Marketing

The Marketing Ph.D. program is a research-intensive full-time course of study designed to place graduates in marketing faculty positions at research-oriented universities. The four to five-year Ph.D. program involves forty-two credit hours of coursework plus intensive research activity, including working on your dissertation and writing papers for publication in major refereed academic journals such as Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Marketing Science, and Management Science.

The Marketing faculty (click here for more information about our faculty and their publications) is deeply involved in each stage of our doctoral students’ academic lives. Throughout the program, each student receives opportunities to present work at workshops or conferences, attend regular department seminar series, develop speaking and writing skills, and receive regular feedback from the faculty.

Qualifications for our program are (1) motivation to undertake social science research and (2) the ability to do so, as demonstrated by a high score on the GMAT or GRE, a strong academic record, and endorsement from former professors. We review every application and look at each applicant as an individual. Accepted doctoral students are hired as Research or Teaching Assistants for 20 hours a week and receive competitive year-round stipends. The Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship provides a laptop or desktop for new students and additional funding for students presenting papers at national conferences.

We encourage our students to seek placements as professors at research-oriented universities, and they do. See here for recent placements and here for achievements.

We want our program to be stimulating, enjoyable, and a bonding experience with other Ph.D. students. New students get a great deal of help from those who have been in the program, and are expected to offer similar help to other new students down the road.

As faculty members, we treat our Ph.D. students like colleagues. And you are.

I encourage you to carefully go through our extensive FAQs page, which should help answer most frequently asked questions about our program and the application process.

Professor Seshadri Tirunillai
Marketing Ph.D. Program Coordinator
Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship
Bauer College of Business
University of Houston