BUS-M 650 Research Methods in Marketing

• 15 weeks
• 3 credits
• Prerequisite(s): None

The general purpose of this course is to assist doctoral students in acquiring a basic understanding of the research process and knowledge of the research tools that they will need to design and execute scientific research on behavioral and organizational issues in business. As such, this course is concerned with the total research process from the generation of research ideas through the publication of the research manuscript. A major impediment to scientific research that will be addressed by this course is the failure on the part of researchers to properly meld together the theoretical and empirical domains in their model structures. Theoretically-oriented researchers have a tendency to emphasize the conceptual aspects of their research, but often at the expense of measurement issues; and methodologically-oriented researchers have a tendency to focus more on statistical techniques than on theory development. Consequently, a fundamental objective of this course will be to provide students with an understanding of the basic principles of latent variable structural equation modeling and how this method helps to bridge the gap between these two traditions by clarifying the different types of relationships that researchers must take into account when constructing theories, and emphasizing the importance of the linkages between the conceptual and the empirical.