Marketing - PhD in Management

Marketing is one of a business school's broadest and most encompassing areas. It involves a deep understanding of how consumers and firms interact several dimensions in the market. Marketing consists in developing a deep understanding of the buyer or consumer and covers the decision domains of designing and delivering products and services, pricing, distributing, and promoting (both personal--sales force management--and impersonal--mass communications, such as advertising or marketing through the internet), based on this understanding. Marketing also covers the strategic domain of resource allocation among product/market combinations.

Broadly defined, here are some of the research interests in the Marketing area: branding, B2B marketing, consumer behaviour, customer relationship management, customer/behavioural decision making, customer centricity, distribution channels, e-business, forecasting, innovation, international marketing, advertising, new product development, pharmaceutical marketing, pricing, promotion, retailing, sales force management, service management, strategic marketing and transaction cost analysis. 

To cover such a broad area, the Marketing area in the INSEAD PhD draws from several disciplines, including psychology, sociology, economics, computer science, neuro-economics, and statistics, to name a few. In addition, marketing research also intersects with a broad range of other business areas, such as strategy and organisational behaviour.

The breadth of the Marketing field reflects the diverse backgrounds of its scholars. It draws individuals from various experiences ranging from engineering and sciences to the social sciences. 

The Marketing Area has resident faculty members at INSEAD’s Europe and Asia Campuses and welcomes visiting scholars from other business schools and universities. It also has a strong presence among editorial board members, with hundreds of articles published in top marketing journals since 2007 and several renowned international research awards in the last decade. 

One of the many critical pedagogical contributions INSEAD has made available to Marketing PhD students is the MARKSTRAT, a simulation of marketing, a consumer durable, which is widely used for both teaching and research on how managers make marketing decisions.

Another vital resource available to INSEAD PhDs and scholars worldwide is the state-of-the-art INSEAD-Sorbonne Behavioural Lab in Paris, which provides invaluable support for conducting high-quality research on human behaviour.

Every year, research studies conducted at the lab result in publications in prestigious academic journals, awards and honours, conference presentations, dissertations, and media mileage in popular press outlets. As a result, the lab's exemplary contributions to behavioural research, led by world-class scholars, have set a benchmark for other business schools with similar facilities.

Visit the Marketing Academic Area Page

   Download the Marketing Course Template

The Marketing area at the INSEAD PhD covers a wide range of disciplines, making it an attractive domain for candidates from various subject areas and industries, recognising the value of diverse perspectives. 

We are particularly interested in candidates with exceptional academic backgrounds that will equip them to excel as researchers. We seek individuals who can design and conduct relevant experiments to enhance our understanding of consumer behaviour. Additionally, we value applicants who can handle intriguing and complex marketing data sets.

By joining the Marketing area, you will have the opportunity to delve into the multifaceted world of the field, leveraging your prior background to make valuable contributions to research and experiment design. We encourage candidates passionate about advancing consumer behaviour knowledge and leveraging data-driven insights to apply and join our dynamic and collaborative community.

Download the Call for applications 2025 intake.

Here are some of the backgrounds of Marketing PhD students who have joined the programme: 

Bachelor of Economics, MA in Economics
BA Human Resource Management, MSc Social Cognition
Bachelor and Master of Technology, Master in Quantitative Economics
Bachelor of Business Administration
Bachelor of Technology, Master in Marketing Research
BS Applied Economics, Master in Economics
BS and Master of Engineering in Operations Research
Bachelor in Business Administration, MS in Business Administration
MSc Social and Cultural Psychology
MA Managerial and Financial Economics
MSc Cognitive and Decision Sciences
MA Marketing
PhD Computer Science

View the current Marketing PhD students' profiles.

The Marketing job market is a healthy one – it is a prominent subject in business education and is featured heavily in the typical business school curriculum. In addition, the Marketing area at INSEAD has produced PhD graduates who the academic job market has well received and has a proven successful career progression in academia.

Bart J. Bronnenberg, one of the pioneers of the programme, joined the University of Texas at Austin immediately after his PhD, one of the top-ranked marketing departments and prominent business schools and among the highly ranked programmes in the US. In 1999, Bart became an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Anderson Graduate School of UCLA and later received tenure as Full Professor. Bart Bronnenberg is a Professor of Marketing at the Tilburg School of Economics and Management. He is also a research fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in London.

Miklos Sarvary joined INSEAD as Associate Professor and later became Professor and Dean of INSEAD's Executive Education after appointments at Harvard's and Stanford's Graduate Schools of Business. Miklos is with Columbia Business School, holding the position of Carson Family Professor of Business and faculty lead for the Media and Technology Programme.

Here are some of the leading business schools and universities where our graduates are:

Bocconi, CEIBS, Columbia, CUHK, Dartmouth, Emory, Grenoble Ecole de Management, HEC Paris, HK Polytechnic University, IE Business School, IMD Switzerland, Johns Hopkins University, Nanyang Technological University, Southern Methodist University, Tel Aviv University, Tilburg, U. of Colorado Boulder, U. of Pittsburgh, U. of Toronto, University of British Columbia, UC Berkeley, University College Dublin, University of Washington Tacoma and Washington State University Vancouver, among others. 

To learn more about the incredible achievements of our Global PhD Alumni Community, please visit our website.

We encourage prospects to plan for their application for the PhD in Management. Application for the following year's intake starts in the early Fall of the current year, with a preferred deadline of mid-December.

Go to the Admissions and Financing page

Moreover, we encourage prospects to attend our upcoming recruitment events or register below to receive the URLs of the Special Area Webinars we have conducted over the years.

Registration Link