Consumer or Marketing Psychology Graduate Programs? Advice Needed!!

[Carolyn_D]

As my senior year, GREs, grad applications and the real world quickly approaches I've been immensely struggling with the decision of "what's next?" The beginning of my junior year I took a class called the 'Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making' (I'm a psychology major) and I absolutely fell in love with the topic. I recall myself constantly spitting out "did you know's..." to my family and friends about things I was learning in that class. It was after this that I really came to terms with the fact that my long-time goal of going to graduate school for clinical psychology, may not actually be the avenue that I would be happiest perusing.

I've been really interested in human behavior, consumer/consulting psychology, as well as, marketing psychology and overall judgment and decision making; however, as a senior, I have never taken a single business or econ class since I found this passion so late in the game. With that said, I was wondering if anyone has any advice or words of wisdom on graduate school in psychology or these particular topics in general (i.e. consumer and marketing psychology) and avenues I might be interested in perusing?

For example, I've done hours and hours of research and read dozens of graduate school books and have come across very few programs, whether it be Master's or PhD's in psychology, that pertain specifically to my interests relating consumer science and marketing to human behavior psychology. I've only found tons of PhDs in marketing and business etc - however, psychology is still one of my underlying passions and I would love to be able to incorporate both areas into a Master's or PhD program within the overall field of psychology.

Is anyone familiar with any specific programs that might be tailored to these interests? Or does anyone have any career paths or ideas that might be able to incorporate these? I really appreciate any and all advice; I've never felt more lost! Please reply via a comment here or e-mail me at cd305507@ohio.edu. Thank you so much!

[jblsmith]

Take Calc I-III, Linear Algebra, Advanced Econometrics, and Real Analysis this summer/fall and apply to Econ programs, that way you can really study how people act in the market. Psychology, Sociology, and Econ all study the same thing, human behavior. The only difference is Econ actually uses math.

Edited July 21, 2011 by jblsmith

[Carolyn_D]

Thank you, will do! Do you happen to know of any specific universities or programs that are via the psychology department but pertain to marketing and such? Thanks again!

[lewin]

There are several business schools that have strong connections with social psychology: Kellogg/Northwestern, Fuqua/Duke, and Booth/Chicago are three of them (and very competitive). By "connections" I mean many of their faculty are social psychologists by training. Those would be great places to study the intersection of marketing and psychology.

[Behavioral]

Seems like you made your way from reddit!

I know you hold some reservations about marketing/business in general, but you have to realize that they share a surprising amount of overlap with psychology research. To be blunt, marketing is essentially separated into two main disciplines: quantitative marketing (economic modeling) and behavioral marketing (consumer psychology, JDM, etc.). Many marketing professors still publish very regularly in top psychology journals (JPSP, Psych Bulletin, etc.) and arguably two of the most influential marketing professors of our time were both classically trained in psychology before going on to marketing (Dan Ariely and John Lynch). Also, many successful applicants to behavioral marketing Ph.D. programs only hold a psychology degree and many don't have any econ/business coursework (I had 0 marketing/business courses under my belt, though I was a joint math/econ major). Your not being experienced in either shouldn't pose much of a problem for business Ph.D. admission if your numbers and research experience are up to par.

Aside from that, marketing programs have much more lucrative career prospects (2011 placement/starting salary report: http://docsig.org/WWW2011Final.pdf); industry consulting opportunities are much easier to obtain with a business doctorate; there's no post-doc before professorship; median time to completion for a Ph.D. is only 5 years; business-Ph.D. attrition rate is something like 20%; graduate financial package is quite generous ($32k/year fellowship at Kellogg, and higher at places like Stanford GSB); and there's the ability to be faculty in either or both marketing and psychology departments.

I don't mean to sound like some advertisement, but you should at least consider marketing programs.

Take Calc I-III, Linear Algebra, Advanced Econometrics, and Real Analysis this summer/fall and apply to Econ programs, that way you can really study how people act in the market. Psychology, Sociology, and Econ all study the same thing, human behavior. The only difference is Econ actually uses math.

As someone who was a double major in psychology and joint math/econ (and even got into a couple of econ Ph.D. programs this year), I couldn't disagree more. There are a handful of professors finally including bounded rationality/incomplete information to the microecon/game theory literature, but it still seems that the overwhelming majority of the discipline is still contentious of any psychology/JDM encroachment. I jumped ship to marketing because I still take a good amount of coursework with the econ students at NU and can direct my research which is more inclined to our psychology/marketing departments. Economics is great training for someone looking to model decision making dynamics, but the discipline lacks qualitative depth for my liking right now.

There are several business schools that have strong connections with social psychology: Kellogg/Northwestern, Fuqua/Duke, and Booth/Chicago are three of them (and very competitive). By "connections" I mean many of their faculty are social psychologists by training. Those would be great places to study the intersection of marketing and psychology.

Booth actually seems to have mainly quantitative marketing faculty that due heavily focus on game theory/formal modeling. You're definitely spot on about Kellogg and Fuqua--both have a good number of faculty that have dual-positions in the marketing and psychology departments.

[Carolyn_D]

Wow this has been great advice, thanks so much! Very informative. My only hesitation going into a Marketing program would be due to my extensive background (via internships, volunteering, and research) in clinical psychology and I worry that if I wanted to some day go back to a more clinical area, a M.A./M.S. or PhD/PsyD in social, applied, or behavioral psychology might be the safest bet to be able to cover both bases. What are your thoughts?

And although I've been preparing for graduate school since my freshman year in college, I basically have nightmares about not getting into any programs! I have tons and tons of books that all emphasize the fact that on average 1-5 people out of a couple hundred get into these programs, especially the top programs that most match my interests. It's terribly discouraging and disheartening even for the most motivated and serious students, like myself.

[jblsmith]

I was just kinding about doing your PhD in econ, I just like giving other social sciences a hard time for their relative lack of rigor. In all seriousness though, if you do your PhD in marketing, especially quant marketing, your job prospects are almost boundless and your starting salary will be at least 1.5x mine.

[Behavioral]

Wow this has been great advice, thanks so much! Very informative. My only hesitation going into a Marketing program would be due to my extensive background (via internships, volunteering, and research) in clinical psychology and I worry that if I wanted to some day go back to a more clinical area, a M.A./M.S. or PhD/PsyD in social, applied, or behavioral psychology might be the safest bet to be able to cover both bases. What are your thoughts?

And although I've been preparing for graduate school since my freshman year in college, I basically have nightmares about not getting into any programs! I have tons and tons of books that all emphasize the fact that on average 1-5 people out of a couple hundred get into these programs, especially the top programs that most match my interests. It's terribly discouraging and disheartening even for the most motivated and serious students, like myself.

You can't go into clinical practice anyway unless you get your Ph.D. in actual Clinical Psychology. You're going to have to make the choice between Clinical or Experimental before you can even come close to determining what field you want to apply to. If you go into any Experimental Ph.D. program, you can still do research that encompasses clinical topics--you just won't be able to be a practitioner. At my undergrad, we don't have a single clinical psychologist on faculty, but there were plenty doing research with collaborators in the psychiatry department in the med school. My own advisor was a behavioral psychologist by training (B.F. Skinner was even on his dissertation committee in 1967) and he's done research encroaching social, behavioral neuroscience, and economics in the past 4 decades. Nothing but the limit of his curiosity prevents him from doing work he didn't do a Ph.D. on. Once you're tenured, you begin to get more freedom about what you want to study--this is something you develop on your own, out of the classroom anyway.

Talk to the professors in your department. You end up finding out that it's not so scary. I know for top top marketing program, the acceptance rate is somewhere around 3-5% (with around 2-4 matriculating) and that's a hard number to swallow. HOWEVER, people who've served on admissions committees know that many of the applicants really have no business applying to doctoral programs. Many don't meet administrative requirements of GPA/GRE scores; many have 0 relevant coursework; many have 0 research experience; and many don't have the right reasons to go to grad school to convince adcomms that they're worthy. At UCSD, the professors said that only around 20% of the applications are even worth reading from doing a very quick preliminary look at transcripts, scores, and CVs. If you've been doing research as an undergrad, have good letters of rec, and your numbers meet the requirements of the school you're applying to, your chances of getting in are a lot higher than you think. I had some feelings that I would be shut out of admission this year (you read my story; I only decided to apply 3 days before taking my GMAT and did everything on a whim), but I somehow got into 7/12 programs I applied to--something I never believed I could do. You won't know how competitive you are until you apply (you can get an estimate if you give your honest profile to a professor to look over, too).

I was just kinding about doing your PhD in econ, I just like giving other social sciences a hard time for their relative lack of rigor. In all seriousness though, if you do your PhD in marketing, especially quant marketing, your job prospects are almost boundless and your starting salary will be at least 1.5x mine.

Haha I couldn't tell if you were joking or not in that post. There should be a new troll/sarcasm smiley for the forum. And yeah -- one of the reasons I still insist on using the same quant rigor as econ in my research is because I feel that behavioral psych/marketing research could benefit from using models and more sophisticated means of analysis rather than just acknowledging the presence of an effect. And yeah QM salaries are pretty scary and still aren't on par with finance.

Edited July 23, 2011 by Behavioral

[Carolyn_D]

Well the thing is I can't see myself doing research as a career or working in academia, which is why I am specifically trying to address what level/type of graduate school that I am even interested in. I know that technically this means that I should go for just a Masters or maybe a PsyD since that is more practical/practice oriented. I am currently working on my honors thesis and have been a research assistant in a multiple labs since my freshman year, and also had a summer internship at NIMH, heavily focused on research. So I have experience with research but I just don't have the passion for it as I do for working with people directly or working in applied real world settings. Which is what really prompted me to post this to begin with.

I am especially interested at the moment in human behavior and decision making, which is why I thought consumer or marketing psychology may be an interest to explore further. I have interned in multiple clinical settings and although I really enjoyed it and for the past three years had no doubt that that's what I wanted to do, I'm not sure anymore if that's even where my full interest lies. I KNOW that I don't want to do therapy for just normal everyday people with petty problems; if I were to remotely consider clinical it would definitely be in more of a hospital setting.

Anyway. From all that I just said (sorry it was lengthy) do you think a PhD is not for me because I dont want to work in a strictly experimental setting or academia? I just feel like I have potential for so much more than a Masters, but sometimes I wonder if I even need it, you know?

[Behavioral]

I don't see many employers in industry buying into JDM, to be honest. It's great to have a thorough understanding of it, but until JDM/BDT becomes mainstream, it'll still be considered hogwash.

If you can nab an MBA/MPP from a top 20 and put your knowledge of JDM to use, you can be quite successful in marketing, consulting, technical support, policy, etc.

A Ph.D. is overkill (and probably full of opportunity costs) if you don't want to be an academic. A masters in psychology ... doesn't carry much utility, in my opinion, unless you're using it as a stepping stone to a Ph.D. program.

[natamuka]

hi everyone! Who know something about green marketing! I'm searching for any information

[BeingThere]

Carolyn_D:

Check out Industrial/Organizational Psychology. In my review of I/O programs, I know I've come across faculty at various schools who study judgment and decision-making, but not from the consumer perspective. I/O is a great field that includes a wide range topics. I highly recommend you look into it. Go to SIOP.org and then look under "Graduate Training Programs" for a list of schools and links to the school/program websites.

Further, I/O is a grad degree that you can use in the workplace. You aren't consigned to just academia. But if you did decide later that you wanted to teach, with an I/O degree you could teach in business or psychology.

Just offering another viable option if your interest is in judgment and decision-making. If judgment and decision-making is the only thing you love that overlaps with marketing, then I/O might be better because it encompasses a very wide range of psychology topics.

Edited September 23, 2013 by Bren2014