Project Description

The successful candidate will participate in research projects seeking to understand the characteristics of and consumer preferences for entertainment media. The successful candidate will also teach and/or supervise master theses on topics related to their expertise and interests.

Research work will be carried out on secondary data using quantitative methods. Secondary (and possibly primary) data describing consumers, media content, and media consumption occasions will form the basis for the research. Data will come from multiple sources, and may describe consumers and media at different levels of aggregation. Understanding and integrating these disparate data sets will be an important part of this work. The exact set of quantitiative methods used for the project will depend on the candidate’s skills; data analysis and cleaning, multivariate data analysis (and in particular techniques for dimension reduction), econometrics, and Bayesian estimation are likely to be essential. With other researchers involved in the broader project, the successful candidate will investigate how the analysis and its findings could improve the innovation process of new content development, and how the innovation and decision-making process is informed by the available data.

This postdoctoral research post is a two-year contract and is offered by Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. This will allow the researcher to work across disciplinary boundaries and integrate the fields of data science, consumer preferences and behavior, innovation management, and media studies. This position consists of 80 per cent research and 20 per cent teaching.

The postdoctoral researcher will be located at Erasmus University Rotterdam, but will also work with Talpa staff on data gathering and aggregation at Talpa’s offices in Amsterdam, Hilversum, and Laren., and attend  regular meetings at the University of Amsterdam. Hence travel within the Netherlands will be required. Candidates must be fluent in written and spoken English, and proficient in Dutch at a level sufficient to work with data in Dutch (e.g. television program titles and descriptions), or willing to learn basic Dutch within a period of several months.

Requirements

Candidates should have, or be close to obtaining, a PhD in quantitative marketing, management science or media studies with a strong quantitative focus, or in a related quantitative field such as statistics, econometrics, or computer science. Candidates with degrees in one of these quantitative fields should also have a strong interest in the substantive areas related to this project. Candidates will be evaluated on their potential for excellence in research, and on their potential for teaching.

The appointment at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University is for two years. The gross monthly salary will be, depending on experience, between €2,709 and €4,274 based on 38 hours per week and in accordance with the Collective Labor Agreement for Dutch Universities.

The intended start date is 1 January 2020.

Department of Marketing Management

The department of Marketing Management at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) needs a postdoctoral researcher for a two-year position involving research into consumer preferences for entertainment media and teaching in the department of Marketing Management.

This is one of three postdoctoral research positions for the NWO-funded research project Data inspired creativity: Using big data in cross-media creative innovation processes (NWO Flagships Creative Industry). The project is a close collaboration with the media company Talpa Network, which will provide access to their organization and data about consumers, content characteristics, and media consumption.

The postdoctoral researcher will join an inter-disciplinary consortium comprising two postdoctoral and nine senior researchers from five universities: University of Amsterdam, Erasmus University Rotterdam, University of Groningen, Tilburg University, and VU Amsterdam. The consortium covers expertise in communication science, data science, innovation management, marketing, and media studies.