Question

Topic: Student Questions

Opinions And Suggestions On My Mkt Thesis Proposal

Posted by Anonymous on 12/4/2008 at 7:01 PM ET 250 Points
Hello people!

Well I'm about to finish my master in MKT. Over the las weeks I've been considering several topics for my thesis proposal and decided to focus on Something related to Gen Y.
My motives: The market size it will represent in the near future, the difficulty in reaching this segment with traditional media and the availability of new technologies (Mainly Web 2.0). It think it makes it very interesting.

So far I've a vague idea on the model that I want to test:
Mainly I'm interested in testing if Technological accessibility, technological literacy and personal traits, have an influence on young consumers WOM. I also think that I will explore if Product Quality, Service, Innovativeness and Satisfaction will moderate WOM. Also, although not sure, if parental control has a moderator or mediatior effect on youngster's WOM.

I'd really appreciate any insights, suggestions, comments or critiques that you would have on this topic and the model.

Thank you very much!
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RESPONSES

  • Posted on 12/5/2008 at 11:04 AM Accepted
    First reaction is that the topic is pretty broad, but maybe you have some ideas that will let you deal with it all at the same time.

    The key question is what your methodology will be. You should read all you can on the topic ... from MarketingProfs reports and wherever else you can find tidbits that relate to your topic. But sooner or later you're going to need to survey or interview a sampling of your subjects, and how/where you do that is going to determine the value of your project.

    For starters, you probably need to narrow your efforts geographically. Europeans, North Americans and Asians, for example, may not all have the same behaviors in this regard. There could well be differences based on culture. Even within a single country there could be regional differences that are significant. You can either analyze those differences or just describe the ones you think are most important in a small region.

    Then you may also want to limit your work to a single technology. All of Web 2.0 is pretty broad, and you're going to have a problem trying to isolate effects if you include multiple technologies in a single study.

    Overall, my suggestion would be to narrow the focus considerably and do a great job on a very small slice, rather than a lousy job on everything.
  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 12/6/2008 at 9:42 AM Member
    Also, will you be surveying existing marketing efforts or will you create your own experiment?

    The problem with using a meta-analysis is that you'll need to make a number of assumptions on what contributed to the success/failure (was it the technology, the copy, the color of the copy, the placement of the copy on the page, the time of day the copy is seen, on what website, ... ?).

    If you undertake creating your own experiment, you can isolate the effects and get some accurate data. However, you may not have the budget to achieve something, nor the skills to create effective results, nor a product/message that's WOM-worthy.
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