PhD Student Position Behavioral Marketing / Consumer Psychology

Date of Entry: 1 January 2023 or later

Would you enjoy developing psychological theory of behavior within markets? The behavioral marketing group is seeking applicants for a PhD-student position at the Faculty of Business and Economics. You could pursue your PhD-degree in either in business or in psychology, that is, at either faculty. 

Our research investigates the role of feelings and motivation in decision making. The group is directed by Prof. C. Miguel Brendl, https://wwz.unibas.ch/de/brendl/.

Your position

• Four-year contract (one plus three years), ideally starting on 1 January 2023.
• Work on project within one of the research areas of the team
• See your projects through all stages, from planning to publication
• Do your research collaboratively in an English-speaking team
• Doctoral thesis will be supervised by Prof. Brendl
• You need a very good command of English, German is not necessary
• You need to take advanced courses that improve your skills, including statistics and rudimentary programming (e.g., R, JavaScript)

Your profile

• Master's degree in a behavioral science (e.g., business/marketing, psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, experimental economics)
• You consider a research-oriented academic career
• You understand journal articles that involve psychological theory and experimentation (e.g., J. of Consumer Research, Psychological Science)
• You found doing the research for your thesis highly engaging
• Doing high quality work is important to you, even if you have to start over again
• You can motivate yourself to work today for a goal in the far future
• You initiate tasks and push them ahead independently, but ...
• you do so while seeking guidance from your dissertation advisor and from your colleagues
• You coordinate with your colleagues when working together on a project

We offer you

First, we support you in exploring if you want to pursue an academic career, and we prepare you for one. Good career prospects in academia entail succeeding at publishing in the premier academic journals, despite their very low acceptance rates. This requires persistence (see section Your Profile) and skill, which good PhD programs teach you. We have considerable experience at these journals, both, with publishing and with evaluating manuscripts, and seek to pass this on to you. Students who have worked with Prof. Brendl have published their PhD research in these journals and several have been offered positions at globally leading business departments (e.g., Cornell University, Carnegie Mellon University, New York University, or London Business School). Second, the field of behavioral marketing fuses marketing and psychology, and we do cutting-edge research in both fields (see our publications). Third, we offer you substantial time to focus on research. Finally, salary and benefits are internationally competitive and Basel is an attractive place to live (youtube.com/watch?v=0OwNT5GsrAM); for the university: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDU95v8atuc

• Please submit an electronic application to the application link or use the apply button below.
• Fill out a questionnaire located here: https://wwzunibas.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2tX8WumoF4YdnIa
• Include your curriculum vitae, your diplomas, course grades, a statement explaining your relevant experience and your professional interests, and information about any prior research experience (e.g., master's thesis, research assistance) as well as a sample of your research (e.g., a thesis)
• Please ask one faculty member (preferably two) to email a confidential letter of recommendation directly to application-marketing-wwz@unibas.ch
• Please direct any questions to application-marketing-wwz@unibas.ch