Münster enjoyed a fully packed week of hard academic work with Mark B. Houston (Professor and Head of the Marketing Department at Texas A&M University), who taught about 20 doctoral students from various centers of the business school the essentials of the design and value of survey research. What is the role of theory as a foundation of survey research? What are the differences between different scale types? These were two essential questions Mark Houston addressed in the course in an interactive way.  In return for this efforts, he was honored with a prototype of the new MCM merchandising (in T-shirt form) -- and with steaks and sausages prepared by Thorsten Hennig-Thurau and the LM&M team.