Department of Marketing

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Preparing 21st Century Marketing Leaders

Teaching That is Practical, Applied, and Rigorous

  • Extensive expertise and experience in the key areas of advertising, e-marketing, marketing research, and sales.
  • A hands-on, applied philosophy of education highlighted by real clients, real-word case studies, and comprehensive projects reflecting the complexity and challenge that is today's marketing environment. Recent real-world clients include:  the Akron Zoo, Downtown Akron Partnership, E.J. Thomas Hall, and National Inventors Hall of Fame.
  • A faculty that thrives on helping students to understand and utilize both conceptual principles and fundamental skills to solve marketing problems and be excellent practitioners.

Institutes and Facilities That are Cutting Edge and Never Dull

Hubs of activity on a daily basis, and endowed by successful alumni, our department's three core institutes provide leading edge training, facilities, and research to both students and practitioners.

  • The Ronald R. and Diane C. Fisher Institute for Professional Selling is one of the nation's leaders in sales-focused education. It provides ultra-realistic personal selling simulations in a state-of-the-art environment, prepares students to participate and succeed in the National Collegiate Sales Competition, and produces academic research that expands knowledge of the sales profession.
  • Gary L. and Karen S. Taylor Institute for Direct Marketing, students and practitioners have access to high-tech classroom and meeting facilities, focus group rooms, an infomercial studio, Creative Marketing laboratory, Web usability center, and a constant influx of industry speakers and events.
  • Our latest addition, The Benjamin and Nancy Suarez Applied Marketing Research Laboratories, features bleeding-edge neuromarketing equipment designed to forward the field in understanding consumer behavior at the physiological level, and industry databases providing up-to-date competitive marketing intelligence.

Relationships with Practitioners that are Invaluable

  • Beginning with our 10-member strong Professional Advisory Board, comprised of local and national leaders of the business community, we believe in and live the idea that marketing education cannot be divorced from practice. Our faculty utilize their relationships with the industry to keep current with changing practices and reflect them back into the classroom, by bringing in successful and inspiring guest lecturers, and providing access to internship and job opportunities for our students.

Message from the Chair

What an exciting time to be in Marketing!

As we race headlong into the second decade of the 21st Century, the commerce of the world and the world of commerce are changing by the minute. 

The Marketing Department at The University of Akron strives to stay in the forefront of marketing education, marketing practice and marketing research.  Praeger Publishing asked the department to edit a four-volume set of books summarizing new concepts:  "Marketing in the 21st Century" was published in 2007.

Our department was one of the first to recognize the importance of selling as a profession and a sub-discipline in academic circles.  The Fisher Institute for Professional Selling was founded in 1991 to support research and pedagogical efforts in selling.  A physical sales laboratory was created to augment student learning through video recording of sales interactions.  The lab has been recently upgraded to all-digital equipment.

Mirroring the successful development of the sales program, the Taylor Institute for Direct Marketing was established recently and is still spreading its wings throughout the university and the community.  As the technologies of marketing research, supply chains and marketing communications have evolved, so has the need to keep our students up to date.  We can create markets through research, communicate to the customer and arrange direct delivery and feedback from that customer.

How do customers decide what to buy, how to use it, when to upgrade?  The Suarez Marketing Research Laboratory can help to understand how consumers seek information, what they see when it's there and how they think about the information.  State-of -the-art eye tracking equipment is just part of what is available.

The technology is waiting.  The Marketing Department welcomes undergraduate and graduate Doug Hausknechtstudents to come learn the theories, skills and techniques necessary to apply these technologies in the new economy.

Doug Hausknecht
Interim Chair, Department of Marketing

Contact Us

259 South Broadway Street
Akron, OH, 44325-4804

Phone: 330-972-7650

Fax: 330-972-5798

Email: mktg.cba@uakron.edu

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The University of Akron

302 Buchtel Common. Akron, OH 44325
Phone: 330-972-7111
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