The marketing program offers a broad range of venues for study and exploration. In keeping with the traditional interest in operational marketing problems, students may undertake advanced studies in the mathematical modeling of buyer-seller interactions, consumer choice processes, the allocation of marketing resources into components of the marketing mix, and product development. Students may also specialize in the study of the behavioral dimensions of buyer behavior, examining attitude structures, motivations, group influences, and communication processes at the final or industrial levels.

Alternatively, students may focus on the development of strategic direction for the profit or nonprofit organization. This can include the processes of market evolution, competitive behavior, and the maintenance of organizational differential advantages through product and market development, mergers, and research and development. Students may also specialize in marketing system efficiency and fairness; the regulation of the marketing system; the evolution, growth, and modeling of distribution systems; and comparative marketing systems.

In order to cope with these expanding horizons, each marketing program is designed to provide a broad exposure to the advanced literature in each field. Students then select an area for intensive study and develop a program that trains them to comprehend and perform cutting-edge research in that field.

The program includes a series of marketing Ph.D. seminars, the development of expertise in a particular social science discipline, and technical skill appropriate to the analysis of the problems to be studied.