Anna's path from doctorate to business
Five years ago, Dr Anna Gehring completed her degree in Business Administration at the University of Paderborn. She then decided to do a doctorate at the chair of Prof Dr Andreas Eggert in order to immerse herself further in the field of marketing. As an expert in the field of B2B marketing, she then joined the management consultancy UNITY AG.
As a native of Bielefeld, it was an obvious choice for Anna to study in Paderborn. She therefore decided to enrol on the International Business Studies (IBS) Bachelor's degree programme at Paderborn University in 2012. She combined basic business knowledge with the foreign languages English and French. After completing her bachelor's degree, the current consultant wanted to expand her specialisation in economics even further. ‘I wanted to use the seminar time that was previously spent on language courses for pure economics courses in my Master's degree,’ she says, explaining her change of subject in the Master's programme. Anna quickly focussed on marketing, among other things, and learned specialist and methodological skills. This encouraged her to study for a doctorate after completing her Master's degree.
Becoming an expert in marketing
‘I found the marketing field exciting, so I wanted more - I wanted to become an expert,’ she says, looking back on her early days. No sooner said than done: Anna applied for a vacant position as a research assistant at the former chair of Prof Dr Eggert, whom she already knew from several modules, straight after completing her Master's degree. Anna impressed not only with her achievements, but first and foremost with her personality and her burning motivation for marketing. Anna used the first year of her doctoral studies at UPB in particular to find a topic and orientate herself. She then devoted herself to research, collecting data and attending conferences. After two years, she and her doctoral supervisor moved to the FU Berlin, where she continued her research. Once in Berlin, she also threw herself straight into the writing phase of her doctoral thesis.
Doctorate: more than just professional knowledge
Anna's passion for B2B marketing was already apparent during her studies, so she wrote her doctoral thesis on ‘Customer Success’. She learnt the tools for qualitative research and a basic understanding of B2B marketing during her studies. Her doctorate then focussed on how customers can be made more successful and what specifically constitutes customer success. ‘I read a lot of literature and conducted numerous interviews,’ Anna recalls of this time. The result of years of work? Customer success is more than just achieving goals. But Anna actually gained even more from her four-year doctoral studies than just a professional insight - namely self-motivation, perseverance ‘and the realisation that everything will be fine at some point’. She already laid the foundations for this in her Bachelor's and Master's degree programmes, as an independent way of working was also required here. Anna has now found her place in her career and it doesn't consist of research at university, but of management consultancy at UNITY AG. Specifically, the 30-year-old works in the area of Digital Customer Experience and has quickly recognised the first differences to her time as a student and doctoral candidate: ‘In consulting, many things are faster than during my studies or doctorate and yet it is exciting that I recognise things that I learned before,’ she says, thinking of IT projects and modules in the area of management or reorganisation, among other things.
A doctorate in the private sector?
In her day-to-day work, Anna now goes ‘from theory to application’ on a daily basis, which means that she is drawn to working as a management consultant for large corporations as well as medium-sized and family-run companies. As part of her doctorate, Anna was often involved in smaller consulting projects, which she enjoyed and made consulting the focus of her work. ‘Customers come to me with a problem and I look at who the market is, whether the product is any good, how high the production costs are and much more,’ says the Bielefeld native, describing her work. But does Anna also benefit from her doctorate in practice? ‘During my doctorate, I learnt to turn complex things into simple ones and that helps me enormously in my job. From an objective point of view, I may have got a higher position straight away than I would have with ‘just’ a Master's degree.’ And yet Anna knows that her path in life is not the right one for all students - ‘but for me it was just perfect the way it went.’
Tips for students:
- Do internships and don't stress about getting through your studies as quickly as possible! Practical experience is the be-all and end-all!
- I recommend a doctorate to anyone who has the confidence to take this step, because you don't have to be highly talented to do it!
What is marketing for you in three words?
Customer centricity, customer understanding, customer relationship
You want that too?
We are one of the few faculties in Germany to offer a structured doctoral programme. This enables you to deepen your specialist knowledge to the tune of 30 ECTS credits and thus acquire the tools for your research activities.
