Doctoral Fellowship in Marketing

The researcher is expected to develop research activities within the framework of a project of the PARTENAMUT-IPM-Digital Marketing Chair (see the project description below), under the supervision of Professors Ingrid Poncin and Simon Hazée. These activities will be carried out within the “Center of Excellence on Consumers and Marketing Strategy (CCMS)” attached to the LouRIM Research Institute of UCLouvain.

As part of this mandate, the researcher pursues research in the area of digital marketing with the ultimate goals of sharing knowledge through scientific publications and obtaining a doctoral thesis. The person also participates in the activities of the PARTENAMUT-IPM-Digital Marketing Chair.

In order to obtain the title of “Doctor of Economics and Management”, the person must follow and pass the doctoral training provided by the Louvain School of Management (see www.uclouvain.be/lsm-doctorat. html).

Research project summary

The connected world in which we live has fundamentally changed our behaviours throughout the customer journey, including the way we search for information, purchase, and interact with organizations. In this digitized omnichannel context, understanding and managing the experience of consumers, employees and other stakeholders has become a major challenge for organizations. This project aims to advance knowledge on this subject and, ultimately, to help organizations have a more sustainable social, environmental and economic impact.

Among the numerous topics related to digital marketing and the management of stakeholder experience, we identify a few that are related to the research currently being carried out within the CCMS and which could be the subject of a doctoral thesis:

Research project summary

• Understanding stakeholder experience in a virtual environment, its value, experience in multi-channel hybrid environments (e.g., mobile, website, social networks, etc.), the concept of social presence, but also the important part of affective reactions and their impact on experience in a digital context.
• Understanding and optimizing interactions between machines/robots/artificial intelligence (AI) and humans for enhanced engagement and trust (e.g., use of chatbots for complaint management). This raises many questions about, among other things: the ability of AI to understand and consider stakeholders’ emotions and needs; the way service tasks should be designed such that hybrid human-AI teams can co-create value; the conditions necessary for the replacement of humans by AI; the role of humans and AI along the journey.
• The development of a conceptual framework for studying consumer behaviour in the digital world, which would serve as a scientific anchor and allow the development and optimization of digital marketing actions as well as novel and relevant performance indicators.