University Registrar

Graduate Department of Marketing

College of Business

Website: https://business.fsu.edu/departments/marketing

Chair: Michael Brady; Professors: Brady, Cronin, Hartline, Hofacker, Kim, Lee, Mende, Scott; Associate Professors: Bonney, Fajardo, Harmeling; Assistant Professors: Thomas; Senior Lecturers in Marketing: Dever, Hopkins, Kinney; Associates in Marketing: Ferguson, Jackson, Viosca; Dr. Persis E. and Dr. Charles E. Rockwood Eminent Scholar in Marketing: Scott; John R. Kerr Research Chair in Marketing: Cronin; Bob Sasser Professor of Marketing: Brady; Carl DeSantis Professor of Business Administration: Hofacker; Charles A. Bruning Professor of Business Administration: Hartline; Persis E. Rockwood Associate Professor of Marketing: Harmeling; Persis E. Rockwood Professor of Marketing: Hofacker; Spencer-Feheley MBA Professor: Kim

Relative to other marketing departments around the world, the FSU Department of Marketing is unique in terms of composition and focus. In addition to faculty in the traditional areas of marketing strategy and consumer behavior, the department also houses faculty in sales, public policy, and multinational business. The ability to leverage the synergies among these academic areas is a key competitive advantage and strength for the department. In addition, many of the marketing faculty (regardless of academic specialty) have a scholarly focus in services marketing. This is also a key strength of the department, in that a services focus coincides with the thrust of our national and state economies, virtually all of the placement opportunities for marketing graduates, and an established scholarly interest in the interdisciplinary nature of services.

Combined Bachelor's in Marketing/Master of Business Administration Pathway (BS-MAR/MBA)

Given the vast number of career paths that stem from marketing, it is essential that students understand how they can most effectively prepare themselves for the options that lie ahead. The demand for many of the traditional marketing career paths continues to expand as jobs like sales management, retail merchandising, brand management, and advertising/PR, regularly appear in job postings. Additionally, the rapid growth of big data has created the tools for more accurate consumer insight, resulting in a new facet of marketing-based jobs. Companies continue to aggressively compete to recruit recent graduates who are trained in the skills required to conduct a more in-depth customer analysis. This change has created many marketing positions, including jobs like consumer insight analyst, customer analyst, market segment analyst, and consumer insights manager. Because these career paths are all rooted in an understanding of analytics, graduate programs in marketing are becoming more popular. By specializing in marketing, students can leverage the multifaceted career set they develop in our MBA program with a highly focused curriculum designed to help students understand consumer behavior, segmentation, and the application of big data.

Students will need to apply for admission to the combined BS-MAR/MBA pathway in the fall or spring of their junior year for the following fall. Admission will require an overall GPA of at least 3.4, an upper-division GPA of at least 3.2 and an upper-division marketing GPA of at least 3.2 based on at least two upper-division marketing courses at the time of application. Admitted students are then able to register during their senior year for up to nine semester hours of graduate courses that count towards both the BS-MAR and MBA degrees. Students admitted to the combined BS-MAR/MBA pathway will still be required to apply for the MBA program through the regular process in their senior year.

Combined pathway students must maintain an average of 3.00 GPA or higher in graduate coursework.

This program also creates a unique opportunity for students wishing to go directly to work and then enter our part-time or online MBA program. Students entering this program within four years of undergraduate graduation will still be able to use these credits as long as they are able to graduate within seven years of the first graduate course. For more information, please visit https://business.fsu.edu/combined-pathways.

Doctoral Degree

The College of Business offers the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Business Administration. The Department of Marketing offers a concentration in marketing. The marketing doctoral program provides a solid foundation in the use of analytical and research tools applicable to marketing problems and a thorough understanding of modern marketing theory and applications.

The marketing faculty identifies and accepts doctoral students who are interested in and have the potential to pursue academic careers at leading universities and institutions throughout the world. It is the objective of the marketing faculty to provide students with the training and experience that will permit them to pursue these academic careers. The curriculum is designed to accomplish this objective. However, attainment of the objective requires that each student admitted to the doctoral program make a commitment to: 1) achieve a broad awareness of the various issues that constitute the field of marketing and an integrative understanding of their relationships, 2) develop abilities to design and conduct empirical research that is publishable in the leading journals of the student's primary interest area, and 3) maintain a tradition of scholarship and a professional commitment to excellence in teaching and instruction.

The prospective marketing doctoral student must meet college-wide admission standards and be recommended by the marketing faculty. Students plan their program in consultation with the marketing doctoral advisor and an advisory committee. The student must complete the courses in the marketing primary area, a support area, and the analytical and research tools area. The support area can be chosen from another area of business or from a non-business discipline such as economics, mathematics, communication, or statistics. Extensive student-faculty interaction is stressed throughout the program and culminates in the completion and defense of a dissertation under the guidance of the marketing faculty.

For additional information related to graduate Marketing programs, contact the Graduate Office, College of Business, P.O. Box 3061110, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, 32306-1110, or via e-mail at gradprograms@business.fsu.edu. For current information, please visit https://business.fsu.edu/phd.

Definition of Prefixes

GEB—General Business

MAR—Marketing

Graduate Courses

Master's Courses

Note: The 5000 level courses are reserved exclusively for graduate students. No courses carrying both undergraduate and graduate credit are offered, except for students participating in the BS/MS Combined Program. Courses which may be repeated for credit are designated by "r" immediately following the course number.

GEB 5907r. Special Studies in Business (1–3). May be repeated to a maximum of three semester hours.

MAR 5028. Fundamentals of Marketing (3). This course introduces the student to the basics of marketing as a business discipline. It covers a wide variety of topics relevant to the task of managing resources to achieve marketing goals. Successful completion requires learning the vocabulary and concepts which characterize the marketing field and applying them to the development of a marketing strategy. Cannot be applied for credit for any graduate business degree.

MAR 5107. Business Ethics and Social Responsibility (3). This course focuses on the ethical responsibilities of companies toward all stakeholders in the marketing environment, including owners, employees, customers, and society. Includes a study of ethical decision making and how it overlaps with strategic and tactical decisions in both general and marketing.

MAR 5125. Marketing Strategy in the Global Environment (3). This course examines the business-level marketing strategy in the context of global markets and uses the marketing-planning process as a framework for understanding how global environments, markets, and institutions affect the strategic marketing operations of the global business enterprise.

MAR 5336. Strategic Corporate Communication (3). This course takes an integrated marketing communication approach to the structure and function of corporate communication and its role in managing a corporation's overall reputation. Specifically, this course examines strategic communication planning and how the corporation communicates with its various publics, including consumers, employees, investors, the media, government, and society at large. The course also addresses crisis avoidance and crisis communication planning.

MAR 5408. Sales Leadership (3). This course focuses on practical and theoretical issues associated with an array of sales leadership activities, including hiring salespeople, designing and implementing training programs, in-field coaching and development, motivating and compensating salespeople, and team building.

MAR 5409. Business-to-Business Sales and Marketing (3). This course focuses on building and managing relationships with business customers. It will cover business-to-business management issues, with an emphasis on topics at the mid-to-upper management level. Specific strategic marketing issues include problems and opportunities that leverage an understanding of the entire supply chain. Sales will deal primarily with complex, large/key account management and customer relations. Sales management issues will concentrate on managing a sales force focused on complex accounts.

MAR 5416. Strategic Sales Force Management (3). This course focuses on quantitative methods for data analysis and strategic decision making related to sales territory design, sales force organization, compensation plans, forecasting, and key account resource allocations.

MAR 5505. Consumer Behavior (3). Seminar focusing on theories of behavior and their relationship to marketing. Comprehensive analysis and interpretation of consumer behavior models. Also offered by the Department of Communication.

MAR 5625. Marketing Research and Analytics (3). This course focuses on the tools, techniques, and procedures involved in the marketing research process, as well as the critical thinking skills necessary to interpret marketing research findings. In addition, the course covers major analytical techniques that are used in a variety of research settings in both marketing and general business.

MAR 5668. Big Data for Marketing Decision Making (3). This course serves as an introduction to the use of data in making marketing decisions, application of analytics, and the processes required for implementation. In this course, students develop skills that are marketable, helps them understand and interpret marketing research reports, and analyze real data from real cases to apply insights to strategic marketing decision-making.

MAR 5675. Marketing Analytics (3). This course surveys the Marketing Analytics field, reducing the startup cost to using a wide variety of techniques needed by the practicing marketing scientist, and shows how marketing analytic techniques feed into the strategic marketing process and business decision-making in general.

MAR 5816. Marketing Strategy (3). Strategy applied to planning, analysis, and control; emphasis on individual situation analysis involving consumer needs, market position, competition, and public policy environment.

MAR 5818. Corporate Affairs Management (3). This course focuses on corporate affairs activities and the strategic use of these activities to market the organization, its issues, and its ideals to potential stakeholders (consumers, general public, shareholders, media, government, etc). Includes class presentations by corporate executives and extensive class discussion.

MAR 5839. Product Innovation Management (3). This course is a structured way of thinking about product and process development. Students receive an up-to-date toolbox for developing and managing new products and processes. The course focuses on hands-on individual assignments, creating aura to stimulate consumer awareness, and a group project to simulate the development process of a new and original products or services. Students work with an existing company to consult them on ways to be more innovative in their product development to meet consumer needs or develop process that create efficiencies, thus lowering costs and increasing profits.

MAR 5849. Service Marketing Management (3). This course exposes students to a new way of thinking about marketing. No longer are manufacturing processes, defects per one-thousand, or logistics paramount. Services are different. The course discusses how they are different, why they are different, and what strategies result from these distinctions. The course covers why people are essential to service success, why expectations are important to service consumers, how the physical environment influences service delivery, and how services firms should recover from failure. Students also learn how quality is evaluated in service firms, why value is an essential deliverable, and what role loyalty has on the bottom line.

MAR 5861. Customer Relationship Management (3). This course emphasizes customers as arguably the single most important stakeholder of any modern corporation and focuses on strategies aimed at developing and maintaining enduring customer relationships. Management of customer relationships in concert with other key stakeholder relationships is also explored.

MAR 5907r. Directed Individual Study (1–3). (S/U grade only). Prerequisite: Permission from the associate dean for academic programs. May be repeated to a maximum of nine semester hours.

MAR 5908r. Special Studies in Management (1–3). Prerequisite: Permission from the associate dean for academic studies. May be taken up to three times, or to a maximum of nine credit hours, whichever is met first; may be repeated within the same term.

MAR 5935r. Special Topics in Marketing (1–3). This course is an in-depth study of current topics in marketing. May be repeated to a maximum nine (9) credit hours; repeatable within the same term.

MAR 5957r. Global Business Seminar (1–3). This course consists of on-campus class meetings and an international trip to an overseas destination. On campus meetings help students understand the related international business theories as well as the inhibiting and opportunity-offering roles of local cultures in international business. The international trip is to gain access to the best business practices of world-class multinational firms in the destination city. May be repeated to a maximum of six semester hours.

Doctoral Courses

Note: The doctoral curriculum includes courses selected from the following in addition to those offered at the 5000 level. In exceptional cases master's candidates may elect 6000 level courses with permission of the instructor and the associate dean for academic programs.

GEB 6904r. Readings for Examination (1–12). (S/U grade only). Prerequisite: All coursework required for the PhD. Designed for PhD students who have completed all of their required coursework and are preparing to sit for their preliminary examinations in the current semester. May be repeated to a maximum of twenty-four semester hours.

MAR 6506. Seminar in Consumer Behavior Methods (3). Prerequisite: Consent of Marketing doctoral program director. This course is an advanced doctoral seminar focused on learning procedures for designing and conducting experimental research.

MAR 6575. Seminar in Marketing: Selected Topics in Consumer Behavior (3). Prerequisite: Instructor permission. In-depth analysis of current selected topics in consumer information processing, attitudes, decision making, and social and cultural influences on consumer behavior.

MAR 6665. Seminar in Marketing Models (3). Prerequisites: Doctoral standing and instructor permission. This course examines the applicability of modeling approaches within marketing contexts. Reviews of the modeling based literature forms the cornerstone of the class, with extensive discussion and analysis. doctoral standing and instructor permission are required for admission.

MAR 6817. Seminar in Marketing Management (3). Prerequisite: Instructor permission. Exploration of the conceptual foundations and research traditions of marketing research. Emphasis is placed upon reviewing the totality of research contexts and subject matters examined within the marketing discipline. The class format revolves around the critical review of appropriate journal articles. doctoral standing and instructor permission are required for admission.

MAR 6828. Seminar in Marketing: Elements and Integration of Marketing Strategy (3). Analysis of constraints and options when managing the major elements of marketing strategy, as well as optimizing opportunities, goals, and efficiency.

MAR 6918r. Supervised Research (1–3). (S/U grade only). Prerequisite: Permission from the associate dean for academic programs. May be taken up to three times or up to five credit hours, whichever is met first; may be repeated within the same term.

MAR 6919r. Supervised Teaching (1–3). (S/U grade only). Prerequisite: Permission from the associate dean for academic programs. May be repeated to a maximum of five credit hours; may be repeated within the same term.

MAR 6979. Seminar in Marketing: Research Methodology (3). Prerequisite: Instructor permission. Course focuses on the strategies, theories, and concepts of the supply chain activities in both the business and the international markets.

MAR 6980r. Dissertation (1–12). (S/U grade only). Prerequisite: Admission to doctoral candidacy. For this course, a minimum of twenty-four semester hours of credit is required.

MAR 8964r. Doctoral Preliminary Examination (0). (P/F grade only.)

MAR 8985r. Dissertation Defense Examination (0). (P/F grade only.)