Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

Sophie,

You're the second dissertation topic question discussing guerrilla marketing and viral marketing as your prospective topic and worried if there are enough books on the topic. Oh my gosh! Have you actually tried looking for books? There are a TON of books on those topics. They are the hottest topic in marketing today and everyone is writing about it. They are so hot they are approaching passe - what more can be said that hasn't been written already! Just search Amazon for guerrilla marketing and you'll see there are pages and pages of books:
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords....

And the same story for viral marketing:
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords...

Plus, don't forget that you don't have to have all your references from books. There's scholarly and peer reviewed journals with papers available on both topics. When I searched on EBSCOhost for “guerrilla marketing,” there were 37 results. For “viral marketing,” there were 84. I believe you will find plenty of source to formulate a dissertation.

Go to Amazon and look up books you'd like to review for your dissertation and then go to your library with the titles, authors, and ISBN numbers and see if they have them. If they don't, I'm sure they can get them. Use their facilities to search the article data bases. You'll have much more source than you can use.

As far as your proposed titles, the first one, "The impact of viral and guerrilla marketing on e-commerce businesses," sounds like a literature review. YAWN. Keep in mind that your dissertation goal is two-fold. And this doesn't include "getting a good grade and impressing my prof so I can graduate." First, you should be furthering the industry by adding new information. Just as you will take what other scholars have written as your base, you will take that a couple steps further and other scholars after you will use your input and add to that...Second, you are trying to learn something new so that you become just a little more valuable when you graduate and starting your career. Your topic should be of interest to you and in the area in which you'd like to begin practicing. If the hotel industry is where it's at for you, then the second topic may have possibilities. But, I would make it a statement, not a question. "How the online hotel market can take advantage of online guerrilla and viral marketing." Or even better, "Utilizing guerrilla and viral marketing to propel an online hotelier into the next level." Obviously, you'd have to pick a specific "subject" online hotelier. This would cover where they are today and the techniques they are using and how it's working. Then, by proposing guerrilla and viral marketing techniques - in particular, ones that are used successfully in other segments - and then discussing how to adapt them to the online hotelier environment. Further, if you can actually present data showing what worked and how much - you will have a great paper. It will provide you with meaty tools and set you apart from other new graduates in that industry and you will have furthered the marketing world.

I hope this helps.

Wayde

Wayde,

Thanks very much for your help. Your ideas are great and I think I am going to stick to the latter title you suggested - "Utilizing guerrilla and viral marketing to propel an online hotelier into the next level."

When you say "you'd have to pick a specific "subject" online hotelier" is it O.K just to pick one or is it best to do a comparison between a few hotels and the techniques they are currently using?

Thanks again for all your help, I really do appreciate it!

Sophie

Ok thanks very much Wayde! All great ideas and will definitely take them into consideration. Wish me luck!

Thanks for your help.

Sophie

My pleasure to help you.

Good luck, Sophie! Knock 'em dead!

Wayde