Question

Topic: Student Questions

Phd Thesis Advice Needed: Imc, Branding

Posted by Anonymous on 10/22/2010 at 1:12 PM ET 250 Points
Hello,

I'm looking for some advice. I'm hoping to start a PhD next year, and I'm struggling to pick a suitable topic. There are many areas of marketing that I am personally interested in, which makes pinning down issues in certain areas quite hard.

I've been out of education for a few years and the topics I investigated for previous degrees have moved on. But as background info, my undergrad topic was the importance of brand personality in the cosmetics industry. This was very interesting, and earned me a first. My Masters topic was on achieving IMC in amateur and semi-professional sports clubs, which earned me a distinction.

I loved studying at uni, so now I'm coming up to a period where I'm being made redundant, alongside that UK uni fee’s are likely to be on the up, so starting some research next year is something I’d like to do, given the unemployment problem/opportunity that’s ahead!

I'm really interested in branding and IMC. Visual auditing and design work are strength of mine, as is marketing communication strategy. I love researching case studies, particularly being hands on and being on location. I do quite a lot of design work, so something with a creative slant would be greatly suitable.

My work experience since university has been predominantly in SME's, working on ridiculously tight budgets, so my first thought was to look at SME or start up IMC on a shoe-string budget. However, I've also some experience in a large national tourist attraction, and I'm interested in the marketing strategy for that. I'd love to do some travelling in the next few years, so I thought a comparative study of IMC at several world class tourist attractions would be really fascinating, and I could take myself off on location to do research.

My PhD will be self funded, so I don’t see a problem with building in some abroad time, to make things more interesting for me. However, I’m painfully aware that there’s probably something worth pursuing in SME/start up marketing on a budget, given the UK’s horrific financial position right now.

Any advice that anyone can throw at me would be much appreciated. I feel like I haven’t got very far with a topic in the last few months, and I’d like to prepare a proposal before my job contract is up (January), so I can get started on research asap. I hate sitting around not doing anything!

Thanks for taking the time to read this.
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by telemoxie on 10/23/2010 at 10:33 AM Member
    can somebody help me out here... does IMC refer to “integrated marketing communications"?

    If it does, what about a thesis regarding integrating multiple Facebook and social media "personalities" of more traditional marketing programs?
  • Posted on 11/1/2010 at 4:51 AM Author
    Hi,

    Thanks for replying, but that's not what I was looking for.
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