|
PhD in Marketing
|
Marketing PhD Students
2008 - 2009
First Row:
Anupama Kothari,
Savannah Shi, Qian Li
Second Row:
Jing Gao, Peggy
Tseng, Hyoryung Nam
Third Row:
Heather Johnson,
Francine Espinoza,
Jordan Etkin
Fourth Row:
Yu-Jen Chen,
Zac Arens, Ke Na, Ted
Matherly |
Recent
Accomplishments (Former and Current PhD
Students)
Peggy Tseng has recently been
awarded the prestigious
Marvin Jolson 2009 Doctoral Student
Award, which includes a financial
award of $1,000. Peggy has demonstrated
academic excellence during her doctoral
studies; distinctive service to the
Smith School; service to the Association
of Doctoral Students; quality research
and presentation of research at
conferences and in scholarly journals;
and activity in a professional or
academic association.
Lan Luo, a PhD student who graduated
from the Smith School in 2005, along
with co-authors
P.K.
Kannan (current faculty member at
Smith) and Brian Ratchford (former
faculty member at Smith) won the AMA's
Don Lehmann Award for the best
dissertation-based article in JMR or JM,
for their JMR article, "Incorporating
Subjective Characteristics in Product
Design and Evaluations." This is
the second time in three years that the
Lehmann Award has gone to a Smith School
Marketing graduate (Debora Thompson won
it in 2007).
Program Overview
Marketing is one of the major
functional areas in business and
non-profit organizations, and is one of
the most popular areas of study in most
undergraduate and graduate programs in
management. Academic research in
marketing covers a broad range of
topics, ranging from highly quantitative
models of market behavior and consumer
decision making to experimental studies
of consumption behavior.
A PhD in marketing ordinarily
prepares students for careers in
academic research and teaching in this
area. Current and recent doctoral
students from the Smith School have won
prestigious dissertation competitions,
and have obtained positions at the
world's leading universities.
Recent doctoral student placements
include Xing Pan (2003, Assistant
Professor at Indiana University and now
at the University of California -
Riverside),
Lan Luo (2005, Assistant Professor
at the University of Southern
California),
Debora Viana Thompson, (2006,
Assistant Professor at Georgetown
University),
Ashwin Aravindakshan, (2007,
Assistant Professor at the University of
California, Davis)and
Shweta Oza,
(2007, Assistant Professor at the
University of Miami). There has
been a very strong demand for PhDs in
marketing in recent years, and this is
expected to continue.
Marketing professors who are doctoral
graduates of the Smith School of
Business at the University of Maryland
are among the nation's best in terms of
impact of their research on the
profession, according to a recent study
by Academic Assessment Services. Smith
doctoral marketing graduates ranked 15th
nationally in average number of
citations to their work.
Overview
The objective of the program is to
provide the most rigorous and up-to-date
training possible, and to provide an
educational experience that at least
matches that of the very best programs.
The marketing faculty at the Robert H.
Smith School includes the former Editor
of the Journal of Marketing,
former Editor of Marketing Science
and the Editor of the Journal of
Service Research. In addition,
Smith marketing faculty are members of
the editorial boards of many top
journals in marketing, including
Journal of Marketing Research, Journal
of Consumer Research Marketing
Science and Journal of Marketing.
Marketing faculty members regularly
publish in the leading journals in
marketing.
The marketing department at the
Robert H. Smith School is also the home
of the
Center for Excellence in Service, a
world-class center for the study of such
topics as customer equity management,
e-service and service innovation. This
center hosts the annual
AMA Frontiers in Services Conference
and the
Journal of Service Research and
is also a source of contacts with
corporations, who are potential sources
of funding and data for research.
The presence of the
Center for Excellence in Service
makes the PhD program in marketing at
the Smith School especially attractive
to students with interests in service
marketing, e-service, customer equity
and CRM. However, the marketing
department faculty have a wide variety
of other interests, including marketing
strategy, marketing research, consumer
behavior, consumer decision making,
retailing, business-to-business
marketing, pricing, advertising,
promotions, service marketing,
international marketing, and product
management. In short, the Robert H.
Smith School marketing faculty has a
very broad range of interests and
expertise that can accommodate virtually
any PhD student interest.
Marvin A. Jolson Doctoral
Student Award
Marvin A. Jolson was the
first doctoral student to
graduate in the field of
marketing at the University
of Maryland. Upon his
graduation in 1969, he was
invited to stay on at
Maryland and become an
assistant professor.
He accepted the invitation,
thus launching a thirty-year
academic career, rising to
the rank of full professor
in just ten years.
Upon his retirement in 1999,
he was designated Professor
Emeritus of Marketing at the
University of Maryland.
Professor Jolson passed away
in 2001. |
 |
The Department of Marketing
at the Robert H. Smith
School of Business selects
one outstanding marketing
doctoral student who has
advanced to candidacy to
receive the Marvin
A. Jolson Award, a
financial award of $1,000.
The selected student has
demonstrated academic
excellence during doctoral
studies; distinctive service
to the Smith School; service
to the Association of
Doctoral Students; quality
research and presentation of
research at conferences and
in scholarly journals; and
activity in a
professional or academic
association. |
The following bio about
Marvin Jolson is excerpted
from a 2001 article by Rolph
Anderson et al. from the
Journal of Personal Selling
& Sales Management.
The
complete article can be
found here.
“What is especially ironic
about Marv's sales
orientation is that he began
his professional career as
an electrical engineer,
after graduating from George
Washington University. But
even during his academic
training to become an
engineer, he evinced an
interest in selling by
assuming a part-time
position as a direct-to-home
encyclopedia salesperson for
Encyclopedia Britannica
(EB). He did so, though, to
support his family, not for
vocational purposes. That
initial sales experience,
however, so vivified him
that he began a fifty-year
journey devoted to the
selling profession.
Although Marv was inundated
with myriad responsibilities
at EB, he enrolled in the
Executive Program at the
University of Chicago, from
which he earned an MBA in
1965. Working on MBA classes
whetted his appetite for
further education.
Consequently, Marv decided
to matriculate in the
doctoral program in
marketing at the University
of Maryland. He did this
with the blessing of EB's
CEO and a promise to return
to EB upon completing the
degree. In fact, EB held
Marv in such high regard,
that the firm continued to
pay him his salary while he
attended the University of
Maryland. And what did EB
do? The CEO wished Marv well
and instructed Marv to
forego paying back his grad
school salary!
Just as he did at EB, Marv
rose through the academic
ranks quickly, becoming a
full professor in ten years.
Although he taught many
different courses, his heart
was in teaching sales
management at both the
undergraduate and graduate
levels. He was an extremely
dedicated instructor; he
enjoyed the students, and
they appreciated his
interest in them. He had an
open door policy and would
even accept collect phone
calls at his home from
students needing assistance.
He equipped students for the
real world--after all, his
plethora of business
experience served to
complement the juxtaposed
theory that he provided. And
his indefatigable efforts
with doctoral students
afforded him opportunity to
instill in them a strong
dose of pragmatism along
with doctrinaire marketing
concepts.
Although he paid keen
attention to teaching, Marv
was a prolific researcher
and publisher. He wrote over
100 articles, was an author
or co-author of five books
(one of which was translated
into Japanese), and gave
numerous presentations at
academic conferences. One of
his articles was voted as
the "Best Article of the
Year" in the Journal of
Personal Selling and Sales
Management (JPSSM).
Moreover, he was the second
editor of the JPSSM, serving
from 1982-1984. During his
editorship, the journal's
reputation was enhanced
markedly, as he worked
incessantly to augment its
stature. As editor, he was
JPSSM's international
spokesperson, as he never
missed an opportunity to
talk about the journal to
prospective target markets,
especially businesspeople.
He firmly believed that the
articles in JPSSM should be
"must reading" for both
marketing academics and
practitioners involved in
what was for Marv "the
wonderful world of selling."
Perhaps the one award that
most clearly recognizes
Marv's portentous
contributions to selling and
sales management was one
given to him in 1999. He was
the inaugural recipient of
the American Marketing
Association's Sales Special
Interest Group's Lifetime
Achievement Award. This
award is bestowed on "... an
individual who has made
significant contributions to
the academic sales
profession..." and "...who
has made a career of
furthering the academic
advancement of selling and
sales management."” |
Student Support
Doctoral students typically are supported through
research and teaching assistantships. In
their first two years, students normally
have a research assistantship that
involves working up to 20 hours per week
with a faculty member on research
projects. This is an excellent way to
learn the practical aspects of
conducting research, and often leads to
joint publications with faculty members.
After their first two years, students
normally do some teaching, and all
students in the program are required to
get teaching experience before they
graduate.
Levels of financial support are
competitive with the best schools, and
include stipend, tuition waiver, and
summer support. Students have office
facilities, access to state-of-the art
computing resources, and the use of the
University of Maryland's excellent
library system. In addition our
corporate contacts are very useful
sources of data for research projects
and dissertations.
Students studying under current
faculty members in marketing at the
Robert H. Smith School have recently
been placed at Indiana University,
University of Southern California,
Cornell University and the University of
Rochester.
Location
The University of Maryland's Robert H.
Smith School of Business is
located in College Park, a suburb of
Washington, D.C. College Park
is nine miles from downtown Washington, the
seat of the Federal Government of the
United States. College Park is also 32
miles from the city of Baltimore. The
Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area
is the fourth largest in the United
States with almost 8 million residents.
Aside from being one of the world's
major centers of government, this area
is a major center of the information
technology, telecommunication,
bio-technology, health care, and travel
industries. The area has one of the
world's most diverse populations, and a
sunny, temperate climate. It offers
activities to match any taste, including
restaurants of all types, some of the
world's best museums, and access to all
sorts of outdoor activities, ranging
from boating and fishing to running.
Abundant housing and access to public
transportation is available in the
College Park area.
The Program
The goal of the PhD program is to
develop outstanding research scholars in
marketing who are also effective
teachers. Toward this end, each doctoral
student:
- Takes relevant courses
- Completes a pre-dissertation
paper
- Must pass a written
comprehensive examination
- Prepares and defends a
dissertation proposal
- Implements and defends a
dissertation
A total of six courses (18 credits)
are required for the marketing major.
Ordinarily four of these courses will be
PhD level seminars that students take
in their first two years (one per
semester). The purpose of these seminars
is to provide as broad coverage as
possible of the marketing area.
Depending on the student's background
and interests, the other two marketing
courses can be in a variety of areas;
one or both may be waived if the student
has received an MBA Degree before
entering the program.
In addition to the marketing major,
each student must take two minors, each
of which comprises 12 credits (4
courses). One minor must be in the area
of research methods, and is normally
comprised of a set of courses on data
analysis relevant to the student's
interests. The second minor can be in
any area related to the student's area
of interest in marketing, and may be
selected from within or outside of the
Robert H. Smith School of Business.
Examples of relevant minors are
economics, psychology, information
systems, electronic commerce, and
management science.
Students are encouraged to become
active in research as soon as they enter
the program, and are expected to submit
something for publication, most likely
in collaboration with a faculty member,
by the end of their first year. The
first formal research requirement is a
paper based on the student's own
original research that the student must
write and present to the marketing
faculty at the end of his/her second
year in the program. Students ordinarily
take their comprehensive exam in
marketing in the middle of their third
year. After that they work on their
dissertation. Depending on the student's
background, the program ordinarily takes
4-5 years to complete.
Admission
Ideally students will have a master's
degree in business or some related area
(e.g., psychology, economics, operations
research, communications), and a few
years of relevant work experience. In
some cases, students with undergraduate
degrees with a strong quantitative
focus, such as the physical sciences or
engineering, will be considered for
admission. An official score on the
Graduate Management Admissions test
(GMAT) is required. Student selection is
based on expected performance in the
program. Some of the factors considered
in the selection process are:
- Past academic record
- GMAT scores
- Letters of recommendation
- Level of expressed commitment to
the program
The typical doctoral student in
marketing has an undergraduate GPA of
3.5, holds a master's degree, has about
three years of work experience, and has
a GMAT score above 650. Highly qualified
applicants will be interviewed on the
telephone or invited for a campus visit
prior to acceptance.
Information
Request
for materials, contact:
Professor Michel Wedel
Robert H. Smith School of Business
3303 Van
Munching Hall
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742.1815
Tel: 301.405.2162
Fax: 301.405.0146
E-mail:
mwedel@rhsmith.umd.edu
|
