Date: 16th April 2026

Speakers: Rhys Bell (Senior Student Recruitment Advisor), Dr Geoff Parkes (DBA Programme Director) and Dr Arezoo Fakhimi (DBA Lead, Marketing and Entrepreneurship Department) 

Introduction 

Rhys Bell: Hi, my name is Rhys. I am one of the Student Recruitment Advisors for the DBA, and I will be helping guide everyone through the session today. I am also joined by Dr Geoff Parkes and Dr Arezoo Fakhimi. 

Rhys Bell: So, just kicking off, there are a few things we want to share with you about studying with Aston University Online. One of the key points is that Aston offers a flexible and student-centric learning experience. 

The university holds a Triple Gold rating in the Teaching Excellence Framework from 2023. 

We are also considered to be in the top 5% of global universities according to the QS World University Rankings. 

In addition, Aston was named University of the Year for Student Success by the Daily Mail University Guide in 2025. 

About the Online DBA 

Rhys Bell: A little bit specifically about the online DBA. 

With this programme, you can earn your DBA from a triple-accredited business school. 

Aston is also recognised as a premier DBA provider, according to CEO Magazine’s DBA Rankings 2025. Aston Business School is ranked 15th in the UK and 90th in Europe by the Financial Times European Business School Rankings 2025. The programme is impact-driven and research-focused, and you will receive a lot of personalised mentorship throughout the duration of the programme. 

Why Aston Online 

Rhys Bell: Aston University Online offers a range of advantages that make it an appealing choice for prospective students globally. 

You receive round-the-clock support, expert tutors, and one-to-one feedback. 

There is a dedicated Student Success Team, access to the digital library, and learning resources and materials available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 

You also receive complimentary full access to Adobe Creative Cloud. 

You can take control of your schedule, access programme materials anytime and anywhere, study at your own pace, and the programme is fully online and asynchronous. 

Key DBA information 

Rhys Bell: Some key DBA information. As we have already touched on, the programme is delivered by the triple-accredited Aston Business School. 

The total tuition fee is £39,000 across four years, and that is payable in monthly instalments. 

The standard duration of the programme is four years, although it can be extended to six years if needed. It is considered a part-time programme. 

Some of the key skills you will develop include impactful research delivery, professional network building, evidence-based thinking, professional practice and policy development, and critical knowledge appreciation. 

Dr Geoff Parkes: Welcome, everybody. My name is Geoff Parkes, and I am the Programme Director for the Aston DBA. 

As Rhys has explained, we run these webinars regularly to give prospective students a flavour of the programme and, in particular, to outline what we are looking for in a strong application. 

That is one of the important things we want to cover with you today, because if you do decide to make an application, we want to give you the best possible chance of presenting it in a way that we can assess properly and that helps you progress toward joining the programme. 

The other thing we want to do today is give you a feel for the types of research we undertake here at Aston, the kind of research questions we explore, and the way in which academic endeavour is framed within an institution. 

That is often quite different from how practitioners look at real-world problems in business today. 

So, for today’s session, I have invited my close colleague, Dr Arezoo Fakhimi, to join us. Arezoo is my colleague in the Marketing and Entrepreneurship Department, and she is our DBA lead there. 

She joins me in interviewing candidates who are interested in working in areas such as marketing and entrepreneurship. 

Today, Arezoo is going to give a short presentation on an area of research. I believe it is digital marketing, Arezoo, or at least an aspect of digital marketing? 

Dr Arezoo Fakhimi: Yes, that is right. Digital marketing, specifically within services marketing. 

Dr Geoff Parkes: Excellent. Over to you, Arezoo. 

Practical research at Aston Online (Digital Marketing) 

Dr Arezoo Fakhimi: First of all, I am Dr Arezoo Fakhimi. I have a PhD in Marketing, and today I am going to present one of my research areas in a practical context, which is the application of AI as a frontline employee. 

If any of you are interested in the application of emerging technology for developing your research proposal, please feel free to email me. You can find my email address on the university website, and after the session I can share it with you as well. 

To begin, I am quite sure that many of you have already used automated machines at airports for self-check-in, but today I am going to talk about more advanced and intelligent technologies. 

Different companies have introduced AI agents. Apple introduced Siri, Google introduced Google Assistant, and Amazon introduced Alexa. These technologies use a level of artificial intelligence that can learn from consumer behaviour and from interaction patterns. 

For example, I would like to know how many of you have experienced this: You step out of your home or start your car, and then Google Maps suddenly appears on your phone screen or your car display and shows your next destination. You ask yourself, how does Google Maps know where I am going? 

This is the kind of AI I am going to talk about today. It is the application of a level of AI that can learn from consumer behaviour, and businesses and organisations can use that to personalise and customise services for their customers. 

These technologies are already all around us in normal life. You access them through your phone, smart speaker, laptop, television, tablet, and other devices. But they have also moved from the home into organisations. 

Different organisations have started using them in the form of chatbots, virtual assistants with physical bodies such as robots, or virtual assistants such as voice-based systems. 

I also know of insurance companies that use AI assistants to assess insurance claims. In some cases, the AI assistant reviews claims and, if it recognises that a claim may be fraudulent, it passes the matter to a human to review. 

We are now seeing these systems used by different companies around the world. As an example, I would like to show you a short video about an AI agent used by ANZ, one of the major banks in Australia and New Zealand. After that, I will explain some of the benefits, advantages, and disadvantages of using these technologies. You may find some of these ideas useful for developing your own DBA proposal. 

Video Demonstration: A video was played during the video. The video introduces Jamie, ANZ’s AI digital assistant, which helps customers with common banking questions through a face-to-face style online interaction. It shows how Jamie can quickly answer queries, improve accessibility, and provide immediate support, while also making clear that the tool is designed to give customers more choice rather than replace all human service. 

Discussion of benefits and practical applications 

Dr Arezoo Fakhimi: As a manager in a company, or as someone working for an organisation, you may ask yourself why you would need an intelligent assistant in your company. 

I will go through some of the benefits now, and perhaps you will find one of these areas interesting enough to explore further in your own research. 

The first point is that an AI assistant can identify customers quickly, often simply through their customer number, and help them answer a variety of questions. 

It can handle a huge volume of communication at the same time. Through that, you can remove the need for customers to wait in queues for customer service. 

It also enables you to provide service 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without needing to worry about frontline employees becoming tired, stressed, or affected by environmental conditions. 

Another benefit can be understood through a very common example. Imagine that you call a service centre to solve a problem. You speak to the first person, introduce yourself, provide your customer number, explain the problem, and say whether it has happened before. Then, after all of that, the person says they are not sure and that they will connect you to their manager. You then have to introduce yourself again, explain the problem again, and repeat the entire process. 

Then the manager says that perhaps someone from the IT Department can help you and passes you on again. Once again, you repeat everything. 

In contrast, if a company uses an AI agent, the system can recognise you from the beginning, identify your previous communication history, and either solve your problem directly or transfer you to the right person immediately. 

Another advantage of using AI agents in organisations is that customer interactions are recorded automatically. In a normal situation with a human frontline employee, the employee usually has to finish the conversation and then go back and record everything manually. They may forget parts of the interaction or miss certain details. With an AI agent, that recording happens automatically. 

I mentioned earlier that this level of AI can learn from customer behaviour and interaction. Later, companies can use those accumulated data as big data to personalise and customise services for their customers, close service quality gaps, provide service at the level customers expect, keep them satisfied, and ultimately turn them into loyal customers. 

Another benefit is the ability to retain organisational knowledge. This is particularly important in a B2B context, where relationships are often critical. Sometimes strong informal relationships form between a frontline employee and a client, or between a salesperson and a customer. In some cases, when that employee moves to another company, the customer moves as well. But when the company uses AI agents, the knowledge and interaction patterns can be retained within the organisation. 

If you are working in an international company or in a multicultural country, the application of AI agents can also improve communication with customers. These systems can recognise different accents, and more advanced versions can operate in multiple languages. A customer may be able to choose their preferred language, such as Chinese, English, Spanish, or Portuguese, and communicate more easily with the company. We know that this can increase customer satisfaction and improve interaction quality. 

Customer acceptance and privacy concerns 

Dr Arezoo Fakhimi: Now, you may ask another very important question: Will customers actually accept this type of technology? Will they be happy to interact with AI, or would they still prefer to speak with humans? 

Based on the research we conducted, we found that many people do in fact like these kinds of AI agents. Some said they felt as though they were talking to a friend. Some built emotional relationships and bonds with them, which, of course, is the objective of many companies. Some participants even said that they missed the AI assistant when it was not there. So, from an emotional and affective perspective, we found that people are indeed capable of building relationships with these technologies. 

However, despite all these benefits, there are also some risks and concerns. 

One of the main concerns is privacy risk and uncertainty. People worry that their information may be recorded and shared with third parties, whether government agencies or other organisations, such as those involved in advertising and promotion. Many customers find that unsettling or annoying. 

Related to this is the risk of cyberattacks. Companies must consider whether they can preserve customer information securely and ensure that nobody unauthorised can access it. This is one of the major concerns many companies face today. 

If you are interested in how people respond to this, our research identified three main categories of customers. 

The first group are customers who, because of the convenience and value they receive from the intelligent assistant, do not mind the privacy risk and do not care about it very much. 

The second group are those who still use the AI assistant because of the value they receive, but they limit their interactions to only those areas where they feel they benefit directly. 

The third group, which is potentially the most difficult from a business perspective, are those who decide not to use the AI agent at all. 

So, what should businesses do about this? 

One important response is to have a clear privacy policy. Businesses should be transparent. They should tell customers whether they store their data, where the data are stored, what they are used for, and whether those data are shared with third parties or other organisations, including government bodies if applicable. 

AI strategy and organisational choices 

Dr Arezoo Fakhimi: When it comes to the application of human employees versus machines, we should say that it depends heavily on the type of service and the type of product a company offers. 

There is not one single solution that works for every organisation. Each organisation needs to consider different aspects of what it wants to achieve from using AI and then decide what kind of AI is most suitable. 

In relation to AI agents specifically, companies generally have two main options. 

The first is to go for a custom AI solution. This means having a software company develop a personalised and customised AI assistant for them. This can cost anywhere from around $6,000 to $300,000 per solution. The challenge is that the company then has to feed it data, train it, and manage the early stages of interaction, which can initially be frustrating for customers. 

The second option is to use third-party AI software. These are systems that have already been used and trained by other organisations. This may cost anything from zero to around $40,000 per year. The advantage is that other companies have already trained the system. The disadvantage is that the external provider may have access to some data. 

If you would like to understand how this works conceptually, when a customer engages with this type of AI assistant, the system’s features, such as voice-based conversation, smart cognitive functionality, problem-solving capability, behavioural interaction, and being non-judgemental, create different forms of value for the customer. 

As a result of that value, customers may build trust, commitment, and a relational connection with the AI assistant, which in turn encourages them to come back and engage more with the company. 

In our research, this is exactly what we found. I am not going to go deeply into the model itself today, but I wanted to share the broad idea for your information. 

Dr Arezoo Fakhimi: Thank you very much. 

How to write a strong DBA research proposal 

Dr Geoff Parkes: Thank you very much, Arezoo. We will take questions at the end, I think that is the best way to proceed. Thank you very much indeed. Rhys, could you reload the slides so I can talk through the aspects of a good proposal? 

That presentation gives you a flavour of the type of very practical research we are undertaking. As I said, Arezoo is my colleague in the Marketing and Entrepreneurship Department. Her presentation gives you a sense of the practical problems we examine within the business school. From an academic perspective, we approach those problems with rigour, and we look at where contributions can be made. I am going to talk a little more about contribution now. 

In terms of what makes a good proposal, we are looking for several things. First, you need to show evidence that you have engaged with the resources on our website. There is a great deal of information there about previous students’ experiences. There are extended videos I have recorded on what makes a good proposal. There are also student testimonials. It is important that you spend time reviewing those materials. This is really an exercise in due diligence. We are carrying out our due diligence by reviewing your proposal and meeting you in interview, but we also want you to do your due diligence to make sure this is the right step for you. So please make sure you have explored the resources available online. 

I am struggling to move the slides on, Rhys, so you may need to do that for me. 

Yes, thank you. There are three important areas when it comes to crafting a good proposal. First, we are organised into academic departments. As I said earlier, Arezoo and I are in the Marketing and Entrepreneurship Department. We also have an Accounting and Finance Department, and a Business and Information Systems Department. We are organised through academic departments, and researchers are also often linked to a research centre. For example, there is an Entrepreneurial Research Centre and an Information Systems and Cyber Security Research Centre. 

A very good starting point is to look at academic research profiles. Rhys has included the relevant links in the presentation. You should review the research that academics in those areas are currently undertaking. For example, if your topic of interest is AI assistance at the point of sale, you could look at Arezoo’s academic research profile, see the type of work she is doing, and also look at how she structures her research papers. In particular, you should pay attention to where the signals for further research appear. 

What you are really trying to do is match your research idea to the current state of academic discussion. You are asking yourself where your research question fits into the academic discourse on that topic right now. 

That is what we mean by making a contribution. To undertake any form of doctoral research, not just a DBA but a PhD as well, you are not expected to invent something completely from scratch. You are expected to make a contribution. You build on the work of previous academics. So, in crafting your proposal, you need to recognise what that existing academic work is and show how your work fits into it. You need to make an argument and defend why your project is a good idea. That is what doctoral research is about: making arguments and defending what you have done and why you have done it. 

Within the presentation Rhys is sharing, we have included links to our research centres, academic departments, and individual research profiles. That gives you the opportunity to see how your work might make a contribution. 

If you cannot find what you need through our own resources, then use Google Scholar. Google Scholar helps you understand the current state of academic endeavour across the world. That is very important. 

Aston is relatively unusual as a business school because we are triple-accredited, which places us among less than one percent of business schools globally. In addition, our business school is very large. It represents a substantial proportion of the university’s overall activity. In many universities, the business school might account for 10 or 20 percent of activity. Ours is much bigger. It is the largest single activity within the university. So whatever topic you are interested in, it is likely that we are already covering it in some way. 

As I said, look at our academics’ work, but also look at Google Scholar. What you are trying to understand is the current state of academic endeavour on your topic. That matters. 

This is different from a contribution to practice. The reason you are here today is because you have some intellectual curiosity and have probably observed a phenomenon in your professional life that you think deserves further research. That is important. You need to articulate that practical phenomenon in your application. 

We also want you to demonstrate the contribution to practice. The distinctive feature of a DBA is that you should be able to leverage this new knowledge in your professional life. In that sense, a DBA should be viewed as an investment. Like any investment, you need to think about the return. By being able to explain what the contribution to your practice will be, both we and you can see what the return on that investment is likely to be, professionally and personally. 

So, in summary, we want you to shape your proposal around our research centres and academic expertise. We want you to show that you understand what an academic contribution is. Doctoral work must bring new knowledge. Future researchers should be able to build on what you discover, and you need to explain what that contribution will be. 

Your proposal should also provide an overview of your research agenda. What is the practical phenomenon you have observed? What might the sample or data set look like? What are the likely timescales, within the context of a DBA? What is the research question? Keep that part simple. Do not overcomplicate it. Make the task as easy as possible for yourself. Try to explain in simple terms what your research question is, what phenomenon you are studying, and what your objectives are. 

You also need to demonstrate the current state of knowledge around your research area. What theories are other academics using that are relevant to your question? What have empirical studies already found? What new knowledge have previous researchers brought to the table, and how does that connect to what you want to do? 

You should also explain which research methods you are likely to use. You probably already understand the distinction between quantitative and qualitative research. Some people are naturally drawn to solving problems through numbers and data. Others prefer to work through what people say or through documentary evidence that supports an argument. Neither approach is right or wrong. But it is useful in your proposal to indicate whether your preference is quantitative or qualitative, and why. That then allows us to assess whether your proposed approach is sensible for your research question. That is something we would investigate further if you were invited to interview. 

Finally, and as I said earlier, tell us how you would use this qualification. It matters to us that we understand how you plan to leverage the new knowledge you will gain. One of the first questions Arezoo and I will ask in interview is why now, at this stage in your professional career, is the right time for a professional doctorate, and what you would use it for if you obtained it. 

The standard entry requirements are shown there. Rhys, I do not know whether you want to take over now and wrap up this part of the presentation before we move to questions. 

Rhys Bell: Yes, certainly. I will continue from here. 

When you start your application, it is helpful to keep in mind the standard entry requirements for the DBA. First, you must have a master’s degree, usually a UK qualification or international equivalent, in business, management, or a related subject. That is something I am happy to discuss with any applicant in more detail, particularly where qualifications may not fit the standard wording exactly. 

We also require a minimum of five years of senior management experience. When you submit your CV, I will review that to ensure it meets the requirement. 

For international students, you must also meet our English language requirements. Again, I am happy to discuss that directly with anyone, and you can also find more information on Aston University’s website. 

Now, turning to the application process, your success is our priority. We aim to make the process quick, simple, and well supported. First, you complete the online application form. The Admissions Team will then contact you to discuss your career goals and the programme details. 

You will then be asked to submit the required documents. Sometimes we may ask for some changes or further clarification. This slide is slightly out of date because it does not show the full DBA process. Once you submit a DBA application, I carry out an initial review. If everything looks good and is properly formatted, I then send it to the Academic Team for review. If everything is satisfactory at that stage, you are invited to interview. After the interview, you await the final decision. If you are accepted onto the programme, you will then be asked to accept your offer and pay the deposit. At that point, you simply prepare to start in your chosen intake. 

Our next intake is in May, so if you are aiming for that intake and have not yet spoken to the Admissions Team, I would recommend doing that as soon as possible. 

We are now at the Q&A section, so if you have any questions, please put them in the chat or Q&A box and we will help as much as we can. If there is anything we cannot answer immediately, we will know who can and will follow up with you afterwards. 

Before we begin, I will leave this slide up. You can use the QR code to book a call with an advisor, and all the key contact details are here as well. 

Dr Geoff Parkes: Brilliant. Any questions? 

Now is the time to ask them. As Arezoo said, if you have any questions on her presentation, please do raise them. Equally, if there is something specific you want to discuss, I am very happy to address particular enquiries through Rhys. What we have tried to do today is give you a framework so that you have the best possible chance of putting forward a strong DBA proposal. 

It is also important to say that we are not expecting you to arrive as fully formed academic writers. We recognise that you are practitioners. We are not assuming that you are completely familiar with academic writing or academic presentation. But it is important in your proposal that you show some understanding of the academic world and what it means to enter it. That matters because it is part of setting you up to succeed, and that is exactly what we want.

Rhys Bell: Thank you, everyone, for joining. I think that went really well and was very informative. If you have any follow-up questions, or if you want to talk about an application or next steps, all of our contact information is here. You have the application link, the next intake date, which is 25 May, the option to book a call, and the enquiries email address. 

Dr Geoff Parkes: Thank you, Rhys. Thanks, Arezoo, and thank you to everyone for attending today. As I said, we very much see the proposal as the foundation of the whole process. It is central to meeting you, understanding your research question, and assessing your readiness for the programme. It is a very important part of the application process. Do not rush it. Get it right the first time, and then we can have a proper discussion with you. 

Rhys Bell: Alright, sounds good. Have a lovely day. 

Dr Geoff Parkes: Okay, thanks again, everyone. Goodbye.

Disclaimer: 

This transcript is based on a recorded webinar and has been lightly edited for readability, clarity and conciseness. We’ve removed filler words, false starts, and repeated phrases (such as “um” and “ah”) without changing the meaning. All information remains accurate to the recording. 

Tuition fees may be subject to annual increases in line with inflation from 2026, in accordance with UK Government policy and maximum fee limits.