PhD in Quantitative Marketing

Abstract

The marketing group at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University seeks highly motivated PhD students looking to study topics in the domain of quantitative marketing. 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 or econometrics. 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

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).

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, and seminars in quantitative marketing, 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.

Note: In December, we offer our PhD Virtual Open House Day. If you are interested in our PhD program and consider applying, we invite you to join us on December 9 from 9.30 am to 11.00 am CET OR on December 11 from 8.00 pm to 9.30 pm CET. In these info sessions we provide you with lots of information on our PhD program, department, and school. You will also get to know some of our faculty members and current PhD students, hear them talk about their research, and have the chance to ask questions.

Interested? Then please register here or use this QR code to register:

(Registration deadline: December 1).

We look forward to meeting you!

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.  
• Understanding the theoretical foundations and state-of-the-art models in marketing science, economics, and computer science literatures relevant to understanding the phenomena.
• Identifying the fundamental variables, trade-offs and relationships that are most important to studying the phenomena and formalizing them in a measurement model.
• Developing and coding the appropriate algorithms and methods that implement the novel concepts and model.
• Gathering experimental or observational data to test hypotheses or highlight the strength and boundaries of the proposed methods.
• Identifying the critical assumptions needed to draw inferences from empirical results.
• Writing computer code to analyse experimental or secondary data according the best practices and tools in the relative sub-domain, including versioning (e.g., GitHub), pre-registration, data sharing and open science (e.g., Figshare).
• Presenting research findings at international conferences, in 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 further develop thinking and research skills.
• Participating in and contributing to departmental research functions (PhD Day, research seminars, weekly research meetings).
• Teaching students (to a limited degree).

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:

• Intellectual curiosity, drive, eagerness to learn, and openness to criticism and other perspectives
• Strong motivation to pursue an international career as a leading scholar
• Strong commitment to methodological rigor and scientific integrity
• Strong passion for real-world problems faced by different types of organizations
• Excellent speaking and writing ability in fluent English, ideally with experience writing for a scientific audience
• Willingness and motivation to independently formulate research projects and carry them through to completion
• Excellent organizational skills
• Strong motivation to pursue an international career as a leading scholar
• 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, or marketing. 
• The ideal candidate should also have some experience in programming (e.g., R, Python, Julia, Scala, Java, or C++) and in data analysis, management, preparation, and visualization, ideally as part of at least one end-to-end data science project.

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, 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. IIn addition, we strongly encourage our members to publish their codes on open-science platforms and create packages to generate more impact and adhere to the principle of Open Science.

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. We also strongly encourage collaboration with our business partners who are active in multiple domains (digital, retail, consumer goods, nonprofits, B2B, fintech, etc.).

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/

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.