The Society for Marketing Advances is proud to sponsor the Annual SMA Doctoral Dissertation Proposal Award to recognize the best of emerging scholarship in marketing and related fields such as logistics/supply chain management. We are pleased to recognize the winners and finalists of this competition and invite all eligible doctoral candidates to submit their work.

Submission Criteria and Procedures  

Eligible entrants are those doctoral candidates who have successfully defended their dissertation proposal, but have not completed the final defense of the dissertation prior to the competition submission deadline. A letter from the primary dissertation advisor must be submitted with the proposal, stating that the candidate meets this eligibility criterion.

The dissertation proposal must focus on some aspect of marketing or related fields such as logistics/supply chain management. In general, any topic acceptable for dissertation research in these fields is appropriate. 

Each entry should be in the form of a dissertation proposal that includes the nature of the problem to be researched, relevant theory, hypotheses to be tested, method, analysis, and indicative references.

Documents must be formatted in MS Word, double-spaced, using Times New Roman 11-point font with 1 inch margins all around. Proposals are limited to 15 pages, including all figures, tables, and references and should begin with an abstract of 150 words or less. Authors must use the style of the Journal of Marketing. 

Authors should avoid identifying themselves, their advisor(s), or their university in the text.  Please include the following information on a separate cover page: title, author’s name, institutional affiliation, postal mail address, e-mail address, telephone and fax numbers, and name of primary dissertation advisor.

Proposals are evaluated through a blind review format and reviewer comments will be provided to the author. All electronic files sent out for review will include this message: "To safeguard the intellectual property rights of authors, the Society for Marketing Advances requests that you do not share or otherwise make use of the manuscript, proposal or reviews."

No hard copy submissions will be accepted. You MUST be present at the Society for Marketing Advances Annual Conference to receive your award.