Challenges and Prospects Facing Doctoral Education in Marketing

Abstract

Doctoral programs are under continuous pressure to justify their mission, their training and their graduates’ success. To better understand the challenges and prospects facing doctoral education in marketing, this paper first reviews the extant literature and then proposes a model of marketing doctoral program performance. This conceptual framework provides a schematic view of many of the important antecedents, program inputs, and external influences that impinge upon the outcome performance of doctoral programs in marketing. Subsequently, the results of a survey of 84 doctoral program directors regarding the challenges faced today by marketing doctoral programs and opinions about anticipated changes likely to occur in doctoral programs are then described. Lastly, implications derived from both our review and summary model as well as the survey of doctoral program directors and our own experiences are discussed.