How to write a marketing thesis

1
How to write a marketing thesis?

• Instructed by Yi-Wen Chien

2
What sections (or chapters) should be included
within a marketing paper?

• Study purpose
• Literature review
• Proposed framework
• Hypotheses
• Methodology
• Results and discussion
• General discussion

3
Study Purpose

• Tell your readers why you are doing this
  research?
• The relationship to be studied has never been
  examined before, but is important to both
  managerial implication or/and academic research
• For example, endorser-gt negative or no effect

4
Study Purpose

• There are conflicts existing among previous
  findings you can propose a new framework to
  explain these conflicts
• Endorser-gtpositive or negative effect or no
  effect
• Previous methodology is not appropriate you can
  propose a nee methodology to test the
  relationship which has been studied before

5
Literature Review

• Make sure all the previous literature cited or
  discussed in your study must be related to your
  proposed framework
• For example, you want to study the endorser
  effect on product attitudes and propose such
  effect may be moderated by involvement
• Focus on involvement and endorser and product
  attitude
• Do not cite endorser studies which are not
  related to involvement or product attitude
• You can refer to the following journals JCP,
  JCR, JM, JA, JMR, JPSP

6
Proposed Framework

• Explain your proposed theory here
• Your theory must be supported by previous
  theories cannot invent a theory from nothing
• Provide reasoning for your theory
• It is better to draw a figure to demonstrate the
  proposed relationship

7
The effects of endorsers on product attitudes
with involvement as a moderator
Product Attitude
Endorser
involvement
8
Hypothesis

• Summarize your proposed theory by using the form
  of statements
• The variables can be measured
• For example,
• H1 when involvement is high, there is no
  endorser effect that is, there is no different
  attitudes between positive and negative endorsers
  
• H2 when involvement is low, positive endorser
  produces more favorable product attitudes than
  negative endorser

9
Methodology

• Describe the methodology to test your proposed
  theory
• In marketing area, we usually use experiment
  design to test the theory
• Other methodologies include survey (first hand or
  existing data base), qualitative research
  (interview)

10
Experiment Design
High Involvement
Low Involvement
Positive endorser
Negative endorser
Positive endorser
Negative endorser
M3 gt M4
M1 M2
11
Surveyregression/LISREL

• Product attitude f (x1, x2, x3, x4.)

12
Methodology

• Pretest
• Procedure
• Independent variable
• Dependent variable

13
Results and Discussion

• Report your statistic analysis and summarize the
  findings
• If you need to do another study because of
  extending the first study or because there is
  something unexamined in the first study, you have
  to explain why you conduct the second study here

14
General Discussion

• Summarize the findings
• Explain the uniqueness of your research
• How it is different from previous literature
• How it can contribute to 1) managerial practice,
  and 2)academic research
• Describe possible limitations and future research
  directions