Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Business Administration - Marketing Specialization

Drexel's PhD in Business program prepares candidates for careers in academic research and teaching. The PhD in Business includes specializations in accounting, decision sciences, finance, marketing and management (organizational behavior and strategy). PhD degrees are delivered as full-time, on-campus degrees and normally require about five years to complete. The LeBow faculty takes a hands-on approach to research and mentoring students on a daily basis. The support of LeBow’s collaborative, collegial research environment provides our doctoral students with tremendous research opportunities. Marketing as an academic discipline can be viewed from both micro and macro perspectives. From the micro viewpoint, marketing exists at the nexus between an organization and the markets because its offerings include not only physical products but also services, ideas, causes and people. The fundamental role of the marketing process as it occurs within any given organization is to understand and interpret the needs and wants of the markets it serves and then formulate appropriate product, pricing, promotion, and distribution strategies to satisfy those needs and wants. This process occurs within a competitive and dynamic environment so marketing management must continuously adjust its strategies to adapt to and exploit changing situations and contexts. From the macro perspective, marketing institutions can be seen as engaging in a matching function which helps to foster equilibrium between aggregate production and aggregate desired consumption. This matching process enhances economic efficiency by reducing the amount of misdirected production output and enhances effectiveness in terms of more congruency between output and consumer needs and wants. The PhD in Business with a specialization in marketing addresses both perspectives in most of the courses it offers, but the primary emphasis is from the micro point of view.