ISMS Doctoral Dissertation Proposal Competition Application Process

Goals

ISMS dissertation grants are meant to cover the following costs of dissertation research

• Collect data, obtain software, run experiments, pay research assistants
• Release from teaching
• Provide summer support
• Provide fifth year support

Award Information

• Each year ISMS will announce and run a dissertation proposal competition
• One to five awards of $5000 will be awarded to the best proposal(s) based on ISMS budget and the number of winners each year

Application Eligibility Criteria

Any student member of ISMS is eligible to participate in this competition, provided that:

• The candidate or his/her advisor has been a dues paying member of ISMS for at least two years (including the current year).
• The candidate is registered at an accredited university to receive the degree of PhD in business or marketing.
• The candidate’s chair certifies that the proposal for the dissertation has been approved by the candidate’s committee, school or university by May 31^st of 2010.
• The candidate’s chair certifies that the dissertation will not be complete by December 31^st of 2010.
• The dissertation has not already won an ISMS dissertation grant in prior years.

Submission Information

The final proposal must not exceed a maximum length of 20 double-spaced pages including tables, exhibits, and references. A one-page, self-contained summary of the proposal needs to be included as the first page of the proposal. The problem statement, relevant theory that addresses the problem, hypothesis to be tested, methodology to be employed and an indicative bibliography need to be clearly stated and substantiated in the proposal. For blind reviewing purposes, any identifying information from the proposal itself may be omitted. A separate document containing the entrant’s name and contact information, the title of the dissertation, contact information for the entrant’s thesis advisor/chair and names of all the committee members need to be provided. Please use the style sheet similar to the one required by Marketing Science. Only submission materials e-mailed to isms.dissertation@gmail.com no later than May 31, 2010 will be considered.

Evaluation Criteria

The committee evaluating the proposals will use the following criteria to judge the proposals:

1. Problem Importance
2. Likely theoretical contribution, and/or advance in marketing science
3. Likely contribution to marketing practice
4. Appropriateness of methodology/research design

The winner(s) are expected to be announced by August 31, 2010.