Aalto University Marketing Master’s Thesis Guide: 30 ECTS Thesis, 6 ECTS Thesis Course and 9–12 Month Process

Aalto University’s Master’s Programme in Marketing has a more structured thesis process than a generic School of Business thesis route. Under the current 2026–2028 curriculum, the programme is 120 ECTS and the thesis architecture is:

• MARK.thes Master's Thesis: 30 ECTS;
• MARK-E9900 How to write a Master's Thesis: 6 ECTS, a separate thesis-support course/process taught in Period I or III in the second year; and
• BIZ.matr Maturity Test: 0 ECTS.

The Marketing Department’s current thesis page still describes the 6 ECTS support process using the operational term thesis seminar. That should not be read as a second additional six-credit requirement. For current students, MARK-E9900 is the current curriculum code, while the thesis page explains how the seminar-style process actually works.

Marketing also uses a distinctive Expression of Interest (EoI) to start the thesis process and allocate supervisors. The default calendar process is 9–12 months, although Aalto describes the nominal 30+6 ECTS workload as roughly six months of full-time work. The process is divided into three academic phases before final submission.

This guide is based on current Aalto Marketing curriculum, thesis, recommended timetable and graduation pages, together with university-wide public-thesis, AI and Turnitin guidance verified on 30 August 2026.

Where the thesis sits in the current Marketing degree

The current Marketing degree leads to the Master of Science (Economics and Business Administration) and totals 120 ECTS. The current programme code is BIZ29. Programme studies total 90 ECTS and elective studies 30 ECTS.

Inside the programme studies, the thesis structure is explicit:

• MARK.thes: 30 ECTS;
• MARK-E9900 How to write a Master's Thesis: 6 ECTS;
• BIZ.matr: 0 ECTS.

The same curriculum includes both qualitative and quantitative research-methods courses. These courses expand methodological competence, but they do not impose one universal methodology on every Marketing thesis.

Aalto’s recommended timetable says the capstone and thesis-related courses should normally be completed towards the end of the degree, and the thesis-support course is scheduled in the second study year. This is different from programmes such as International Management, where programme-specific timing places the thesis in the first year.

Marketing uses a 30 ECTS thesis, not a free 20/30 ECTS choice

The School of Business general thesis framework discusses both 20 ECTS and 30 ECTS theses. That can create confusion if the generic section is read without the programme curriculum.

For Marketing, the current curriculum resolves the issue: the Marketing thesis is 30 ECTS. A Marketing student should not treat the 20 ECTS format as an alternative that can simply be selected for convenience.

Aalto’s generic School of Business guidance estimates a 30 ECTS thesis at approximately 750–900 hours, or around 5–6 months of full-time study. Marketing’s own process page, however, says the whole thesis-writing process should normally finish in about 9–12 months. These statements describe different things: one is the nominal workload, while the other is the real calendar process including supervision cycles, staged deliverables, other studies and ordinary semester timing.

A sensible Marketing plan therefore avoids two opposite mistakes: do not assume 9–12 months means full-time thesis work for an entire year, and do not assume a nominal six-month workload means the complete administrative and supervision process can always be compressed into six calendar months.

Start the process with the Expression of Interest

Marketing uses a department-managed Expression of Interest process to begin thesis work. Students submit a short EoI through the current Marketing thesis process, normally around the beginning of either the autumn or spring thesis cycle.

The EoI is deliberately lightweight. Aalto describes it as free-form, with a maximum length of two pages. It should explain what topics or themes interest you and can mention methodological preferences, such as an interest in qualitative or quantitative work.

You do not need a final thesis title, fully fixed research question or finished methodology at this stage. Aalto compares the EoI more to a motivational letter than a complete research plan.

The reason is practical: the department uses the EoI to allocate supervisors. If you already know a faculty member you would prefer to work with, you may state that preference, but the department cannot guarantee that every preference will be accommodated.

Schedule constraints should also be declared early. If exchange studies, employment or another commitment will affect your availability for meetings, put that information in the EoI rather than waiting until supervision has already been arranged.

The current public Marketing page still displays exact kick-off and EoI dates for the 2025–26 academic year. It does not yet provide a replacement exact 2026–27 public date table. Those older dates should therefore not be copied forward as current deadlines. Use the live Marketing thesis page and MyCourses/Sisu information when your actual cycle opens.

Use the voluntary kick-off, but understand what is actually compulsory

The Marketing Department holds a voluntary kick-off session twice a year, at the beginning of Period I and Period III. Its purpose is to help students organise the thesis project and to introduce possible research collaboration opportunities.

The kick-off is useful, but Aalto labels it voluntary. The more important formal mechanism is the EoI and the subsequent supervisor allocation.

Once a supervisor has been assigned, the practical seminar/course process usually combines group meetings and one-to-one meetings. The current public Marketing page states that there are no compulsory meetings. However, supervisors have limited availability, and students who repeatedly miss scheduled group meetings should not assume that individual replacement appointments will automatically be created.

The formal pass requirement for the 6 ECTS thesis-support course is active participation and discussion with the supervisor, together with incorporating the supervisor’s comments and suggestions as the thesis progresses. This makes engagement substantive even though the page does not impose one universal meeting-count rule.

Students enroll in the thesis course/seminar through Sisu. The safest approach is therefore to treat the course as an active supervision structure rather than a passive registration that earns credits automatically.

The Marketing thesis is built around three phases

The current Marketing thesis process divides progress into three formal phases:

1. Phase 1: accepted research plan and literature-review section, pass/fail;
2. Phase 2: first draft of methods and results sections, pass/fail; and
3. Phase 3: final version of the master’s thesis, 30 ECTS and graded 0–5.

The separate 6 ECTS thesis-support course is itself pass/fail.

This staged structure is one of the strongest reasons not to postpone serious writing until the end. Phase 1 already expects a research plan and literature review. Phase 2 expects draft methods and results. The process is designed to make the thesis progressively examinable rather than allowing all research and writing to remain informal until the final month.

Aalto also states that students should have completed their bachelor’s degree before beginning the master’s thesis project. The compulsory research-methods requirement must be completed by the end of Phase 1.

For planning, treat each phase as a decision gate. If the research question, data access or method changes substantially, update the rest of the design before pushing ahead merely to preserve the original plan.

Choose a Marketing research problem that fits the evidence

Marketing is broad enough to support very different thesis traditions. A project may address consumer behaviour, branding, retail, marketing strategy, digital marketing, data-driven marketing, markets and society, customer experience, platforms or another field represented in the programme.

The current public guidance does not require every Marketing student to use interviews, experiments, surveys, econometric analysis or one specific theoretical framework. The research question should drive the method.

A strong early design keeps five elements aligned:

• problem: what is genuinely not understood or not adequately explained;
• question: what the thesis will answer;
• literature: what prior research is needed to frame the problem;
• evidence and method: what data or material can answer the question; and
• contribution: what the result adds to academic understanding or relevant practice.

The current programme includes both qualitative and quantitative methods courses precisely because Marketing research can use more than one research tradition. Methodological sophistication does not mean using the most complicated possible technique. It means choosing an approach that is defensible for the question and executing it carefully.

Individual, pair, commissioned and article-type theses are possible

Marketing follows the School of Business framework that permits several authorship and output formats.

A thesis may be written individually or in a pair. A pair thesis must be one cohesive research project, with meaningful contribution from both students. The students choose their pair themselves. Aalto normally evaluates the thesis as one work and students usually receive the same grade, although different grades can be possible in exceptional contribution circumstances.

A commissioned thesis with an external organisation is also possible. The university supervisor must approve the topic. The organisation’s practical interests may shape the research problem, but the thesis must still meet academic standards.

Commissioning does not make the evaluated thesis confidential. Aalto states that all theses must be publicly available and that an external party cannot demand that the thesis itself remains secret. Extra confidential reports delivered separately to a commissioner do not count toward thesis grading.

An article-type thesis is another permitted format. It follows the conventions of an academic manuscript and typically aims at approximately 10,000–15,000 words, depending on disciplinary practice. That range belongs to the article-type format only. It is not a universal Marketing thesis word count.

Journal publication is not required for an article-type thesis to be accepted. Publication strategy and thesis assessment are separate processes.

No universal monograph page count or citation style is publicly imposed

The current Marketing and School of Business pages do not publish one universal page count or word count for every traditional Marketing thesis. They also do not impose one mandatory citation style or identical chapter structure across every research design.

That flexibility matters. A quantitative behavioural study, qualitative consumer-culture project, secondary-data strategy study and conceptual marketing thesis may require very different report architectures.

Use the current thesis course, supervisor guidance and disciplinary conventions to decide the appropriate structure. Do not convert the article-type 10,000–15,000-word guidance into a general rule for monograph theses.

Use MyStudies for topic, supervisor and final submission

Once you have a preliminary thesis topic and the Marketing process has assigned a supervisor, apply for supervisor and topic approval in MyStudies > Thesis tab.

The supervisor must be approved in MyStudies before the final thesis can be submitted for evaluation. This makes MyStudies more than a final upload portal; it is part of the formal thesis record.

At the end of the process, submit the final thesis through MyStudies for evaluation, grading and archiving. The final thesis should be saved as PDF/A so it can be preserved long term.

If two students wrote a pair thesis, both students submit the same final file for evaluation.

Students must be enrolled as attending for the study right to which the thesis belongs when submitting the thesis. Administrative eligibility therefore needs to be checked before the final deadline, not after a file has already been prepared.

Use Turnitin before the final archival submission

Aalto allows students to use Turnitin proactively during thesis work. Before final submission, students can run a check in the relevant MyCourses environment, and the final MyStudies submission also produces a Turnitin similarity report.

Similarity output is a diagnostic tool rather than an automatic misconduct decision. Correct quotations, references, standard expressions and problematic copying can all affect similarity. The report needs contextual interpretation.

The same principle applies to AI-detection indicators. A score does not by itself prove misconduct. Students remain responsible for source attribution, originality, factual accuracy and compliance with the rules that apply to their thesis work.

Use proactive checks to fix citation and paraphrasing problems while changes are still easy, rather than discovering them after the final archival file has been submitted.

How the Marketing thesis is evaluated

The final Marketing thesis is graded on the School of Business 0–5 scale. The supervisor evaluates the thesis together with a second examiner who is knowledgeable in the field. The two examiners provide a single evaluation using the School of Business grading rubric.

The assessment is not limited to whether the results look interesting. Aalto’s current guidance explicitly connects thesis evaluation with specialised knowledge, scientific thinking, critical reasoning, appropriate research methods, academic standards, project management and the ability to integrate feedback.

The Head of Department confirms the grades for theses submitted during the same month. After approval, the final grade is visible in MyStudies and Sisu and the evaluation statement can be downloaded from MyStudies.

This is why time management and staged progress matter academically, not just administratively. The process itself provides evidence of whether the student can plan, execute and communicate an independent research project.

The thesis abstract serves as the maturity essay

Marketing students complete BIZ.matr, a 0 ECTS maturity test. At master’s level, the thesis abstract serves as the maturity essay, so no separate maturity-essay file is normally required.

The exact language requirement depends on the student’s educational-language background and previous degree. Students educated in Finnish or Swedish may have additional language-demonstration requirements; students with different educational backgrounds may use the abstract primarily to demonstrate familiarity with the thesis subject.

Aalto’s current AI guidance prohibits language-model use in maturity examinations. Because the assessed thesis abstract functions as the maturity essay, students must follow that restriction for the maturity component even if some AI assistance might be allowed elsewhere in thesis work under other conditions.

Do not assume that another student’s maturity-language arrangement automatically applies to you. Check the current rules that correspond to your educational background.

The evaluated thesis is a public document

Aalto master’s theses are public documents. Secret or confidential information must therefore be kept out of the thesis submitted for examination.

This rule is particularly important for commissioned Marketing theses involving customer data, commercial strategy, internal analytics or unreleased business information. The external organisation cannot make the evaluated thesis confidential through an NDA with the student.

Aaltodoc publishes thesis metadata and the abstract under the current policy. Open online publication of the full text depends on the applicable author-consent arrangement, but withholding open full-text consent does not convert the thesis into a confidential document.

Discuss confidentiality at the beginning of a commissioned project. It is much easier to design a public thesis around appropriately anonymised or separated information than to discover at the final submission stage that important sections cannot legally be included.

Current 2027 Marketing thesis-submission dates

The current Marketing graduation page publishes the following 2027 dates as the last day to apply for graduation and submit the thesis and maturity essay:

• 27 January 2027
• 17 February 2027
• 24 March 2027
• 21 April 2027
• 26 May 2027
• 30 July 2027
• 25 August 2027
• 22 September 2027
• 20 October 2027
• 17 November 2027
• 31 December 2027

There is an important June exception. Although 23 June 2027 is a graduation date, Aalto states that no thesis or maturity essay may be submitted for examination in June. Students aiming for June graduation must submit the thesis and maturity essay according to the May timetable.

The same graduation page asks students to allow at least three weeks for study-plan approvals before the relevant graduation deadline. The thesis, maturity essay and thesis-support course can still be awaiting registration at the graduation request, but the rest of the study plan should be complete and in order.

Administrative dates are cycle-sensitive. Recheck the live Marketing graduation and thesis pages before committing to a final submission date.

There is no current public Marketing defence requirement to invent

The current Marketing thesis page describes the EoI, supervisor allocation, seminar/course participation, three phases, MyStudies submission and evaluation in detail. It does not state a mandatory thesis defence or thesis presentation requirement for Marketing students.

That absence matters because other School of Business programmes may have explicit presentation rules. Those programme-specific rules should not be imported into Marketing merely because they belong to the same school.

If the current Marketing course or MyCourses workspace later introduces a presentation requirement for a particular cohort, students should follow the live instruction. But this guide does not manufacture a requirement that is not in the current public Marketing sources.

A practical Marketing thesis workflow

A defensible sequence is:

1. Plan for the second-year thesis cycle. Complete enough programme work to know which Marketing area you want to research.
2. Complete the bachelor’s degree before formally starting the project.
3. Use the voluntary kick-off if useful. Treat its exact date as cycle-sensitive.
4. Submit the max-two-page Expression of Interest. Describe themes, interests, methodological preferences and important schedule constraints.
5. Receive supervisor allocation through the Marketing process. State preferences where relevant, but do not assume they are guaranteed.
6. Register for MARK-E9900/the thesis-support process in Sisu.
7. Apply for topic and supervisor approval in MyStudies.
8. Complete Phase 1. Produce an accepted research plan and literature review; finish the compulsory methods requirement by this stage.
9. Execute the research and complete Phase 2. Produce the first draft of methods and results and use supervisor feedback to correct the design.
10. Write continuously. Do not wait until the end to turn analysis into academic argument.
11. Use Turnitin proactively. Fix citation, attribution and paraphrasing issues before the final archival version.
12. Complete Phase 3. Finalise the 30 ECTS thesis and verify the correct PDF/A file.
13. Prepare the abstract as the maturity essay. Follow the language and AI restrictions that apply to you.
14. Submit through MyStudies by a live Marketing deadline. Remember that June is not a thesis-submission month.
15. Apply for graduation in Sisu when the rest of the degree is ready. Keep HOPS approvals and administrative lead time in view.

Final checklist

Before final submission, confirm that:

• you are following the current BIZ29 / 2026–2028 Marketing curriculum;
• the thesis is 30 ECTS, not an optional 20 ECTS project;
• MARK-E9900 is treated as the separate 6 ECTS thesis-support course/process;
• BIZ.matr is 0 ECTS;
• you understand the 9–12 month calendar process and the roughly six-month full-time workload baseline;
• the Expression of Interest was used to enter the current supervisor-allocation process;
• your supervisor and topic are approved in MyStudies;
• Phase 1 and Phase 2 requirements have been completed before the final 0–5 graded thesis;
• the required methods coursework is completed by the end of Phase 1;
• any pair thesis is one cohesive project with meaningful contribution from both students;
• any commissioned organisation understands that the evaluated thesis is public;
• article-type 10,000–15,000-word guidance is used only for that format;
• no unsupported presentation or defence requirement has been imported from another programme;
• Turnitin/source attribution has been checked;
• the abstract satisfies the maturity-test requirements and prohibited AI assistance has not been used for the maturity component;
• the final file is valid PDF/A;
• you are enrolled as attending for the relevant study right;
• the live Marketing thesis and graduation deadlines have been rechecked; and
• if targeting June graduation, the thesis has already been submitted according to the May timetable.

The central rule is straightforward: Aalto Marketing is a 30 ECTS thesis with a separate 6 ECTS, EoI-driven thesis-support process that normally runs across 9–12 calendar months. Use the staged phases and supervisor allocation to control the project, and do not replace Marketing-specific instructions with rules borrowed from another School of Business programme.