Doctoral Students


Thinking about pursuing a Ph.D.?

As a graduate student in our group, you will face many exciting and rewarding challenges. We hope you share our passion for research, seek to break new intellectual ground, and contribute to the academic conversation in our field. Through exciting practice partner projects, as well as through Goethe University Frankfurt’s incomparable access to secondary databases and our very own experimental laboratory, we are well-equipped to study exciting research questions that move the needle in today’s business and societal landscape.

As one of the largest marketing departments in Germany, sized by tenured faculty, our department houses faculty experts that approach these questions through the most diverse set of theories and methodologies, ranging from quantitative econometric modeling, over marketing strategy, to consumer psychology. We are dedicated to graduate education and research and are making every effort to provide the best guidance and support to you.

As such, we are very proud that our graduates found placements in tenured and tenure-track positions in a wide range of countries (Germany, Switzerland, Austria, UK, US, Spain, and the Netherlands, see an overview of our placements here) and left their mark on dozens of national and international dissertation awards. Our students are also regular presenters at renowned international conferences and are offered visiting positions at top-notch universities and research institutions.

If pursuing a Ph.D. in marketing sounds interesting, there are two options for doing so: Either through our Ph.D. program offered in our graduate school (GSEFM) or directly at a chair. Our Ph.D. program in the graduate school offers a two-year cycle of doctoral-level coursework specifically designed to prepare you both theoretically and empirically to conduct cutting-edge research with a focus on marketing analytics, followed by the individual dissertation work at a chair in our group. You can be admitted to this program right after your bachelor’s degree and earn a master’s degree through the coursework in the first two years of the program. More information on the graduate school and the complimentary research master program (M.Sc. in Quantitative Marketing) can be found here.

In contrast, pursuing a Ph.D. directly at a chair involves working closely with a specific professor in our group right from the start, usually with a greater emphasis on independent research, chair administration, teaching commitments, and a more individualized curriculum. For more information on this type of doctorate, please reach out to the specific chair, overviewed here.

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