Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

Hey everyone, I am studying for my MSC in Marketing. I have currently had a mental block, and would appreciate if you guys could help me.

I have to pick a dissertation title but I am not sure what to do. Last year for my undergraduate dissertation, I had this similar problem but it was resolved by a post from this board. For my undergraduate dissertation I was advised to look at, marketing to children.

The objectives of this study
• To undertake a critical review of academic literature surrounding children’s understanding, of junk food advertising and the effect advertisings has on their eating behaviour.
• To develop a measure for measuring parental opinion on advertising food directed to children.
• To employ that measure to a sample of parents
In addressing these objectives, the research looked specifically at the following:
• Influences of friends, links with celebrities or cartoon characters, TV ads, in-store product positioning, free gifts and internet promotions, on both food choices and eating habits of children.
• Parent’s opinion on statements regarding the influence of television advertising directed at children.

the study consisted of 14 attitude statements on advertising to children responses were given on a five point Likert scale ranging from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’. A total of 102 questionnaires were distributed to the sample. The main findings of the research conducted in the dissertation showed that in the eyes of parents kids are bombarded with advertising for unhealthy foods. Factors which parents believe influence children's requests for and consumption of unhealthy foods are free gifts, endorsements by cartoon characters in store product positioning and television adverts.

The reason why I have told you guys about my undergraduate study is that after talking to one of my lectures, he advised me to further my research on the above topic. I achieved a mark of 67%, which I was extremely pleased with. The main area which let me down was the statistical analysis on the quantitative data.

After thinking about what my lecture said I have come to the decision that I do not want to further my research, but instead to start fresh with a new topic, also this time around I would like go down the qualitative route.

I would like to look in to Shock advertising. As there are a lot of international students in my program, I would like to do some form of cultural comparison, in regards to the affect shock advertising.

That’s all I have come up with so far I was hoping that someone could offer me some advice in what I should do. Or if any one has a better area of study (in advertising/marketing) I would like to know

Thanks a lot
Magic