Marketing: Curriculum

The Marketing PhD curriculum is very flexible in order to meet students’ needs. Each student, in conjunction with the marketing faculty, develops a program of coursework that best addresses the training required for that student’s interests, given the courses available and the student’s prior academic background.

PhD Curriculum

The marketing area offers several PhD Seminars:

  • BA961: Seminar in Quantitative Research in Marketing
  • BA962: Seminar in Consumer Behavior
  • BA963: Marketing Models Seminar
  • BA964: Experimental Design and Analysis Seminar
  • BA965: Automaticity
  • BA966: Social Cognition
  • BA991: Selected Topics (recent special topics seminars have included Consumer Research, Marketing Strategy, and Research Methods)

Each student is expected to take the basic seminar in consumer behavior, marketing strategy, and quantitative marketing.  Depending upon their interests, they would also take relevant courses in other areas at the Fuqua School (e.g., decision sciences, management and organizations, operations management) or other departments at Duke or the University of North Carolina (e.g., economics, psychology, statistics, sociology).  Each student takes methodology courses appropriate to their area of interest. Because the coursework is tailored to your individual interests, there isn’t a ‘typical’ program in the Marketing PhD program.  Here are two potential paths you might take:

Program Guidelines

Below we discuss guidance for course selection and other matters, progress guidelines, and research assistantships. Because the mechanisms for carrying out these functions differ somewhat depending upon the student’s year in the program, the first year, second year and third year are addressed in separate sections.