* To provide a deep understanding and appreciation of the 
  academic literature over the past 30 years concerning  
  business-to-business (or industrial) marketing, channels of  
  distribution, and sales management.


* To provide PhD students the opportunity to read, analyze, 
  and critique the academic literature in the B2B topical areas 
  and to identify their own research program of interest in the 
  B2B research area.

* To ensure that each PhD student develops and presents a 
  personal review and critique, along with a conceptual model 
  for conducting a theory-driven research project, in two  
  topical areas in the B2B marketing research arena.

* To ensure that the PhD gains an appreciation of the unique 
  research paradigms and methods employed, or potentially 
  employable, in conducting empirical investigations and is  
  able to apply them to a suitable B2B marketing research  
  project.

* To require each PhD student to develop and present an 
  in-depth research paper for potential submission to a  
  refereed journal that publishes B2B conceptual models and  
  empirical investigations.

* To provide each PhD student with constructive criticism of 
  their research topic interests, their, specific research 
  paper, their research plans and agenda, and the skill 
  requirements in their research areas of interest.

* Channels and Distribution Strategy in the Supply Chain
* Diagnosing the Customer’s Value Chain
* Buyer-Seller Relationships (dyadic, multi-party etc.)
* Organizational Buyer Behavior and models
* Vendor Consideration Sets and Choice Models
* Purchasing Research from a Marketing Perspective 
  (e.g., taxonomies of organizational purchasing strategic 
   types) 
* Personal Selling Approaches and Sales Performance) 
* Job Satisfaction and Job Commitment in Sales Roles 
* Sales Process Research (e.g., adaptive selling, sales script  
  research and team selling)
* Sales Management and Control Research (e.g., compensation  
  systems, human resource management, span of control)
* Applications of Research Methods and Measurement Issues  
  specific to B2B marketing research (e.g., quantitative and 
  qualitative methods for testing theories of B2B buying 
  behavior and marketing practices)