Marketing

Marketing can be seen simplified as ensuring that customers’ needs are met whilst maximizing firm profits. Marketing operates in a complex and dynamic marketplace environment. Those environmental forces influence strategic and operational decision-making processes by marketers.

Driven by the emergence of large datasets, the increasing computational power and the availability of new methods, the quantitative marketing paradigm has prevailed within the last decade.

Quantitative marketing research develops tools and strategies to support marketing managers in their decisions. Business and “Big Data” analytics have produced one of the most important advances in business and economics over the past decade leading to fundamental changes in how organizations and consumers operate. Within this area, we focus on social networks, social media, customer relationship management, online marketing (such as online brand communities) and social dynamics.

Exemplary project: The Impact of Customer Community Participation on Customer Behaviors (R. Algesheimer)

Many firms increasingly offer community venues to their customers, such as blogs, fora, social media pages or even clubs in real life in order to facilitate social interactions amongst them. Data employed from our year-long field experiment on an auction platform reveal that a simple email invitation significantly increased customer participation in the firm’s community. Results also showed that community participation had mixed effects on customers’ likelihoods of participating in buying and selling behaviors. Community participation did not translate into increased behaviors overall as would be commonly expected. While there is no impact of participation on the number of bids placed or the revenue earned, there is a negative impact of participation on the number of listings and the amount spent. Together, these results suggest that the community participants become more selective and efficient sellers and also become more conservative in their spending on the items they bid for.

Selected research projects

• University Research Priority Program "Social Networks" (R. Algesheimer)
• Modelling of Online Networks (D. Hu, R. Algesheimer)
• Social Media (R. Algesheimer)
• Opinion Dynamics (R. Algesheimer)
• Social Customer Relationship Management (M. Meierer, R. Algesheimer)
• Dienstleistungsmanagement (H. P. Wehrli)
• Beziehungsmarketing (H. P. Wehrli)
• Entwicklungen im Einzelhandel (H. P. Wehrli)
• Entrepreneurship and Innovation (U. Kaiser)
• Computational Economics (K. Schmedders)
• Design of E-Commerce Platforms (D. Hu, S. Seuken)
• Pricing in Crowdsourcing Markets (A. Bernstein, S. Seuken)

Marketing draws on theories, methods and insights from various scientific disciplines – such as economics, computer science, psychology, sociology, computational physics or bio statistics – and applies them to recent marketing problems. It therefore addresses students who are interested in a truly interdisciplinary and applied research approach.

Marketing plays a key role in almost every industry. Marketing managers’ responsibilities include monitoring and analyzing market trends, monitoring competition, identifying customers’ needs and target markets, developing strategies to communicate with them, creating new products and services, and brand development. For students who focus on this area, there is a wide range of excellent employment opportunities with private firms, public organizations and NGOs.

The goal of our courses is to provide students a sound introduction into recent developments, theories and methods in marketing research with a focus on quantitative methods. The following list provides examples of courses particularly related to Marketing.

List of courses

More detailed information on each module can be found by copying the 8-digit code into the search field of the University’s course catalogue.

Course catalogue

Bachelor's level

Master's level

The following Faculty members research and/or teach in Marketing.

Department of Business Administration (IBW)

Prof. Dr. René Algesheimer (main contact for topic)
Prof. Dr. Andrea Giuffredi-Kähr
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Kaiser
Prof. Dr. Martin Natter
Prof. Dr. Anne Scherer
Prof. Dr. Claudio Tessone

Department of Economics (IVW)

Prof. Dr. Björn Bartling
Prof. Dr. Ernst Fehr
Prof. Dr. Roberto Weber
Prof. Dr. Rainer Winkelmann

Department of Informatics (IFI)

Prof. Dr. Sven Seuken