Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

I would definitely suggest trying to narrow down your topic and focus on one type of marketing. For example, if you wanted to talk about direct marketing and specifically direct mail, you could make a correlation to the US Post Office which had the largest rate increase for direct mailers in the beginning of 2008. They also recently have requested the government to allow them to switch from delivering 6 days per week to 5 (Mon-Fri, cutting out Sat.) as well asking for financial assistance to pay for employees benefits among other things. The relationship between direct mail marketing and the post office suffering from the recession could lead to a number of discussions such as:
- Has a decrease in direct mail by marketers (which has always been expensive) caused the post office to raise their rates or did the rate increase cause marketers to decrease their direct mail volume?
- How the rate increase in direct mail has caused marketers to look for alternative ways to promote their business such as email and social media which are less expensive.
- What the effects of the recession and the post office increase have on marketers and their response rates now that many are gearing away from their dependency on direct mail, which has consistently had the highest response rate. Are lower cost promotions yielding the same benefits and is the ROI equivalent?

Just some thoughts. You could probably talk about any of these without mention of the post office changes as well.

Hope this helps!

There is a dissertation you may find relevant to your topic, its on Credit Crunch and Financial Crisis effect on Consumer Buying Behaviour: https://www.ivoryresearch.com/sample25.php

hope this helps

Could you conduct a qualitative study and interview marketing leaders to ask them what strategies they are using during the economic crisis, then pull the themes from their answers?