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Marketing

  • Schulich’s PhD in Marketing centres on research and emphasizes the relationship between theory development and empirical analysis. It offers unprecedented depth in certain areas of specialization, and also offers students a broad background across several of marketing’s core disciplines.

    Students will develop the theoretical knowledge and methodological skills that are necessary to become successful, productive researchers, as well as the teaching experience and training to communicate this new knowledge. Graduates of the program have the ability and motivation to conduct meaningful, interesting, and significant research on a variety of marketing-related problems and issues.

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Study Options

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Student admission is restricted to full-time study exclusively for the first four years. It is not recommended to be working outside of the PhD program during your studies. Students must be able to participate in the PhD program in Toronto.

Typically, a PhD in marketing will take at least four years to complete. The first two years will be dedicated to graduate-level coursework.

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Courses

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In general, most students focus in one of four areas: consumer culture theory, consumer information processing, marketing strategy or international marketing. The training students receive in consumer culture is anchored in anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies, while consumer information processing students focus on cognitive and social psychology and decision making. Students interested in strategic and international marketing often drill down on economic and management theories.

Doctoral students must complete four marketing seminars, two courses in a minor area (typically in an allied discipline such as anthropology, sociology, psychology, management studies, cultural studies, statistics, or economics), and four method (DCAD) courses.

Courses

Students must successfully complete the following course requirements:

Required Courses

  • CONSUMER RESEARCH A
  • CONSUMER RESEARCH B
  • MARKETING STRATEGY: DEVELOPING CONSUMER RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS
  • RESEARCH PAPER FORMATION
  • CRAFTING HIGH IMPACT CONSUMER RESEARCH
  • INTRODUCTION TO APPLIED STATISTICS
  • LOGICS OF SOCIAL RESEARCH
  • RESEARCH DESIGN
  • QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS

 

Two Elective Courses
These two courses are chosen, in consultation with the Marketing Area PhD Program Representative or from among the doctoral level courses offered within the program.

Comprehensive Examinations

Students write a comprehensive examination after successfully completing all coursework. This examination is designed to demonstrate knowledge of the Accounting field, the chosen foundation field, and research methodologies. The comprehensive examination is set and administered by Marketing Area faculty members. It is normally administered within 24 months of entry into the PhD program. A second and final attempt at this examination is allowed (within six months of the original exam) if the student is unsuccessful in the first attempt.

The program regards the comprehensive examination as a pivotal point for deciding whether students should be allowed to proceed with their studies or be encouraged to withdraw from the program.

Dissertation Proposal and Oral Defence

Candidates must prepare a written proposal to conduct original dissertation research carried out under the supervision of a supervisory committee, and must defend this to the satisfaction of the thesis supervisor and members of the supervisory committee.

Dissertation and Oral Examination

Candidates must prepare a dissertation based on original research carried out under the supervision of a supervisory committee and submit the results in appropriate dissertation form. After the formal submission of the dissertation, an oral examination is held. It is expected that all or part of the dissertation will be published following professional or scientific review.

We recommend further consultation with your area Ph.D. rep concerning any impending changes to the program requirements and guidance on selecting appropriate optional courses.

Faculty

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Schulich's Marketing faculty actively publishes in the top journals in the world. They develop and promote new research methodologies and work closely with students to define solid research questions, develop a plan of study and identify scholarly publication outlets. Our doctoral program offers students an interdisciplinary environment to generate creative ideas and hypotheses, the analytical skills to assess them, and the training to communicate them.

The following faculty are accredited by the Schulich School of Business and the Faculty of Graduate Studies for the supervision of doctoral students:

Selected faculty members

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Career Opportunities

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  • Placement of Recent Graduates

    Gulay Taltekin Guzel Assistant Professor of Markets, Innovation & Design, Bucknell University
    Mohammad Saeid Kermani Assistant Professor in Marketing, Trent University
    Nukhet Agar Assistant Professor, Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson
    Syeda Mariam Humayun Assistant Professor, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa
    Sean Hingston Assistant Professor, DAN Department of Management & Organizational Studies, Western University
    Leah Schneider Adjunct Instructor at Lundquist College of Business, University of Oregon
    Zhennan Wang Adjunct Instructor at Syracuse University
    Arundhati Bhattacharyya Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Management Udaipur
    Pierre-Yann Dube Dolbec Assistant Professor, HEC Montreal
    Amanda Earley Lecturer (Assistant Professor), University of Leicester
    Andrew Smith Assistant Professor, Girrard School of Business, Merrimack College.

Student Research

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  • A critical component to academic scholarship is the dissemination of knowledge through peer-reviewed scholarly journals (e.g., Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, etc.). Faculty and students work closely together from the first year of the program to develop the skills necessary for scholarly success—defining solid research questions, developing a plan of study for the questions, and identifying scholarly outlets for the findings.

    Selected Publications

    Mariam Humayun (Forthcoming) “Brand Hive Minds and Bitcoin Resilience,” Carolyn Strong, ed., Cryptocurrency and Blockchain: Consumer Research and Business Insights, Berlin: De Gruyter (with Belk, R)

    Gulay Taltekin Guzel (2023), “The case for qualitative research” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 33(1), pp.259-272. (with Fischer, E.)

    Mohammad Saeid Kermani (2023), “Getting political: The value-protective effects of expressed outgroup outrage on self-brand connection,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, in press. (with Noseworthy, T., and Darke, P.R.)

    Mohammad Saeid Kermani (2023), “Consumer Online (Dis)trust: A Decade Later,” The Digital Consumer (2nd ed), pp. 514-528, Russell Belk & Rosa Llamas (eds.), Routledge: NY. (with Darke, P.R., & Brady, M.K.)

    Mohammad Saeid Kermani (2022), “Sorry, not sorry: The effect of social power on transgressors’ apology and non-apology,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 28(4), 883–897 (with Guilfoyle, J. R., Struthers, C. W., van Monsjou, E., Shoikhedbrod, A. and Eghbali, N.)

    Mariam Humayun (2022), “Money, possessions, and ownership in the Metaverse: NFTs, cryptocurrencies, Web3 and Wild Markets,” Journal of Business Research, 153: 198-205. (with Belk, R. and Brouard)

    Mariam Humayun (2022), “How Brand Hive Minds Thrive: Understanding Bitcoin’s Resilience,” Cryptoeconomic Systems, 2(1). (with Belk, R.)

    Mariam Humayun (2022), “Bitcoin,” Journal of Customer Behaviour, (In Press).

    Andrew Smith (2021), “Pay attention, please! Person brand building in organized online attention economies,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 49 (2), 258-279 (with Fischer, E.)

    Mohammad Saeid Kermani (2021), “Cultural differences in psychological reactance: Responding to social media censorship,” Current Psychology, 40, 2804–2813. (with Ng, A.H., & Lalonde, R.N.)

    Nükhet Taylor (2021), “Your Fries are Less Fattening than Mine:               How Food Sharing Biases Fattening Judgments Without Biasing Caloric Estimates,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 31 (October), 773 – 783 (with Noseworthy, T. J.)

    Nükhet Taylor (2020), “Compensating for Innovation: Extreme Product Incongruity Encourages Consumers to Affirm Unrelated Consumption Schemas,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 30 (January), 77 – 95. (with Noseworthy, T. J.)

    Sean T. Hingston (2020), “On the Epidemic of Food Waste: Idealized Prototypes and the Aversion to Misshapen Fruits and Vegetables,” Food Quality and Preference, 86 (December), 1 – 10. (with Noseworthy, T. J.)

    Mariam Humayun (2020), “Consumer Reception of New Technologies,” International Journal of Business Anthropology, 10 (1), 49-65. (with Belk, R. and Gopaldas, A.)

    Mariam Humayun (2020), “The Analogue Diaries of Postdigital Consumption,” Journal of Marketing Management, 36(7-8): 633-659. (with Belk, R.)

    Mariam Humayun (2020), “Artificial Life,” Journal of Macromarketing, 40 (2), 221-246. (with Belk, R. and Gopaldas, A.)

    Amanda Earley (2019), “A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about International Marketing,” London: Sage

    Amanda Earley (2019), “Let’s Get Real: New Continental Philosophy’s Methodological Imperative,” Consumption, Markets, and Culture

    Andrew Smith (2019), “Isolation in globalizing academic fields: a collaborative autoethnography of Early Career Researchers,” Academy of Management Learning & Education 18 (2), 261-285 (with Belkhir, M., Brouard, M., Brunk, KH., Dalmoro M., Ferreira, MC., and Figueiredo, B.)

    Arundhati Bhattacharyya (2019), “Consumer Resilience and Subservience in Technology Consumption by the Poor,” Consumption, Markets and Culture, 22 (5/6), 489-507. (with R. Belk)

    Nükhet Taylor (2019), “Supersize My Chances: Promotional Lotteries Impact Product Size Choices,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 29 (January), 79 – 88.” (with T. J. Noseworthy, and E. Pancer)

    Recent Dissertation Topics

    2022: Gulay Taltekin Guzel – Influencing a Field: The Role of Influencers in the Cosmetics Industry

    2022: Mohammad Saeid Kermani – When your outrage is not mine: Consumer responses to expressions of online outrage towards brands

    2020: Nukhet Agar – Of Snakes, Guns, and Innovative Products: The Impact of Threat Cues on Consumer Preference

    2019: Mariam Humayun – Creation and Resilience of Decentralized Brands – Bitcoin & the Blockchain

    2018: Sean T. Hingston – Essentialism, Moral Opposition, and the Aversion to Genetically Modified Foods

    2017: Leah Schneider – The Activist Tale of Emergent Crowds and Mobilized Communities: Investigating the Interplay Between Consumer Activism and Consumer Collectives

    2016: Zhennan (Nicole) Wang – The Internationalization of Emerging Economy Firms: The Impact of Corporate Governance and Political Connections

    2016: Arundhati Bhattacharyya – Technology Metaphors at the Base of the Pyramid

    2016: Pierre-Yann Dolbec – How Do Mainstream Cultural Market Categories Emerge: A Multi-Level Analysis of the Creation of Electronic Dance Music

    2014: Amanda Earley – From Occupy Wall Street to Occupying the Academy: Three Interventions from One Demonstration

    2014: Andrew Smith – Sensegiving Word-of-Mouth and Collective Sensemaking About Epistemic Objects

    Current PhD students in the Marketing Area:

    as of Fall 2023

    • Tima Abboud
    • Lucas Busani Xavier
    • Rowan El-Bialy
    • Yi Xuan Jeremy Lee
    • Jennifer Sedgewick
    • Erik Steiner
    • Orcun Turan
    • Raisa Tasneem Zaman

Research Seminar Series

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  • “Navigating the Complexities of Tiny Spaces”

    Speaker: Marcus Phipps
    Senior Lecturer in Department of Management and Marketing, University of Melbourne, Australia

    Speaker bio: Marcus Phipps is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management and Marketing at the University of Melbourne. His research interests focus on routines, practices, sustainability and transformative consumer research. He has published his work in a variety of journals including the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, and the European Journal of Marketing.

    Abstract: From the romance of nature (Canniford and Shankar 2013) to the spectacle of fantasy retail (Kozinet et al. 2004, Maclaran and Brown 2005), a plenitude of space is seen as a way to enhance the overall consumption experience. This presentation investigates consumers who deliberately seek to limit their space. The tiny house movement is a social and architectural trend that advocates living simply in small spaces. Drawing from in-depth interviews with tiny home owners, blogs, and ethnographic notes from meet-ups and festivals, this research explores the unique emotional relationship of living in a very small space. Findings show how spatial constraints lead to a renegotiation of how household practices are traditionally organized. The private can become public, essentials deemed luxuries, and new emotional spaces are often found outside of the household.

    Friday, September 6th, 2019
    10:30am to 12:00 noon
    Room N201

    RSVP:     ssinclair@schulich.yorku.ca

    Event open to Faculty and PhD