The Marketing curriculum aims to provide students with a solid theoretical and methodological foundation enabling them to conceive, design, and conduct scientific research in marketing management as well as, more broadly, in business management.
From a theoretical perspective, the underlying thesis is that contemporary society and economy are, and will continue to be, influenced by significant drivers of change, including disruptive ones. Examples include demographic shifts (e.g., Italy's aging population), environmental concerns (e.g., awareness of lifestyle impacts on natural ecosystems), technological advances (e.g., the impact of artificial intelligence on professions), cultural dynamics (e.g., sensitivity towards inclusion), and geopolitical developments (e.g., the global value chain). Consequently, existing models of demand-supply relationships are increasingly challenged, prompting traditional management keywords—such as innovation, efficiency, and customer orientation—to assume new strategic relevance and meanings.
Within this scenario, the Italian productive sector—both public and private, profit-oriented and non-profit—faces a growing necessity to assimilate a culture oriented toward competition, embodying the core spirit of marketing.
Thus, relevant research questions within the Marketing curriculum must be deeply anchored in reality, clearly linked to empirically defined contexts, supported by rigorous data derived from reliable sources.
From a methodological standpoint, the starting point is the recognition that marketing research occupies a precise space within the social sciences. Adopting Max Weber’s perspective, this involves developing a science aimed at interpretively understanding meaningful human behavior (e.g., consumer purchasing decisions) oriented towards others (e.g., communication choices to position brands within the consideration set), employing methods capable of yielding causal explanations for behaviors and their consequences.
Hence, the primary focus is on the behaviors of economic actors central to marketing—producers, intermediaries, and consumers—behaviors that must be contextualized historically, meaning precisely defined in terms of time and space, and subsequently interpreted.
Available research methodologies encompass both classical approaches to knowledge acquisition: (i) qualitative methods aimed at exploring and understanding meanings, motivations, and complex dynamics, and (ii) quantitative methods designed to measure, generalize, and identify correlations.
Considering the substantial impact digitalization exerts on research methodologies, the curriculum’s methodological objective includes exploring technology-driven innovations in research approaches, currently also highly regarded within the academic publishing landscape.
The key research areas defining the cultural scope of the curriculum include the following:
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consumption/consumers
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innovation/knowledge
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sustainability/digitization
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marketing communication/brand
It is emphasised that the role of this document is to help the Commission understand the candidate's general aptitude for research and it is not expected to be perfect and fully defined.
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