Established in 1971 within ASE Bucharest, the Marketing Faculty is now an integral part of the Marketing School. Over more than five decades of existence, the Marketing Faculty has developed and gained valuable experience and recognition in the academic and business environments of our country.
The first marketing course in Romania was included in the curriculum of ASE Bucharest during the 1971/1972 academic year. This event was a premiere both for our country and for Southeast Europe.
The emergence and evolution of the Marketing Faculty were driven by the need for businesses to understand the economic and social environment, to anticipate and respond to the needs and expectations of both actual and potential customers, thereby ensuring the maximization of organizational profit and the achievement of other organizational objectives.
The existence of the Marketing Faculty has been marked by administrative and organizational changes, reflecting the importance and role assigned to marketing within Romanian society, as well as the socio-political context of Romania.
A retrospective look at the administrative and organizational evolution of the Marketing Faculty highlights the following milestones:
Year 1971. The Marketing Faculty was established as part of the Faculty of Commerce.
Year 1973. The Marketing Faculty and the Economics of Domestic Trade Faculty merged, resulting in a new entity, the Commerce-Marketing Faculty.
Year 1985. Amid the reduction in the number of departments within ASE, the Commerce-Marketing Faculty and the Merceology Faculty were consolidated, creating the Commerce and Merceology Faculty, which included the Marketing Group.
Year 1990. The process of restructuring and re-establishing departments within ASE was reconsidered, enabling the re-establishment of the Marketing Faculty and the regaining of a significant position in Romanian economic higher education.
Year 2003. The Marketing Faculty became the core around which the Marketing School at ASE Bucharest was created.
Year 2011. Following the provisions of the National Education Law No. 1/2011, the Marketing Faculty was renamed the Marketing School.
With a team of nearly 40 tenured teaching staff, complemented by an almost equal number of associated teaching staff, the Marketing Faculty remains today the most important academic center for university-level marketing education in Romania and one of the largest in Southeast Europe.
The evolution of the Marketing Faculty has been shaped by managerial initiatives and the teaching and scientific contributions of prestigious department heads and professors. Furthermore, through the achievements of all its members in the field of marketing, the Faculty has played a major role in the development of the Romanian school of marketing.
The leadership of the Marketing Faculty has been held by the following recognized specialists in the field of marketing:
Professor Constantin Florescu, PhD
His destiny has been closely tied to the Marketing Faculty since its establishment in 1971. The esteemed professor led the department during the periods of 1971-1983 and 1990-1995. Under his careful guidance, the marketing specialization was developed within the curriculum for ASE Bucharest students.
A mentor to numerous generations of students graduating from the Academy of Economic Studies, Professor Constantin Florescu also created and nurtured the Marketing Faculty team. This team played a key role in shaping young teaching staff as marketing specialists, especially those who joined the department after the 1989 Revolution. During his tenure, the bachelor\s degree program in Marketing within the Faculty of Commerce at ASE Bucharest was established. This program remains a central part of the Marketing Faculty's educational offerings.
An esteemed educator with unmatched rigor and analytical skills, Professor Constantin Florescu was twice awarded prizes by the Romanian Academy.
Professor Vasile Mercioiu, PhD
During the period of 1983-1990, the team of marketing specialists within the Commerce-Merceology Faculty was led by Professor Vasile Mercioiu, PhD, a former vice-rector of the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest, a position he held between 1976 and 1980.
Professor Virgil Balaure, PhD
From 1995 to 2004, Professor Virgil Balaure, PhD, served as the head of the Marketing Faculty. One of his most significant initiatives was the creation of the Marketing School, which admitted its first generation of students in the summer of 2003. As a distinct area of organizational activity and an integrative function at the enterprise level in relation to the dynamic market environment, marketing thus gained a distinct status within economic higher education.
Under his leadership, the Marketing Library collection was launched as a result of a partnership between the Marketing Faculty and Uranus Publishing House. Beginning in 2001, this collection included works covering various marketing domains and specialized areas such as business-to-business marketing, marketing research, consumer behavior, marketing communication, sales force management, logistics, agri-food marketing, direct marketing, international marketing, service marketing, social-political marketing, strategic marketing, cybermarketing, and marketing information systems. Over 50 university textbooks were published as part of this collection.
In 1998, two distinct tracks were introduced within the Marketing specialization of the Faculty of Commerce: "Marketing Policies" and "Marketing Research". These new curricula included numerous courses taught for the first time in Romania's specialized university education. Additionally, Professor Virgil Balaure supported the creation of the master's program in Marketing and Business Communication (starting in 2000) and the first advanced study program in the field of marketing.
Professor Răzvan Zaharia, PhD
Between 2004 and 2008, the Marketing Faculty was led by Professor Răzvan Zaharia, PhD. Under his leadership, the curriculum expanded significantly (increasing from 21 to 48 courses), along with the number of specialists working in the department. During this period, several new master's programs were launched, such as Marketing Research, Marketing Management, Public Relations in Marketing, International Marketing (in 2004), and, notably, the Online Marketing master's program (in the summer of 2005), which, after 2011, became the most sought-after master's program at the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest!
Later, Professor Răzvan Zaharia served as the Chancellor of the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest from 2008 to 2011, President of the Senate of the Academy of Economic Studies from 2012 to 2016, and since 2021, he has been the Director of the Doctoral School of Marketing within the Marketing School, shaping the careers of future top specialists in the field of marketing.
Professor Laurenţiu Dan Anghel, PhD
Starting in 2008, the Marketing Department, was led by Professor Laurenţiu Dan Anghel, PhD. During this period, the department experienced its most extensive growth, both in terms of the number of tenured and associated teaching staff guiding students across all three university cycles (bachelor's, master's, and doctoral studies) and in terms of the number of marketing-related courses offered (exceeding 90). New formats of the marketing bachelor's program were introduced, including part-time studies and an English-taught bachelor's program, as well as new master's programs such as Fundamental Marketing Research, Marketing and Sustainable Development, Marketing and Management in Public Services, and Customer Relationship Management (taught in English).
Today, the programs of the Marketing School at the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest are evaluated as the most valuable nationwide by national accreditation bodies and are highly ranked in global university rankings.