[7] Sarstedt studied at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich where he completed his Diplom-Kaufmann degree, the German equivalent of Master of Science, in 2005.

He completed his Doctoral degree in Business Administration with summa cum laude at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 2008.

[13] He co-authored two widely adopted books on the method, A primer on partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), which has been translated into Arabic, Chinese, German, Italian, Korean, Persian, and Spanish;[12] and Advanced issues in partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), which has been translated into Korean, Persian, Spanish, and Vietnamese.

The former book was reviewed by Adrian Leguina as "a valuable reference to acquire basic grasps on PLS-SEM".

[15] In 2019 and 2020, he published papers in Multivariate Behavioral Research,[16] Nature Human Behaviour,[17] and Psychometrika[18] in which he and his co-authors transferred the concept of measurement uncertainty to psychometrics.

Since his professorship at the Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Sarstedt gained interest in consumer behavior topics, particularly context effects.

His research in this field deals with the impact of ambient scent on consumer behavior[22] and the role of different environments in product acceptance tests.