Doctoral study in Marketing

When you join us for your doctorate in Marketing, you'll join a high-calibre research community and have the opportunity to publish papers, attend international conferences and develop your network in academia and industry.

We welcome research proposals in topics relating to our key research specialisations:

Consumer behaviour

• Consumers in the digital environment
• Consumers’ responses to marketing communications
• Consumers’ experience of shopping
• Consumers’ experience of possessions and place

Ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR)

• Marketing, practice and service innovation
• Marketing in the service economy and sharing economy
• Information and communication technology (ICT) and changing marketing practice
• Marketing science, market measurement and performance
• The marketing-entrepreneurship interface

Contemporary issues in branding

• Branding in the service economy
• Managing brands, market-based assets and market performance
• The nature of intense brand relationships and brand communities
• The development of brand meaning

Sustainability and societal issues in marketing

• Marketing and sustainability
• Consumer resistance and anti-consumption
• Dissatisfaction and complaining behaviour
• Alternative marketing practices
• Corporate social responsibility, ethics, and frameworks of dominance, justice and hegemony in the contemporary market

Pursue your topic with us and benefit from exceptional standards of support and supervision from internationally recognised researchers.

Professor Roderick John Brodie: Relationship marketing and marketing strategy, managing brands, service management, marketing theory

Dr Denise Conroy: How we identity and our sense of self shapes our consumption choices, how we allocate and spend our resources, and where we choose to focus our attention.

Associate Professor Karen V. Fernandez: Consumer culture theory, particularly consumers’ relationships with possessions, places and technology as well as nostalgic, music and sustainable consumption

Dr Mike Lee: Anti-consumption and consumer resistance, especially brand avoidance, innovation resistance, dissatisfaction and complaining behaviours; understanding and applying anti-consumption to areas of public policy and consumer well-being, with particularly interest in consumer perceptions, attitudes, and behaviour towards waste and waste utilisation

Dr Charlotta Windahl: Design practice and market innovation, including B2B and B2C activities related to innovating the experience, products and services, solutions, systems, business models and strategy in various contexts and sectors

Dr Yuri Seo: Digital consumer culture and behaviour, luxury consumption, cultural branding, multicultural marketplaces and globalisation

• “Seeking Believability in Consumption: An Exploration of Women's Responses to the Concept of Weight Management Foods” (supervised by Denise Conroy)
• “Shifting Personal Brandscapes: Young Sojourners” Consumer Acculturation’ (supervised by Karen Fernandez and  Bodo Lang)
• “The role of self-construal in developing resistant consumer identities” (supervised by Karen Fernandez and Sandra Smith)
• "An Examination of Consumer's Awkward Service Experiences (ASEs)” (supervised by Laszlo Sajtos)
• “Understanding Reciprocity in Chinese Social Media: Examining the Influence of Social Capital and Emotion on Reciprocal Behaviour” (Supervised by Rod Brodie and Rick Starr)

Carry Zimmerman, from Germany, is currently doing her PhD in Marketing under the supervision of Dr Denise Conroy and Dr Yuri Seo. She holds a Master of Science in Business Psychology and worked for the Department of Sustainable Management at the University of Bremen (Germany) before she came to New Zealand. With her PhD focussing on in vitro meat/lab protein, she is working in the areas of sustainability, food and consumer behaviour and wants to contribute to the SDG 12: Responsible Food Production and Consumption.

Dr Angela Cruz, now Senior Lecturer at Monash University (Melbourne), has won multiple prizes for her research. She has developed significant expertise in understanding the role of consumption practices and rituals in helping globally mobile and multicultural consumers settle into their adopted cultures. Her research, which contributes to a growing discourse on the importance of non-Eurocentric perspectives in an era of globalised marketplaces, has been published in world class journals including European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Qualitative Market Research, and International Marketing Review. She has also guest-edited a special issue in the Journal of Consumer Marketing.

Angela completed the following programmes at the University:

• Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Commerce conjoint in Marketing, Psychology and Film, TV and Media Studies
• Bachelor of Commerce (First Class Honours) in Marketing
• Master of Commerce (First Class Honours) in Marketing
• PhD in Marketing

There are several scholarships you may be eligible for when you decide to pursue your doctoral studies in Marketing.

University of Auckland Doctoral Scholarships

Barry Spicer and Owen G Glenn PhD Scholarship

Non-University of Auckland Doctoral Scholarships

Phone the University

•  923 7186 (within Auckland)
• 0800 61 62 63 (outside Auckland)
• +64 9 373 7513 (overseas)