Research Interests

• Retailing
• Marketing Strategy
• Advertising Effectiveness
• Digital Marketing

Curriculum Vitae

Thomas Scholdra is IFH-Endowed Assistant Professor of Marketing and Retailing at the University of Cologne since November 2022. Previously, he has been a post-doctoral researcher at the Chair of Retailing and Customer Management. Before joining the Marketing Area, he received his doctoral degree from the University of Bremen with a summa cum laude in 2019. For his dissertation titled “Business Cycles and Consumer Behavior”, he has received several research awards, including the Wolfgang-Ritter-Prize 2020, the dissertation award by the German Brand Association (third place), the Segnitz-Prize 2020 by the University of Bremen.

In his research, Thomas Scholdra relates to three core marketing domains: Marketing Strategy, Retailing, and Advertising. He focuses on managerially relevant research questions and conducts research projects in close collaboration with leading practice partners from various industries (e.g., FMCG, media, insurance). The theoretical and methodological approaches in his projects are often located at the intersection of marketing and economics, finance, as well as computer science. His research approach is quantitative in nature, regularly applying multi-equation econometric models of different forms on a combination of structured (e.g., consumer transactions, firm performance metrics) and unstructured data sources (e.g., written product reviews, speech transcripts). His work is regularly presented at academic marketing conferences and has been published in outlets such as Journal of Marketing, Journal of Retailing, and Journal of International Marketing. Also, he periodically contributes to the annual practice-oriented paper series “Selected Publications of the IFH Sponsors.”

Besides the practical relevance of his research, Thomas Scholdra also has a strong practical orientation in his teaching activities. Key courses of his current curriculum are “Customer Relationship Management”, “Retailing” and “Retailing Analytics.” The complete Curriculum Vitae you will find here.

Business Expertise

Thomas Scholdra has gained business experience at leading companies in the FMCG industry.