Topic of Your Choice
Marketing and Customer Analytics
Short description | Do you have an interesting idea that connects to any of the following areas? Customer online/offline purchases/ sustainability, customer review analysis, text mining, customer base analysis, direct marketing, marketing research, data science Let’s get in touch! |
Degree | BSc, Msc |
Skills you will develop: |
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Required skills |
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Earliest Start Date | Anytime |
Latest Finish date | 6 months after start for Bachelor theses, 12 months for Master theses |
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Topic of Your Choice
Marketing and Customer Analytics
Short description | Do you have an interesting idea that connects to any of the following areas? Customer online/offline purchases/ sustainability, customer review analysis, text mining, customer base analysis, direct marketing, marketing research, data science Let’s get in touch! |
Degree | BSc, Msc |
Skills you will develop: |
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Required skills |
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Earliest Start Date | Anytime |
Latest Finish date | 6 months after start for Bachelor theses, 12 months for Master theses |
Contact Person | |
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Business Applications of Generative AI
Marketing and Customer Analytics
Short description | Business applications of generative AI have the potential to shape future company processes as well as firm and customer interactions. Ho to set up generative AI workflows in businesses and evaluating how these workflows perform is crucial for companies. Examples are text generators tailored to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or online advertising (SEA) content generation (both in textual and visual terms). What we do not know is domain specific performance (e.g., online rankings, clicks), possible trade-offs (e.g., clicks versus bidding cost in SEA), as well as consumer reactions (e,g., perception of generated content). |
Degree | BSc or MSc |
Skills you will develop: |
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Required skills |
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Timeline | Earliest start date: Anytime / latest finish date: One year after start |
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Sources | Reisenbichler, Martin, Thomas Reutterer, David Schweidel and Daniel Dan (2022), "Frontiers: Supporting Content Marketing with Natural Language Generation", Marketing Science, 41(3), 441-452. Reisenbichler, Martin, Thomas Reutterer, David Schweidel (2023), Applying Large Language Models to Sponsored Search Advertising.MSI Report 23. Jansen, Heitmann, Reisenbichler, Schweidel (2023), Engaging Customers with Visual Generative AI. SSRN |
CV - Computer Vision Applications in Marketing
Marketing and Customer Analytics
Short description | Computer Vision (CV) is an important new research method in marketing. Research in the past used CV to get an understanding how brands communicate online (classifying images into marketing related categories like brand selfies), or how to design products like cars to boost sales.Using CV, you can explore new frontiers and marketing applications of your choice. |
Degree | BSc or MSc |
Skills you will develop: |
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Required skills |
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Timeline | Earliest start date: Anytime / latest finish date: One year after start |
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Sources | Hartmann, Heitmann, Schamp, Netzer (2022), "The Power of Brand Selfies", Journal of Marketing Research, 58(6), 1159-1177. |
Search Engine Marketing
Marketing and Customer Analytics
Short description | Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a major source for acquiring new customers in the digital world. Critical components are SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as well as SEA (Search Engine Advertising). With the introduction of generative technology, as well as constant Google updates, and novel search engines like TikTok, SEM environment is in a big transition. You can choose among a broad set of areas of interest to uncover important aspects in SEM like Google ranking optimization techniques, or changes in consumer behavior and perception in Google and similar platforms. |
Degree | BSc, Msc |
Skills you will develop: |
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Required skills |
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Earliest Start Date | Anytime |
Latest Finish date | 6 months after start for Bachelor theses, 12 months for Master theses |
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AI-based Content Marketing
Marketing and Customer Analytics
Short description | You want to take part of a revolving research project that aims at Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of website content and Search Engine Advertising (SEA) for specific keywords searches and Google Ad´campaigns? Then apply for a thesis project with us! We have developed a semi-automated approach that employs state-of-the-art Natural Language Generation (NLG) tools such as Open AI’s GPT to support SEO/SEA marketers in producing superior website content and are looking for students that help us in conducting use cases in this exciting field of digital marketing. |
Degree | BSc or MSc |
Skills you will develop: |
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Required skills |
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Timeline | Earliest start date: Anytime / latest finish date: One year after start |
Contact Person | |
Sources | Reisenbichler, Martin, Thomas Reutterer, David Schweidel and Daniel Dan (2022), "Frontiers: Supporting Content Marketing with Natural Language Generation", Marketing Science, 41(3), 441-452. |
Managing Firms by Customer Base Analysis
Marketing and Customer Analytics
Short description | Customer base analysis (CBA) encompasses a set of tools to measure and develop relationships with customers. Traditionally, these methods are parsimonious and require only data on the frequency, timing, and the value of each customer's past purchase histories to make accurate predictions of their future behavior. More advanced tools are built for data-rich environments and many firms nowadays integrate them in their marketing and customer analytical tool box. Over the years, our team members have helped to advance the field of CBA and developed expertise in this fast moving field. We offer you the opportunity to benefit from this expertise and to join us in our ongoing research projects. You can also bring your own transaction data and gain an understanding of the capabilities (and limits) of CBA methods based on your own use cases. |
Degree | BSc or MSc |
Skills you will develop: |
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Required skills | |
Timeline | Earliest start date: Anytime / Latest finish date: One year after start |
Contact Person | thomas.reutterer@wu.ac.at (I have very limited capacities, so I very likely will ask other team members, e.g., malik.stromberg@wu.ac.at, for help in operational day-to-day supervision) |
Sources |
Fundraising Campaigning & Analytics
Marketing and Customer Analytics
Short description | In collaboration with a Vienna-based fundraising analytics startup https://www.augedo.com/ we offer a couple of thesis projects that aim at combining fundraising campaigning with analytics. Augedo implemented the concept of donor lifetime value (DLV) and uses latest AI-supported technologies to semi-automate donor targeting and fundraising campaign management. Current topics encompass (1) the use of sentiment analysis to optimize the content of fundraising campaigns, (2) leveraging historical donation data to identify potential major long-term donors, and (3) test and learn reactivation strategies for lapsed donors. |
Degree | BSc or MSc |
Skills you will develop: |
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Required skills | |
Timeline | Earliest start date: Anytime / Latest finish date: One year after start |
Contact Person | thomas.reutterer@wu.ac.at (I have very limited capacities, so I very likely will ask other team members, e.g., malik.stromberg@wu.ac.at, for help in operational day-to-day supervision) |
Sources |
Online Text Analysis (Over a Timeline)
Marketing and Customer Analytics
Short description | What people discuss in reviews, what their sentiment is regarding some specifics of a product, a service or a person are insights that can be achieved through Natural Language Processing. What are the insights that a person can get without reading thousands of pages of text? |
Degree | Bsc or MSc |
Skills you will develop: |
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Required skills |
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Earliest Start Date | Anytime |
Latest Finish date | 6 months (Bachelor) or 12 months (Master) after start |
Contact Person |
Text Comparison and Classification
(Over a Timeline)
Marketing and Customer Analytics
Short description | Text classification is an important topic, it is one of the major NLP tasks in Artificial Intelligence. Can an email be classified as legit? Scam? Important? Comparison is an essential tool in Marketing: who does best? Why? |
Degree | Bsc or MSc |
Skills you will develop: |
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Required skills |
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Earliest Start Date | Anytime |
Latest Finish date | 6 months (Bachelor) or 12 months (Master) after start |
Contact Person |
Chatbots in Marketing
Marketing and Customer Analytics
Short description | Chatbots are a very hot topic nowadays. They can be employed in several activities, such as generating surveys, analyzing data, proposing solutions. |
Degree | Bsc or MSc |
Skills you will develop: |
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Required skills |
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Earliest Start Date | Anytime |
Latest Finish date | 6 months (Bachelor) or 12 months (Master) after start |
Contact Person |
Intelligent Agents in Marketing
Marketing and Customer Analytics
Short description | Agents, like Chatbots are essential tools to deal with Natural Language Processing. Agents collect the relevant information from determined sources. They are like dogs that fetch the important items for you. They can retrieve essential information to do competitive analysis. |
Degree | Bsc or MSc |
Skills you will develop: |
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Required skills |
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Earliest Start Date | Anytime |
Latest Finish date | 6 months (Bachelor) or 12 months (Master) after start |
Contact Person |
Topics to choose together
Marketing and Customer Analytics
Short description | I will not write a description here. Come with an interesting topic that involves Artificial Intelligence, obviously also Natural Language Generation or Image Generation and let us talk. I am willing to listen to your proposal and help you develop your thesis. |
Degree | Bsc or MSc |
Skills you will develop: |
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Required skills |
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Earliest Start Date | Anytime |
Latest Finish date | 6 months (Bachelor) or 12 months (Master) after start |
Contact Person |
Synthetic Analytics: Opportunities, challenges, and limitations for using AI language models for marketing research and customer analytics
Short description | Generative AI is transforming all aspects of marketing, including marketing research and customer analytics. With the rise of large language models (LLMs), the concept of “silicon sampling”–using AI-generated data as a proxy for human data–has gained attention to make marketing research more efficient. But is this promise to good to be true? This thesis explores opportunities, challenges and limitations for using AI language models in marketing research. |
Literature | Sarstedt, Marko, Susanne J. Adler, Lea Rau, and Bernd Schmitt (2024), "Using Large Language Models to Generate Silicon Samples in Consumer and Marketing Research: Challenges, Opportunities, and Guidelines," Psychology & Marketing, 41 (6), 1254–1270. Stromberg, Malik, Wendy Moe, Thomas Reutterer, David Schweidel (2025), “Blind Spots in Broad Strokes: Caveats for the Use of LLMs in Marketing Research,” Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5145114. Korst, Jeremy, Stefano Puntoni, Olivier Toubia (2025), “How Gen AI Is Transforming Market Research,” https://hbr.org/2025/05/how-gen-ai-is-transforming-market-research |
Degree | BSc, MSc |
Skills you will develop: |
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Required skills |
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Earliest Start Date | Anytime |
Latest Finish date | 6 months (Bachelor), 12 months (Master) |
Contact Person |
Marketing and Customer Analytics
Branded language: Can company texts reveal true brand identity?
Short description | Companies use texts on their website, in product descriptions, and on social media to evoke a certain perception in the reader. Can we extract and manipulate this brand personality in company generated texts? How does the reader react when we manipulate the text to (not) match the initial brand perception? Do customers prefer a product (e.g., a perfume) with a description that matches (does not match) the own personality or the perceived personality of the person he/she is buying it for? |
Degree | MSc and BSc |
Skills you will develop: |
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Required skills |
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Earliest Start Date | Anytime |
Latest Finish date | 6 months (Bachelor) or 12 months (Master) after start |
Contact Person |
Marketing and Customer Analytics
Topic of Your Choice
Short description | You have an interesting idea that connects to any of the following areas: Customer lifetime value, customer base analysis, brand voice, marketing research, data science, heterogeneous treatment effects, uplift modelling? |
Degree | MSc and BSc |
Skills you will develop: |
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Required skills |
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Earliest Start Date | Anytime |
Latest Finish date | 6 months (Bachelor) or 12 months (Master) after start |
Contact Person |
Marketing and Customer Analytics
Marketing Effects in �LLM-based Agent Societies
Marketing and Customer Analytics
Short description | Advances in large language models (LLMs) enable the simulation of realistic environments in which AI agents can act as customers, influencers, or firms. Using frameworks such as AgentSociety, students can build agent-based simulations to explore whether well-known marketing and consumer behavior effects can be replicated in a LLM-based simulated society. The aim is to understand whether emergent behaviors among LLM-agents mirror human responses observed in empirical marketing studies. Students will combine conceptual grounding from marketing theory with computational simulation design and quantitative analysis. |
Degree | BSc or MSc |
Skills you will develop: |
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Required skills |
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Timeline | Earliest start date: Anytime - Latest finish date: 6/12 months after start |
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Sources |