Focus Areas of the professorship

A focus area of the Professorship in Marketing is retail. Retail has undergone profound changes in recent decades. Most retailers accept that online and offline commerce will not prevail over one another in a zero-sum game, and instead integrate communication and sales channels. At the same time, we observe an increasing number of store closures in our city centers, which worries retailers and municipalities and frustrates consumers. A key research area of the Chair is therefore the future of retail. How can we prevent the decline of brick-and-mortar stores? How can connecting online and offline offerings strengthen retailers? Which new retail formats—such as platforms, quick commerce, or social commerce—promise success?

Digitalization has expanded the possibilities of marketing: new sales and advertising channels, detailed information about existing and potential customers, and high-frequency measurement of marketing performance are just a few examples. At the same time, marketing in the digital age has also become more complex. Companies need to understand and be able to use this wide variety of opportunities. The goal of the Chair of Marketing is to make this complexity comprehensible—not only for our students but also for entrepreneurs and fellow researchers.

The Professorship in Marketing explores the opportunities of digital marketing—as a tool to better understand increasingly diverse information, but also as a means to communicate more effectively with consumers, for example via apps or geographically targeted advertising. Digitalization also helps marketers gain deeper insights into their customers: digital behavioral data with tools such as A/B testing and attribution models have replaced the unreliable gut feeling of traditional advertising effectiveness research. On the flip side, however, rising online advertising costs and increasing strategic dependence on specific advertising channels make customer acquisition more difficult. In short: digital marketing offers many opportunities, but also new challenges. The Professorship in Marketing addresses this field of tension.

Yet economic activity, and thus marketing as well, has social consequences. The Professorship in Marketing therefore also addresses topics such as sustainable consumption, the ecological impact of e-commerce, and digital data protection. At the same time, there is also resistance to marketing, for example in the form of ad busting, negative reactions on social media, or strong privacy concerns that companies must manage.

At the Professorship in Marketing, we stand for quality in research, teaching, and knowledge transfer. We pursue a quantitative-empirical research approach. In teaching, we cover the breadth of marketing in both Bachelor’s and Master’s programs. In knowledge transfer, we cooperate with regional and national institutions and companies. Prof. Dr. Erik Maier is also socially engaged through participation in advisory boards and juries.