The Doctoral Program in
Marketing
PhD Department, SB 418
Irvine, California 92697-3125
phd@merage.uci.edu
949/824-8318
http://merage.uci.edu/PhD
Welcome to the Ph.D. Program in Marketing
The Marketing Ph.D. at The Paul Merage School of Business focuses on studying
the foundations and most recent advances in marketing theory and their application
in today’s dynamic business world. Faculty and student research areas range widely,
including topics as the emerging role of electronic commerce, the impact of
advertising on social issues, the econometric modeling of consumer decisions, hightech distribution systems, advertising’s effects on employees, marketing in
multiethnic communities and global marketplace.
Our Marketing Professors (in alpha order)
Imran Currim is Chancellor's Professor at the University of California, Irvine, and
serves the Paul Merage School of Business as Associate Dean, Marketing & Student
Relations, for the Executive MBA Programs. Prior to that, he served the Merage
School as Associate Dean of the Masters Programs.
He is the recipient of two of the highest honors in marketing:
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the American Marketing Association William O'Dell Award for "the article
judged to have made the most significant five year contribution to
marketing theory, methodology, and practice," and
the American Marketing Association/Houghton Mifflin Distinguished
Teaching in Marketing Award, "for contributions to teaching excellence."
Professor Currim’s recent papers have been finalists for:
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the 2003 American Marketing Association Paul E. Green Award for best
paper published in Journal of Marketing Research during 2002.
the 2004 European Marketing Academy Award for best paper published in
International Journal of Research in Marketing during 2003.
Professor Currim received:
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Wall Street Journal's 2008 Favorite Professor in an Executive MBA
Program.
Business Week 2006 ranked his marketing course taught in the Executive
MBA Program #3 in the world.
Professor Currim was recently appointed Chancellor's Professor at UCI, a title used
to “recognize full Professors who have demonstrated unusual academic merit and
whose continued promise for scholarly achievement makes them of exceptional
value to the university.” He also received one of the highest commendations
awarded by the University of California Irvine Academic Senate, the Distinguished
Faculty Lectureship Award.
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Key Research/Interest Areas:
o Marketing research
o Customer choice
o Design and marketing of products and services
o Customer behavior online
o Assessing the impact of competitive product and service features
and marketing efforts on consumer choice and market share
Mary Gilly has expertise in consumer behavior, focusing her research on the
indirect and often unintended consequences of marketing actions. She conducts her
research in a variety of organizations, such as hospitals, quick-service restaurants,
high-tech firms, and small retailers.
Current projects include a study of household decision-making at a distance via new
technologies, consumer compliance with debt management services, and the
phenomenon of consumer generated advertising. Two of her research grants funded
by the National Science Foundation have focused on older Americans’ use of the
Internet.
Her research findings have appeared in the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of
Consumer Research, California Management Review, and the Journal of Retailing.
She and a colleague recently wrote “Why Consumers Shop Online, Who They Are,
and What They Want” for The Internet Encyclopedia.
Professor Gilly has made nearly 30 presentations on marketing to colloquia and
conferences held across the United States, and internationally. She has co-chaired
conferences and served as an officer in the American Marketing Association. She is
currently Academic Director for the Association for Consumer Research, and is a
member of the American Academy of Advertising.
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Key Research/Interest Areas:
o Consumers and technology
o Services Marketing
o Underserved markets, including Hispanics and the elderly
o Effects of advertising on employees
o Compliance in Service Encounters
John Graham (Professor Emeritus) is an expert in global marketing, international
business negotiations, and business in Greater China and Japan. He has co-authored
several books: International Marketing (with Philip R. Cateora and Mary C. Gilly),
McGraw-Hill, 14th edition, 2009; Global Negotiation: The New Rules (with
William Hernandez Requejo), Palgrave Macmillan, 2008; Doing Business with the
New Japan (with James Day Hodgson and Yoshihiro Sano), Rowman & Littlefield,
2008; China Now: Doing Business in the World’s Most Dynamic Marketplace (with
N. Mark Lam), McGraw-Hill, 2007; and Together Again: A Creative Guide to
Successful Multigenerational Living (with Sharon Graham Niederhaus), M. Evans,
2007. Marketing. See www.GlobalNegotiationResources.com and
www.TogetherAgainBook.com for details.
He has also published extensively in academic and management journals including
Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Journal of Marketing,
Management Science, Marketing Science, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal
of International Business Studies, Strategic Management Journal, and the Journal of
Higher Education.
Professor Graham has been interviewed by numerous local, national, and
international broadcast media outlets, including “NBC Nightly News” and the BBC,
and written several articles for the Los Angeles Times, La Opinion, and the New
York Times.
He has also been a consultant for executive groups for major corporations,
associations and institutions. They include Toyota Motor Sales, AT&T, the United
States Trade Representative, the United States Institute of Peace, and The National
Institute of Health.
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Key Research/Interest Areas:
o Global marketing
o International business negotiations
o Innovation
o Business in Japan
o Negotiation styles in the United States, Japan, Canada, Mexico,
Brazil, Taiwan and The Peoples’ Republic of China, South Korea,
France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union
Sreya Kolay has a PhD in Economics from University of Rochester. Prior to
joining the Marketing Area at Paul Merage, she was an Associate at the Brattle
Group, an economic consulting firm in Cambridge, MA.
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Key Research/Interest Areas:
o Pricing and promotion strategies relating to design of optimal
pricing contracts for firms in various markets
o Vertical market and distribution channels topics including
analysis of mechanisms that help a manufacturer to achieve
channel coordination
o Advertising
o Durable Goods
Loraine Lau- Gesk’s research interests fall into two areas: (1) the influence of
affect or emotions in consumer decision making, and (2) the role of culture and self
in consumer persuasion and judgment. In both areas, she examines how consumers
evaluate, interpret and manage complex conflicting experiences or decisions often
encountered in everyday consumer life. Her research focuses on complex affective
experiences where multiple emotions arise within a consumer context such as in
advertising or actual consumption experiences. In the second area, Professor LauGesk studies consumer self complexity due to cross and within cultural influences.
Past research has looked at the impact of single factors on decision making despite
the fact that many real life issues and experiences are much more complex, less
straightforward and mixed. Professor Lau-Gesk's work in both areas illuminates the
importance of studying more complex issues by resolving conflicts in the literature
and offering new, oftentimes counterintuitive, insight to existing marketing theory
and practice. Professor Lau-Gesk's research appears in Journal of Consumer
Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology and
Marketing Letters, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making and Organizational
Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
Connie Pechmann has received nearly $1.5 million in grants to study anti-smoking
advertising and adolescents, and assists the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy in overseeing a federally funded, multi-year, billion dollar anti-drug
advertising campaign.
She conducts controlled experiments to study the effects of advertising on
consumers focusing on if, and how, the federal government should regulate
controversial advertising forms. Currently she is studying the effectiveness of
various anti-smoking and anti-drug advertising tactics.
Professor Pechmann has received six grants from the California Tobacco-Related
Disease Research Program to study the impact of cigarette and anti-smoking
advertising on youths, including tobacco placements in movies and television
programs, and the showing of anti-smoking public service announcements before
movies.
Her research has been cited in major media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal,
New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today, and she
has appeared on CNN, ABC, and CBC News.
Professor Pechmann has published more than 60 academic articles, book chapters,
reports and proceedings on advertising-related issues. She serves on the review
boards of prestigious marketing journals including the Journal of Consumer
Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, and
Journal of Consumer Psychology.
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Key Research/Interest Areas:
o Effectiveness of various anti-smoking and anti-drug advertising
tactics
o Consumer behavior
o Advertising strategy and regulation
o Advertising to adolescents
o Deceptive advertising
o Product placements
o
o
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Role models in advertising
Pharmaceutical advertising
Retailing, micromarketing and geographic information systems
(GIS)
Rajeev Tyagi’s research focuses on the economics of marketing strategy. He
develops quantitative models to examine competitive marketing strategies,
distribution channels strategies, and new product introduction strategies.
His research has been published in top journals such as Management Science,
Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Industrial
Economics, and Economics Letters. He is an associate editor at Management
Science, and on the editorial board of Marketing Science.
Professor Tyagi is also a renowned teacher, who has won multiple school- and
university-wide awards for excellence in teaching.
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Key Research/Interest Areas:
o Competitive marketing strategies
o Game theory
o Distribution channels
o New products
Alladi Venkatesh is Professor of Management and Associate Dean of Masters
Programs. He also serves as Associate Director of CRITO Center for Research on
Information Technology in Organizations) at the University of California, Irvine.
His research focus is on the impact of new media and information technologies on
consumers/households. He is also the principal investigator of Project Noah. In the
1980s he directed a major study for the National Science Foundation looking at how
American families are adapting to the presence of computers at home. This study
was the first of its kind in the US. Recently, he received another grant from the
National Science Foundation to study the impact of media and information
technologies on households. This three year study will conclude at the end of year
2000. His current work involves Electronic Commerce and the Consumer Sector,
and the future of the Networked Home. Professor Venkatesh has given several
invited presentations including at Intel (Oregon), Interval Research Corporation
(Palo Alto), Philips (Netherlands), Electrolux (Sweden), Domus Academy
(Germany) on new media technologies and consumers/households.
Professor Venkatesh's scholarly publications have appeared in various journals,
including, Journal of Consumer Research, Management Science, Communications
of the ACM, Journal of product Innovation and Management, International Journal
of Research in Marketing, Telecommunications Policy. Professor Venkatesh is a coeditor of a new journal, Consumption, Markets and Culture (CMC).
General Requirements
The marketing faculty has set forth the guidelines listed below.
1. Marketing Ph.D. students are expected to complete all the Ph.D. degree
requirements within four academic years after entering the program. Only in
exceptional cases, at the request of an appropriate faculty member, will requests for
extensions be considered.
1.
There are 3 phases during the Ph.D. program:
a. Preliminary, Qualifying Stage
b. Thesis Proposal Stage
c. Thesis Defense Stage
a.
Preliminary, Qualifying Stage: During this phase, the student will take
course work to prepare for a written qualifying examination that will
be administered during the 2nd year summer. During this phase,
students will also prepare one research paper -- either sole- or coauthored -- to be submitted at the time of the written examination.
Marketing faculty will look at the performance in the exam and the
research paper to assign a "pass" or "fail". Those who get a fail will
get one more chance during the next quarter to retake the exam and/or
submit a changed paper.
b.
Thesis Proposal Stage: Those who get a "pass" in preliminary,
qualifying stage will form a 3-member working committee, with a
marketing faculty as the chair, to develop a thesis proposal. This
proposal can be related to or on a different topic than the paper
submitted earlier for the qualifying stage. If it is related to that paper,
then it should go sufficiently beyond the paper, both conceptually and
empirically. This thesis proposal will be defended in front of a 5member candidacy committee. Those who defend successfully will
have “advanced to candidacy”.
c.
Thesis Defense Stage: The final written dissertation should be
completed, and written approval should be obtained from the Thesis
Committee, by the end of the Fourth Academic Year. The student
must also formally defend the dissertation to the Thesis Committee in
a publicized public forum.
Student Support
Students admitted in the doctoral program in Marketing normally receive a fouryear support package covering tuition, fees and a living stipend. This support is
provided through a combination of scholarships, teaching assistantships and
research assistantships.
Irvine, California: The Heart of the Tech Coast
The University of California, Irvine, campus is located in Orange County,
California, in the heart of the entrepreneurial Tech Coast, and just an hour’s drive
north to Los Angeles or south to San Diego. Home to a variety of global companies,
the Orange County lifestyle is ideal to attract the best and brightest, with its
temperate weather, white-sand beaches, and snow-capped mountains. While the
learning program is intense, students also enjoy making the most of their personal
time.
Website Information
We invite you to explore our extensive website for further information on the Ph.D.
program, our faculty profiles, papers and research areas, plus the Merage School in
general.
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Doctoral Program Home Page: merage.uci.edu/go/phd
Merage School Home Page: merage.uci.edu
Faculty Directory: merage.uci.edu/go/directories
Ph.D. Student Directory: merage.uci.edu/go/directories
Faculty Research: merage.uci.edu/go/research
Academic Areas: merage.uci.edu/go/AcademicAreas
Contact Us
In addition to world-class faculty, a thriving learning and living environment, The
Paul Merage School of Business distinguishes itself for its highly personalized
attention and service. From faculty to staff to fellow students, we want you to
succeed. Please do not hesitation to contact us directly at any time:
Noel Negrete
Associate Director, Doctoral Program
PhD Department, SB 418
Irvine, California 92697-3125
phd@merage.uci.edu
949/824-8318
PhD Department, SB 418
Irvine, California 92697-3125
phd@merage.uci.edu
949/824-8318
http://merage.uci.edu/PhD