Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

You have asked a wide-open question here! A specific answer would require much more information. So, I will give you some general guidance to help you select. First, I would say to you to choose concepts that were of interest to you in your studies. This is because most likely your grasp of these topics is better and your enthusiasm will show through in your presentation and paper. The same goes for the company - discuss a company in which you are interested, except one caveat: Before you settle into that company, review what is available in their annual reports and press releases - as well as in peer reviewed journals (go to your library and talk to the librarian about this) to see if material on the area you have chosen is available concerning that company.

The kinds of topics available to you:

• Understanding markets - how does the company select their market? How does the company segment the market? What segments are they going after?


• Understanding customer needs - how does the company gather information about customer needs?


• Customer influencers - How does the company understand what images and words influence their customers and how does it act on this information?


• Competitive Landscape - what is the company's competitive landscape? What are the strengths and weaknesses of its competitors? How does the company take advantage of the competitors' weaknesses in their strategies?


• Company Analysis - SWOT, Porter's five forces, PESTEL. What strategies come out of these analyses? How has the company's strategies matched your findings? What recommendations do you have to help the company based on your findings?



• Position statement - What is their position statement? Where are they in terms of market segments, versus competitors' products, versus other products and services in the market? In terms of features?


• Branding - what is their branding strategy and how does that support their position statement? How well do they promote a standard brand look? Logos, tag lines, standard packaging, colors, web, etc.


• Marketing Activities - what activities does the company undertake? - Advertising, networking, web, trade shows, direct sales?


• Marketing metrics - how does the company measure their marketing efforts' effectiveness?

That's a brief overview of the marketing process and might give you some ideas.

You have 25 pages to do and a presentation. Make a plan for your project. You have research to do - that will be about half your time. You have 25 pages to write - that will take you about an hour a page. Your presentation will take you about six times as long as it has to be in length - i.e. - if you have a 15 min presentation, allow 90 min to prepare it (after your paper is done). You need to allow about 12 hours for reviewing and editing. So, research: about 40 hours, paper writing, about 25 hours, presentation, about 1.5 hours, editing, about 12 hours.

I hope this helps.

Wayde

Hi there,

I am facing the same task. I am finishing MA in Marketing and will soon have to come up with a thesis topic. I suppose the best thing to do is to think of what you really want to explore within marketing. Marketing is a wide and diverse area that can be explored without a limit and if you dont boil it down to simple question and a single topic you will find it hard to maintain the good sense and follow it with logic all the way. From marketing strategies to marketing communications, different communication tools, marketing mixes etc etc. it is necessary to choose one small part of marketing and ask a question which you will be able to answer streight on. Exploring marekting communications can be burdensome as there are so many issues to explore within communications. The same applies to strategies. Choose one, for example branding, advertising or even print or tv advertising alone. Within strategic marketing one would find it easier to explore for example SWOT or SLEPT analysis or Porerts strategies or Anshoff each one individually as opposes to strategic marketing generally. Good thing is to perhaps look at the marketing leader company such as Nike or CocaCola and explore one bit of marketing activities they pursue such as advertising or product development and all other issues that can be looked at within marketing but keep it to one as opposed to exploring the marketing communications pursues by Nike in general. I hope it goes well. So, its so easy to give advice to someone else but to do it yourself is sooo much harder :) I still need to come up with my own topic.