PhD in Marketing

Abstract

The Marketing group at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University seeks a highly motivated PhD student looking to study research questions in the domain of quantitative marketing or consumer behavior. Our group is unique in the Netherlands with both scholars focusing on developing and applying state-of-the-art methodologies from the fields of statistics, economics, and machine learning, as well as scholars focusing on consumer behavior research that is deeply embedded in both theory and practice. Our faculty combines our methodological expertise with a deep understanding of the challenges businesses face. As part of a business school, we have strong ties with industry (profit and nonprofit) and government that allow our research to have direct societal impact. Strong applicants typically have backgrounds in computer science, statistics, econometrics (quantitative marketing) or psychology, business, statistics, or a related field (consumer behavior). They are typically looking to pursue careers as world-class academic researchers. Students define and execute their own projects in consultation with their advisers and thus need creativity, self-direction, and a passion for scientific research. We are looking for candidates that are equally interested in solid academic research and in addressing real-world problems.

Keywords

Privacy, Digital Marketing, Machine Learning, Causal Inference, Consumer behavior, Psychology, Judgement and decision making

Topic

The marketing group at Rotterdam School of Management (RSM) ranks among the best in the world. Our members publish their research in top journals in marketing as well as related fields. They deeply care about open science practices (e.g., data sharing and open-source software) and frequently host seminars to encourage knowledge exchange. In addition, we have a track record of excellent academic placements. Around 80% of our graduated PhD’s started their first job in academia, and over 50% landed a job at a top 100 business school (UT Dallas ranking).  The group is diverse (in terms of research interests and cultural background), collaborative, and collegial.

Our PhD program seeks to train the next generation of marketing academics. We want our students to maximize their potential and become independent marketing scholars. We expect students to become experts in their domain of interest and define a research agenda around a topic of their choosing. As such, PhD positions in our group are open and students have the opportunity to collaborate with several faculty members when possible. The supervisory team will be formed considering the student’s research interests. During their years of study, students define and execute their own projects. They do this in consultation with their advisers. 

Our quantitatively oriented faculty work on topics such as design of multi-armed bandits and reinforcement learning models with applications to recommendation systems and clinical trials (Gui Liberali), privacy (Gilian Ponte), causal inference (Jason Roos), consumer eye tracking (Ana Martinovici), digital marketing and behavioral decision making (Alina Ferecatu), virtual / augmented / mixed reality (Yvonne van Everdingen), digital platform markets (David Kusterer), marketing strategy (Gerrit van Bruggen), deep learning (Sebastian Gabel), consumer and firm networks (Xi Chen), customer analytics (Aurélie Lemmens), and consumer learning (Maciej Szymanowski).

Our faculty members in consumer behavior work on a wide range of topics, such as how advertising works psychologically (Steven Sweldens), pro-societal consumer interventions (Romain Cadario), judgment and decision making (Gabriele Paolacci), self-control and consumption (Mirjam Tuk), how technology augments behavior (Shwetha Mariadassou and Anne-Kathrin Klesse), numerical processing (Dan Schley and Christophe Lembregts), biological influences on consumption and goal pursuit (Bram Van den Bergh), how to measure consumer preferences (Antonia Krefeld-Schwalb), pro-social behavior, social credit, and consumer advocacy (Alex Genevsky), and marketplace morality (Johannes Boegershausen). 

PhD students in our department receive excellent training and ample opportunities for feedback. In addition to standard required course work, students typically take courses in machine learning, (micro)economics, statistics, causal inference, econometrics (quantitative marketing), or experimental design, statistics, and seminars in consumer behavior and psychology, both internally and externally. In addition, the department regularly offers workshops on a variety of topics, hosted by internal and external faculty members, which enables students to get to know excellent researchers and establish their own (international) network. To facilitate the latter, students are also encouraged and receive funding to go on a research visit to leading research-intensive international institutions and collaborate with excellent external faculty.

Every year, we host a PhD day during which the students present their work and receive feedback from the department at large. Besides, we organize weekly lunchclubs during which both students and faculty can present early-stage work and receive feedback in a safe environment. 

Approach

The PhD student will work in close collaboration with the supervisory team and other faculty on tasks that include:

• Identifying novel research questions based on real-world phenomena or extant theory.
• Understanding the theoretical foundations and prior literature relevant to understanding the phenomena
• Identifying the fundamental variables and relationships that are most important to studying the phenomena and formalizing them in a measurement model or set of experimental hypotheses
• Developing and coding the appropriate algorithms and methods that implement the novel concepts and model.
• Gathering experimental data to test hypotheses or measure phenomena, in online, lab and /or field settings.
• Identifying the critical assumptions needed to draw inferences from empirical results.
• Writing computer code to analyse experimental or secondary data according to the best practices and tools in the relative sub-domain, such as pre-registration, data sharing, and open science.
• Presenting research findings at international conferences, at our PhD day and brownbag seminars.
• Writing up findings for publication in international journals
• Attending classes and seminars (including those offered at other universities) to develop thinking and research skills further
• Participating in and contributing to departmental research functions (PhD Day, research seminars, weekly research meetings)
• Teaching (to a limited degree) students of the department

Through workshops, research seminars, applied and theoretical research with faculty, and seminars on key disciplines that provide the foundations of the marketing discipline (statistics, economics, psychology), the PhD student will gain the requisite experience for independent work. The actual project will be defined by the student and the supervisory group and, thus, requires creativity, self-direction, and passion for top-notch scientific research.

Students have access to world-class research facilities: 

• Erasmus Behavioral Lab provides facilities to conduct high-quality behavioral research, including sound-insulated cubicles, group labs, video labs, and facilities for eye tracking, EEG/ERP, facial coding, and hormone-administration studies.
• High-performance computing is available to researchers via SURFSara (a Dutch consortium for scientific computing).
• Excellent research funding.

Required profile

We seek candidates with the following qualities:

• Masters’ degree (preferably a Research Master´s or MPhil degree) in one of the following fields: computer science, data science, operations research, economics, econometrics, statistics, management, marketing, psychology, statistics, business, or a related discipline
• Energy and passion for consumer behaviour research or quantitative marketing
• Experience conducting experimental research with human participants (consumer behavior candidate)
• Statistical skills and command of standard software packages for analyzing experimental data (e.g., R, SPSS, SAS, Stata, JASP, Python, Julia, Scala, Java, or C++)), and a strong willingness to develop these skills further
• Command of empirical software packages (e.g., Qualtrics, MediaLab, E-Prime) and a strong willingness to develop these skills further
• Intellectual curiosity, eagerness to learn, and openness to criticism and other perspectives
• Strong commitment to methodological rigor and scientific integrity
• Strong motivation to pursue an international career as a leading scholar
• Excellent writing ability in fluent English, ideally with experience writing for a scientific audience
• Strong communication and organizational skills
• Willingness and motivation to independently formulate research projects and carry them through to completion

Required by ERIM

All application documents required by ERIM can be found here. 

Expected output

You will generate research that can be published in top-tier peer-reviewed journals in marketing, such as the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Marketing Science, and Journal of Marketing. The research group at RSM has a strong record of publishing in these and other top journals in related fields, including Management, Psychology, Neuroscience, and Economics. The final results of the PhD project are published in a PhD dissertation, and most marketing PhD dissertations at RSM find their way into top journals.

Cooperation

To strengthen your international research network and complement your time at RSM, you may receive funding for a 3- to 6-month research visit. Past visits have included Stanford, Wharton, Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, Colorado, Cornell, and UCLA.

Societal relevance

Students are encouraged to pursue topics that not only improve the practice of marketing, but also consumer or societal well-being, and thus align closely with the school’s mission to be a force for positive change in the world.

Scientific relevance

PhD research should be of the highest quality, carried out with scientific rigor and the utmost integrity. The department values openness and encourages students to embrace the principles and tools of open science (e.g., making code and data available to others and pre-registering experiments). The marketing group conducts research in our core field of marketing, as well as related disciplines such as management, psychology, judgment and decision-making, neuroscience, economics, and statistics. Our diversity and interdisciplinarity make the department a lively, creative, and intellectually stimulating place to conduct research.

Literature references & data sources

Please refer to the web pages of our faculty members (https://www.rsm.nl/research/departments/marketing-management/faculty/) for more information about their current research interests. You may also refer to our RSM Discovery section (see here https://discovery.rsm.nl/researchers/). It offers a collection of articles and videos that our faculty (and those from other departments) have created about their research. 

You may also look at the work done by several expert practices at ECDA:

• Trial Design and Experimentation: https://ecda.eur.nl/expert-practices/trial-design-experimentation/
• Virtual and Augmented Reality: https://ecda.eur.nl/expert-practices/virtual-augmented-reality/
• Customer Analytics: https://ecda.eur.nl/expert-practices/customer-analytics/
• Psychology of AI: https://ecda.eur.nl/expert-practices/psychology-of-ai/ 

Employment conditions

ERIM offers fully-funded and salaried PhD positions, which means that accepted PhD candidates become employees (promovendi) of Erasmus University Rotterdam. Salary and benefits are in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities (CAO).

Erasmus University Rotterdam aspires to be an equitable and inclusive community. We nurture an open culture, where everyone is supported to fulfil their full potential. We see inclusivity of talent as the basis of our successes, and the diversity of perspectives and people as a highly valued outcome. EUR provides equal opportunities to all employees and applicants regardless of gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, age, neurodiversity, functional impairment, citizenship, or any other aspect which makes them unique. We look forward to welcoming you to our community.

Contact information

For questions regarding the PhD application and selection procedure, please check the Admissions or send us an e-mail via phdadmissions@erim.eur.nl.