyond buyer-seller collaboration. Relationship marketing is a topic included in the literature of services marketing, consumer behavior, electronic commerce, strategic alliances, supply chain management, and business-to-business marketing. This course will explore all of these areas in addition to spending time digesting the relevant relationship literature from the disciplines of sociology, psychology, and management.

Theoretical Foundation of Business in the Information Age

New information technologies are transforming not just the practices but often major conceptual foundations of business fields such as marketing, strategy, organizational behavior, and of course management information systems. This seminar aims to understand the ongoing transformations in theories in business related disciplines that stem from changes in information and communication technologies. Drawing from readings in not just business fields but also economics, sociology, communication studies, cultural studies, and arts, this seminar challenges participants to build new syntheses of emergent theories.