Description
University of Glasgow
Adam Smith Business School
Assessment Brief 2024/2025
Assignment Information.
Course Code : MGT5327
Course Title : Marketing Research
Course Coordinator : Dr. Durga Nagarajan and Dr. Anupam Singh
Weighting : 100%
Submission date : Tuesday, 4 th March 2025, 12pm (noon)
Word limit : 2500 words.
- QUESTION/ DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITY
The Marketing Research course assessment is based solely (100%) upon one piece of individual coursework, a proposal-based portfolio. Its main objective is to expose you to the critical issues, and decisions involved in the process of marketing research (without collecting or analysing data). It is a structured collection of evidence and critical reflection, or analysis designed to support, and document your learning, and development towards the intended learning outcomes (ILOs) or competences of the course. This assessment will play an important part in designing, and undertaking the research contained in your dissertations, as you will be required to set out several component parts demonstrating your learning. It is therefore very important that the portfolio shows evidence not only of what will be done (descriptions), but also why it will be done (evidence-based justifications), in the way that it reflects the rationale of the whole project, at each and every stage.
The portfolio is presented in 2 main parts:
Part 1: Research Proposal (2500 words)
Your research proposal should be structured featuring:
- An introduction section (Discussing the background of the assigned topic, and why it is of interest both theoretically (intended academic/theoretical contributions), and practically (intended managerial/practical implications for relevant stakeholders), outlining the research aim, questions/objectives of this research proposal, research setting/context, and the structure of the proposal);
- A critical literature review section (Positioning your research aim, questions/objectives in the broader literature, outlining the gap in knowledge you want to close, defining key terms/concepts, and identifying if there are academic debates surrounding these, evaluating key theories, models and concepts, and setting relevant hypotheses (the number of hypotheses you set depends on the key concepts you have reviewed);
- A methodology section (You must pursue a mixed-methods approach: that means that you must have BOTH a qualitative and a quantitative phase. Make sure to justify your methodological choices, justify your proposed research philosophy, research design, logic of research, process of research, time horizon, and purpose of the research, the order and sequence of qualitative and quantitative phases/studies, research instruments and their design (interview guide and questionnaire based on your key concepts), sampling (including the sampling criteria and proposed sample sizes), and data analysis, critically address the following questions: what are the strengths and weaknesses of your approach/technique and research design in comparison to other relevant approaches/techniques and research designs? What are your sampling techniques, and how are you going to recruit participants/respondents? How will you prepare your data and analyse your data? Which techniques will you use? And, why have you considered these as appropriate for your assigned research topic and proposal? What is the scope? For example, will your research be bounded by time, geography, participant/respondent characteristics, or any other relevant parameters? What are the limitations of the research design? For example, the quality of the evidence, sampling, and any other constraints… What measures are you going to undertake to ensure rigour/quality? What are the ethical implications?)
- References should be enclosed following Harvard referencing guidelines at the end of your research proposal. References are excluded from the word-count.
Part 2: Appendices (excluded from the word-count)
- Your Interview Guide
- Your Questionnaire
Please note that…
- You are assigned to topics, rather than being asked to come up with your own topics, in order to firstly, ensure that the topics have significant academic/theoretical contributions, managerial/practical implications, secondly, to ensure that there is a gap in knowledge concerning the topics, and thirdly, to ensure that the topics are suitable for a mixed-methods design. You will be allowed to choose your own dissertation topics, only after undertaking both core and elective courses, and, thus, after being introduced to various subjects, topics, issues, and paths entailed in the whole MSc in International Strategic Marketing programme.
- You CAN choose any country, industry, sector, etc., as the context/setting of your research in this assessment, provided that there are legitimate reasons for your choices, and that you critically justify them in your portfolio.
- You CAN enclose further relevant tables/charts/appendices/diagrams/figures/exhibits/pictures, should you wish so. As stated in the first page, these are excluded from the word-count.
- You MUST NOT collect any data for this assessment, and you are NOT required to conduct any analysis, as this is a proposal, and you will not have obtained ethics approval.
- Having a conclusion section is optional, albeit please be mindful of the word-count (conclusion section is included in the word-count).
- Any material (diagrams/figures/tables/charts/exhibits/pictures, etc.) that is in any language, but English, should be stated in English, as well as the native language.
- Starting working on your individual portfolio early will very likely improve the quality of your final submission. An assessment such as this cannot easily be done with little time for considerable, and careful development, and crisp, clear submission.
Assigned Research Proposal Topics
Half of the cohort is randomly assigned to topic 1, and the other half to topic 2. This information is available on Moodle.
Topic 1: The impacts of influencer marketing on the way consumers perceive brands…
- Some concepts to begin with (you can use other relevant concepts if you wish so): Brand Personality, Brand Respect, Influencer Credibility, Online Brand Engagement, Brand Equity, etc.
Topic 2: The consequences of gender-role stereotypes portrayed in adverts on the way consumers perceive brands…
- Some concepts to begin with (you can use other relevant concepts if you wish so): Brand Gender, Brand Engagement, Brand Love, Brand Hate, Brand Respect, Brand Equity, etc.
You should NOT investigate the consequences of non-gender role stereotyped adverts and/or outcomes of femvertising! Please precisely focus on the topic you are assigned to!
- ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Intended Learning Outcomes Being Assessed By the end of this course students will be able to:
- Clearly identify various research designs, and explain the differences between exploratory, descriptive, and causal research designs.
- Analyse the nature, and scope of secondary, and primary data and be able to collect, analyse, and assess secondary, and primary data for specific research purposes.
- Differentiate between situations that call for qualitative, and situations that call for quantitative research.
- Explain the differences between qualitative, and quantitative marketing research in terms of the objectives, sampling, data collection, and analysis.
- Select the most appropriate qualitative research methods (e.g., focus-groups, in-depth interviews, semi-structured interviews, etc.) based on the purpose of the research problem.
- Apply a range of survey, scale, and questionnaire techniques in order to effectively conduct a survey.
- Recognise, and recommend the best sampling technique for different situations, and defend that recommendation.
- Explain the nature of descriptive statistics, and other methods of data analysis (e.g., t-tests, ANOVA, correlation analysis, etc.)
- Effectively write a marketing research prop.
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