The following personal statement is written by an applicant who got accepted to top doctoral programs in Marketing. Variations of this personal statement got accepted at NYU, Cornell, and ASU. Read this marketing personal statement to get inspiration and understand what a top essay should look like.

You might also be interested in reading this Sample Ph.D. Personal Statement that got admitted to MIT.

Sample Personal Statement in Marketing

‘Rationale’ stems from our understanding of the environment in which we reside. Amongst other quirks, I was most curious about how and why things were as they were: Why is the sky blue? Why do we grow old?

This curiosity kept increasing, and it was as if I was trying to find a reason for everything, an explanation, a mathematical formula for everything around me. I saw that notions about reality seem strongly influenced by contrasting paradigms and biases already set in motion by society leaders and people of influential vocations. I was fascinated by this unique influence and thus drawn to the study of human behavior that influenced their ability to make rational (or sometimes irrational) decisions.

Marketing and Sales thus became my obsession. I had my first sale at 13. It was a 1994 Nissan sunny – a big, massive but fuel-efficient car.

Silently observing client reactions, their responses to counter offers, and facial expressions, I learned how to make and close great deals. The more closely I watched, the more obvious things became; patterns emerged – confidence in the seller or the buyer greatly influenced the outcome of the entire process, honesty cemented strong relations with the client, etc.

My bachelor served as a guiding post and introduced several opportunities which anchored my interest in consumer behavior, leading me to a major in marketing. From organizing events for the Rotary society to acquiring sponsorships, the experience intensely focused on liaison skills and project management. Funds were arranged beforehand, but the efficiency of the marketing efforts couldn’t be measured.

Whether the attendees of such events had a great time? Were the goals of the event successfully met? Such questions kept me on edge while serving as the Director of Marketing in these events.

Nearing graduation, my professors urged me to participate in person at a research conference being held in the U.S. My pilot study based on the comparison of Instagram and Facebook was well received at the conference. It was here where I got to channel my curiosity revolving around consumer behavior, which was made possible through research.

This conference helped me in penning down a second paper. It encouraged me to learn more about research regarding the rudimentary concepts involved, such as developing a questionnaire.

However, since I was introduced to research, I have always felt a deficiency in quantitative and qualitative research skills. After graduation, I was able to explore my interests rigorously. Composing scripts, guest posting, and publishing on reputable websites helped me tailor my content according to the audience, understand what they disliked, and how they responded to different content – animated, trendy, etc.

Acquiring partnerships, bidding for projects, and winning them helped secure a grip on the fundamentals of efficiency of marketing efforts. This understanding was complemented by the deployment of advertisements on Facebook and Instagram. The digital environment allowed great freedom in measuring all the hard work involved in rendering such campaigns on social media platforms.

Later on, my thirst for data-driven marketing and research brought me to Rutgers, where I learned how to use Python and R for data processing and visualization. I didn’t know how to use SPSS before; this was a huge milestone.

I was finally able to clean and manage data and ultimately interpret results. After such a divergent endeavor, I focused on my family business alongside side projects such as an initiative on mental health and a home décor business. Such feats helped me in pursuing and understanding the customer at a much personal level.

After working with the customers via a direct channel, I wanted to attend a program that could help me fortify my research skills, which would facilitate the incorporation of all this professional experience and help me make sense of all the interactions I have had with customers. At the undergraduate level, I was always at a loss when teaching the concepts of moderation, mediation, and other quantitative techniques.

Moreover, we weren’t introduced to different qualitative research techniques such as coding of interviews, etc. As a result, I was admitted to the M.S. Marketing program offered at Rutgers. Unfortunately, due to covid-related issues, I was able to join the program four weeks late. But I didn’t let that get to me. I worked hard. I was introduced to statistical techniques such as Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Linear Regression, etc.

We learned about treating outliers and the skewness of the data via SPSS. In the second semester, we were introduced to great techniques that aided researchers in comprehending consumer perception about a brand and their buying habits. Research techniques such as conjoint and multidimensional analysis helped analyze consumer buying patterns and habits in great detail and in a systematic manner. Conjoint analysis fascinated me because it sophisticatedly separates questions and generates simulations which significantly helps in price-sensitivity analysis.

It allows researchers to predict customer behavior depending on different variables, such as different colors of the products, prices, etc. The multidimensional analysis gives a 360 approach to the customer perception when subjected to different variables such as the number of locations in a city, quality of the product, etc. I was excited to finally learn how to analyze customer perceptions and whether an action related to the product yielded a return on the invested efforts.

Coincidently and much to my joy, this semester brought an analytics course on the table, Business Analytics. We learned extensively about the basics, and a project was given to us based on our specialization. I used python in data wrangling; when I had to employ Panda’s library to correct the datasets and add product names to them. Concurrently, I came across great applications which could be used to visualize data for my thesis, such as Violin plots, Geographical plots, scattered line charts, etc.

As a result of my hard work, my project was selected as a sample for the following sessions, and I was told that I had scored the highest among the entire batch of MBA and other M.S. programs. This helped me further my passion for research by aiding me in learning the visualizations required for displaying results and making sense of the data at hand. These visualizations incorporate different statistical techniques, which would be helpful in the future, such as variance present in the data, skewness of data, etc.

Recently, I attended a workshop on Mendeley. As a result, I became a certified Mendeley advisor. Progressing forward, I participated in a workshop based on bibliometric research with the aid of the R package – bibliometrix. Other software involved included PowerBI, VOSviewer, Access, etc.

Currently, I’m working on the research topic for my thesis: Color Combination of packaging and its effect on the consumer buying pattern, with a professor, presently working as an editor at several reputable publishers such as Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, etc. I hope to take both quantitative and qualitative approaches in this research.

I yearn to enhance my research prowess in consumer behavior and digital marketing, including decision models, the efficiency of social media marketing, and various other fields I can explore. I want to work on streamlining the entire marketing process with the essence of understanding what the customer wants. And I believe the Ph.D. in Marketing program offered at NYU can help me acquire the professional skills required for the research I wish to conduct alongside providing a platform for much-needed experimentation in the field.