Ph.D. in Business Administration - Marketing

Penn State marketing faculty members are interested in working with prospective graduate students who show the potential to become top scholars in the field. The department is consistently ranked among the top 20 marketing departments in the world in terms of research productivity and faculty have won many prestigious awards for their research contributions. In addition, the department is well-represented on the editorial boards of top marketing journals and faculty are active in many professional organizations and research conferences. This research vibrancy and energy carries over to the faculty's work with graduate students. The marketing faculty also works closely with two centers of excellence in the Smeal College of Business: the Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM) and the Center for Sports Business & Research.

Program Overview

The goal of the Ph.D. program in marketing is to prepare doctoral students to become productive researchers and teachers at top research universities. Students work closely with faculty to identify areas of interest and can choose to specialize in one or more of the three core areas of marketing—psychological foundations of consumer behavior, marketing management and strategy, and marketing models and quantitative methods.

• Psychological Foundations of Consumer Behavior—How do consumers process information to make purchasing decisions? How does emotion affect the decision-making process? How do marketing tactics (such as advertising and pricing) affect consumer preference? What are the consequences for customer satisfaction?What are the implications for marketers and for public policy? In particular, this area focuses on applying theories and methods of cognitive and social psychology to understanding consumer behavior.
  
  Faculty members: Hans Baumgartner, Lisa Bolton, Jennifer Chang Coupland, Marv Goldberg, Meg Meloy, Bill Ross
• Marketing Management and Strategy—How do managers turn marketing information into marketing strategy? How do companies develop relationships with distributors? What organizational structures contribute to the success of a sales force? Such questions are studied using theories and methods from industrial psychology, political science, strategic management, and organizational behavior.

   

  Faculty members: Franklin Carter, Rajdeep Grewal, Alok Kumar, Bill Ross, Qiong Wang

• Marketing Models and Quantitative Methods—How can we mathematically calibrate the impact of marketing actions on consumer choice? How can we represent competitive positions of brands? What is the most efficient sequence of questions to use for recommending a product? What is the optimal pricing strategy for a new industrial product? How should a company react to a competitor's price change? How can a pharmaceutical company optimally structure its new product pipeline? These are some of the questions addressed by faculty members working in this area. This emphasis area uses techniques from statistics, economics, management science, and operations research to develop quantitative models to solve marketing problems.
  
  Faculty members: Wayne DeSarbo, Min Ding, Peter Ebbes, Duncan Fong, John Liechty, Gary Lilien, Arvind Rangaswamy

Financial Support and Awards

Students who are admitted to the Ph.D. program in marketing receive financial support in the form of a tuition waiver and a monthly stipend for up to 5 years, conditional upon satisfactory progress in the program. Scholarship and research monies are also available on a competitive basis through the college. Moreover, funding for dissertation research may also be obtained by submitting proposals to the Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM). Outstanding candidates with an interest in the area of Business-to-Business Marketing may receive a fellowship (for up to a five-year period) from ISBM with an amount up to $10,000 in addition to the standard graduate assistantship awarded at the university.

Additionally, our students receive opportunities to network with colleagues from across the country. Our students are selected to attend the American Marketing Association Doctoral Consortium, the Haring Symposium, and the doctoral consortiums associated with the major marketing conferences. (Association for Consumer Research, Public Policy & Marketing, Marketing Science). Travel funds are available to doctoral students who will be presenting research papers at professional conferences.

Faculty Achievements

We pride ourselves on having one of the best marketing faculties in the country. Faculty members are actively engaged in research and contribute frequently to the most prestigious journals in the field. View a sample of journal articles and books published by marketing faculty during the last six years.  *If you do not have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your PC, please go to the Adobe Acrobat web site and download Acrobat Reader for Free.

Faculty members have also been the recipients of competitive grants from organizations such as the Marketing Science Institute, the National Science Foundation, the United States Department of Agriculture, the United States Marine Corps Research University, and the National Endowment for Financial Education.

Faculty members have also received many awards for their contributions to the field. A few examples are the following:

• Hans Baumgartner was elected the President of the Society for Consumer Psychology (SCP) in January 2009. SCP is a national organization of academics, practitioners, and students dedicated to the study of the psychology of consumer behavior.
• In 2008 Wayne DeSarbo received 2 awards from the Emerald Literati Network for papers that were published in the Journal of Modelling in Management. He was awarded the outstanding paper award and the other article was selected as a highly commended award winner. 
  
• In 2009, Wayne DeSarbo, Rajdeep Grewal, and Qiong Wang received the Emerald Literati Award for the best paper award of the Journal of Modelling in Management.
• Min Ding won the 2007 Maynard Award for best paper in the Journal of Marketing, and another article was a finalist for the 2005 Green Award at the Journal of Marketing Research.
• Duncan Fong was appointed as an Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association, the flagship statistics journal in 2009.
• Marvin Goldberg received the 2007 Kinnear/JPPM Award for best article published in the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing over a three-year period.
• Marvin Goldberg and Kunter Gunasti received the 2008 Thomas C. Kinnear/Journal of Public Policy & Marketing Award, which recognizes the article that has made the most significant contribution to the understanding of marketing and public policy issues over a three year period.  This is the second time consecutively that Marv won this award.
• Raj Grewal received the Marketing Strategy SIG Early Career Award at the American Marketing Association’s 2007 Summer Marketing Educators’ Conference held in Washington, DC.
• At the American Marketing Association’s 2008 Winter Marketing Educators' Conference held February 15 to 18 in Austin, Texas, Gary Lilien was presented with the AMA Irwin/McGraw-Hill Distinguished Marketing Educator Award, the highest honor a marketing educator can receive.  This lifetime achievement honor is awarded annually to a marketing academic who is universally acknowledged as a longstanding leader in marketing education and who has made extensive contributions to marketing education and the marketing discipline in general. Honorees are individuals who have careers that reflect a balance of distinguished achievements across the criteria of creativity and innovation, teaching and mentoring, research, administration, public service, and service to the marketing profession.
• Meg Meloy is serving as a co-chair for the Society for Consumer Psychology conference i n 2010.
  

Hans Baumgartner
Board Member, Journal of Consumer Research
Board Member, Journal of Consumer Psychology
Board Member, International Journal of Research in Marketing

Lisa Bolton
Board Member, Journal of Marketing
Board Member, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing

Associate Editor, Journal of Marketing Research
Associate Editor, Marketing Science
Board Member, Journal of Marketing
Board Member, Marketing Letters

Min Ding
Board Member, Marketing Science

Duncan Fong
Associate Editor, Journal of the American Statistical Association
Board Member, Marketing Science

Rajdeep Grewal
Editorial Review Board Member, Journal of Marketing
Editorial Review Board Member, Decision Sciences
Editorial Review Board Member, Marketing Science
Editorial Review Board Member, International Journal of Research in Marketing

John Liechty
Marketing Science, Guest Editor
Board Member, Marketing Science

Gary Lilien
Area Editor, Marketing Science
Functional Editor, Marketing, Interfaces
Board Member, International Journal for Research in Marketing

Arvind Rangaswamy
Associate Editor, Marketing Science
Board Member, Journal of Marketing
Board Member, International Journal of Research in Marketing

William Ross
Board Member, Marketing Letters
Board Member, International Journal of Research in Marketing

Quality of the Doctoral Students

Many excellent Ph.D. students have graduated from our program over the years and have obtained jobs at high level universities. Some recent examples include:

• Kunter Gunasti will join the University of Connecticut in the Fall of 2009 as an Assistant Professor in the School of Business.
• Rui Wang joined Peking University in the Fall of 2008 as an Assistant Professor in the Guanghua School of Management.
• Melea Press began at the University of Wyoming in January 2008 as an Assistant Professor of Sustainable Business Practices and Marketing.
• Selin Atalay is an Assistant Professor at HEC Paris in Paris, France beginning Fall 2008.
• Crystal Scott is currently working as an Assistant Professor of Marketing at The University of Michigan, Dearborn.
• Sanjay Puligadda is employed at Miami University's Richard T. Farmer School of Business beginning in 2007.
• Joonwook Park is an Assistant Professor at the Cox Business School at Southern Methodist University starting August 2007.
• Girish Mallapragada is an Assistant Professor at Kenan Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina starting July 2007.
  

Our students frequently publish in top marketing journals with faculty members during and after they have completed their Ph.D.  View a summary of journal articles published by Ph.D. students during the last four years.

How to apply

For more information contact:

Professor Duncan Fong
Ph.D. Coordinator
Department of Marketing
Smeal College of Business
The Pennsylvania State University
456 Business Building
University Park, PA 16802-3603

Telephone: 814-863-3541
Fax: 814-865-3015
E-mail: i2v@psu.edu