Please see below for the list of general topics you can choose from and instructions on how to conduct literature review and write down your report:
General topics to choose from:
- The role of ‘attitude’ in purchasing/repurchasing a product or a service,
- The role of ‘affect’ in purchasing/repurchasing a product or a service,
- The role of ‘social norms’ in purchasing/repurchasing a product or a service,
- The role of ‘motives’ and/or ‘needs’ in purchasing/repurchasing a product or a service,
- The role of ‘personality’ in purchasing/repurchasing a product or a service,
- The role of ‘cultural values’ in purchasing/repurchasing a product or a service,
- The role of ‘past experience’ in purchasing/repurchasing a product or a service,
- The role of ‘word of mouth’ in purchasing/repurchasing a product or a service,
- The role of ‘satisfaction’ in purchasing/repurchasing a product or a service,
How to rephrase the title of your report:
First, choose one of the general topics listed above. Then, choose the type of product or service (context) you will be focusing on for this assignment. The third step is to rephrase your title based on the context you chose. For example, if you choose automobile industry as the context you will be focusing on, and topic #9, your rephrased title will be: ‘The role of ‘satisfaction’ in purchasing an automobile’. As another example, if you choose travel industry as the context you will be focusing on, and topic #7, your rephrased title will be: ‘The role of ‘past experience’ in repurchasing international (or domestic) flights’.
Although you will be exploring services or products produced by a particular provider (e.g. Volkswagen, National Australia Bank, McDonald, etc. ), please leave the title of your report general and don’t mention a particular brand, or a particular product/service provided by a particular producer. For example, for the title of your report, you can’t choose: the influence of satisfaction on purchasing Volkswagen cars or Garnier Shampoos, or McDonald fast food, or services from National Austral Bank, but you can choose: the influence of satisfaction on purchasing an ‘automobile’, ‘hair care product’, ‘fast food’, or ‘banking services’ in general. Other examples of types of products or services you might want to choose can be: ‘bikes’, ‘motorbikes’, ‘outfits’, ‘personal care products’, ‘cosmetics’, ‘athletic shoes’, ‘athletic outfits’, ‘shoes’, ‘baggage’, ‘international flights’, ‘insurance services’, ‘hotel accommodation’, ‘river cruises’, ‘safari tours’, ‘theme park services’, etc. (Please note that the above-mentioned products and services are only examples, and you can choose any product type or service setting you like).
Important:
Although your title will be general, you will be focusing on a product line or a service provided by a particular producer in some sections of your report. More specifically, the goal is to have a general literature review about the influence of Concept 1 on Concept 2 regardless of context, first. Then you need to narrow down your literature review and study the influence of Concept 1 on Concept 2 by looking at the existing literature in the context you chose (i.e., automobile industry, travel industry, hair care products, etc.), in general. Finally, you will provide some recommendations for marketing strategies of a particular brand and suggest how they can attract new customers or how they can enhance their customers’ likelihood of repurchase of a particular product or service based on your general conclusions drawn from your literature review).
How to conduct literature review and write a 1700-2000 word report:
The following components are required in your report:
- Introduction
- Concept 1 (e.g. satisfaction)
- Concept 2 (e.g. intention to repurchase)
- A parent theory (to justify the impact of Concept 1 on Concept 2)
- Relationship between Concept 1 and Concept 2 (e.g. Relationship between satisfaction and intention to repurchase)
- proposition
- Conclusions (implications of your conclusions for practice)
Details about each component of the report:
- Introduction
First, describe the context (i.e., automobile industry, travel industry, etc.) you chose, in general. As a second step, introduce the particular product line or a service produced by a particular brand (e.g. Volkswagen Golf, or Qantas business class international flights, etc.) in the context you chose. Explain what customer segment the product/service is targeted at. Discuss how the chosen product/service is differentiated for a particular target market. More specifically, discuss the existing marketing strategies which are being used to attract customers purchasing the product/service or to encourage the existing customers to repurchase. Explain the features of the product/service (e.g. functionality, the design of the product, etc.) and discuss how such features might create value for the target market. Also, explain how the service /product is promoted to the targeted segment. For example, you can describe features of the product (e.g. labelling, advertisements, packaging, etc.) which are used to communicate promised value to the target market. While explaining the strategies and factors you think might be influential to increase purchase or repurchase intentions and behaviour, refer to the possible influence of ‘Concept 1’ on the likelihood of purchasing or repurchasing the product/service [Note: depending on what topic you choose you will be exploring the role of a particular concept on repurchase or purchase behaviour or intention. For example, if you choose question 9 (e.g. what is the influence of satisfaction on purchasing an automobile?), the concept you are exploring its influence on purchase behaviour is ‘satisfaction’. For the sake of brevity, I referred to this concept as Concept 1, and referred to purchasing or repurchasing behaviour or intention as Concept 2 throughout this document].
Finally, you can mention that you will be exploring the influence of Concept 1 on Concept 2 in the rest of your report more in detail, and you will be providing some recommendations how the provider you chose (e.g. Volkswagen, Qantas, etc.) can enhance their customers’ likelihood of purchase or repurchase of the particular product or service (e.g. Volkswagen Golf, Qantas business class international flights, etc.) in section 7.
- Concept 1 (e.g. satisfaction)
Conduct a literature review to understand how the existing studies (peer-reviewed journal articles) conceptualised Concept 1 (e.g. satisfaction). For example, if you chose question 9 (e.g. what is the influence of satisfaction on purchasing an automobile?), then you need to synthesise the existing research to see how different researchers conceptualised (defined) concept of ‘satisfaction’. You will find out that different studies approached the concept of ‘satisfaction’ differently. For example, some papers focused on transaction-specific satisfaction, while others focused on overall satisfaction. In addition, some research conceptualised satisfaction as a disconfirmation process or post-purchase evaluation process whereas others approached this concept as a post-purchase affective state (e.g. feeling delighted or happy after using the product or service).
For this section of your report, first write an introductory paragraph introducing Concept 1 and briefly make mention of the ways the existing literature approached this concept.
You need to develop a table, then, which summarises your classification of the existing research based on the differences and similarities you find in the existing literature in terms of conceptualisation of the Concept 1.
As a next step, you need to explain your classification presented in the table. In two to three paragraphs describe the content of the table and elaborate on each category (it is important that you elaborate on the content of each table cell).
Important:
You are required to provide references from peer-reviewed journal articles both in the table and within text (please see the file on the Moodle explaining how this report will be marked).
Finally, clarify how you, yourself, conceptualised Concept 1. That is to say, you need to clarify that the way you approached and defined Concept 1 is in line with a particular existing conceptualisation you highlighted in your table and discussed in your paper while synthesising the literature. For example, if your question is: ‘what is the influence of satisfaction on purchasing an automobile?), you need to clarify if you are exploring the role of this concept (e.g. satisfaction) as an emotional state or as a post-purchase evaluation process. You also need to clarify if you are focusing on transaction-specific satisfaction or on overall satisfaction.
- Concept 2 (e.g. intention to repurchase)
In a short paragraph explain if you are exploring the influence of Concept 1 on Purchase (first time trial) or repurchase behaviour. Furthermore, you need to clarify if your focus is on ‘intention’ or on ‘actual’ purchase or repurchase behaviour.
- Parent theory (to justify the impact of Concept 1 on Concept 2)
A Parent theory is any robust (famous) theory which has been tested several times and has been shown to be generalizable to many contexts. Since parent theories are reliable, they can be used to justify relevant hypotheses in other research works.
Several famous theories were discussed during the semester (e.g. The Theory of Reasoned Action, The Theory of Planned Behaviour, The Theory of Trying, Biased Assimilation, Cognitive Dissonance, Consistency Principle, The Social Cognitive Theory of Personality, The Elaboration Likelihood Model …). They are all famous robust theories (parent theories) that, depending on the context, can be relied on and can be used to justify the relationship you will propose might exist between two concepts (e.g. Relationship between Attitude and purchase behaviour).
For this section 4 of your report, more specifically you need to do the followings:
Find a parent theory to justify why you think Concept 1 influences Concept 2. By doing this you are actually practicing deduction. See an example of deduction:
- All plants require Oxygen (this is a parent theory).
- Orchids are plants.
- Therfore, Orchids require Oxygen (your proposed conclusion).
Or:
- Attitude influences behaviour (theory of reasoned action: a parent theory)
- ‘Overall satisfaction’ is analogous to the concept of attitude (an understanding based on your conceptualisation and synthesis of the literature presented in section 2).
- Therfore, satisfaction influences (re-purchase) behaviour (your proposed conclusion)
Please note that you need to justify that Concept 1 influences Concept 2 relying on a parent theory. To this end, first, explain the parent theory in a paragraph. Then in a second paragraph justify why you think this parent theory can explain why Concept 1 might influence Concept 2.
- Relationship between Concept 1 and Concept 2 (e.g. Relationship between satisfaction and intention to repurchase)
To further justify that Concept 1 might influence Concept 2, you are required to do a literature review and see if there is an existing study which found this relationship statistically significant. Develop a table in which one column contains the list of all research (references) which found this relationship statistically significant and a column which found this relationship non-significant. You can further synthesise the literature by exploring the similarities and differences of the studies in each column. For example, you might find that the majority of the research found the influence of Concept 1 on Concept 2 is statistically significant for a particular product, or service, or for men vs. women, or for routine services as compared to non-routine services, for baby boomers as compared to generation Y, etc. See if you can further synthesise the literature to provide support for the possible influence of Concept 1 on Concept 2. Also acknowledge the studies that did not find this relationship statistically significant [Please note that, in addition to presenting your synthesis in a table, you need to describe the table in two to three paragraphs and elaborate on your synthesis of the literature]. In addition, please note that, so far, your literature review in previous sections and at the beginning of this section is general and it does not focus on the particular product or service you discussed in the introduction section. In other words, it includes research conducted in any context.
As a next part of this section, you need to start narrowing down your literature review and see if there is any evidence in the relevant literature to support the influence of Concept 1 on Concept 2 for the context you chose. For example, if the question you chose is: ‘what is the influence of satisfaction on purchasing an automobile?’, after your general synthesis of the literature in terms of the relationship between satisfaction and purchase behaviour, you need to narrow down your review, and see if there is any particular study which found this relationship significant in automotive industry. You can also further explore the existing literature to see if this relationship is being observed to be more significant for men than women, or for routine services vs. non-routine services, or for people with different levels of income, or for people with a certain personality trait (e.g. need for prestige), etc.
Important:
Please see the file on the Moodle site to find out how this section will be marked including information on required number of peer-reviewed journal articles. Please don’t forget that you need to provide references both in the table and within text.
- Proposition
In this section you write down your proposition in italic. For example, you can say, relying on the parent theory (e.g. theory of planned behaviour) and based on the synthesis of the literature discussed in the previous sections, we propose that:
Concept A influences Concept B
Or:
Concept A influences Concept B for men than women
Or:
Concept A influences Concept B for non-routine services than routine services
- Conclusions (implications of your conclusions for practice)
For a real research, after developing propositions or hypotheses, the next step would be collecting data using a data collection method (e.g. experiments or surveys) and analysing data using a statistical technique (e.g. ANOVA) to see if the proposition is statistically significant. If the proposed relationship was found to be statistically significant, the proposition would be accepted. If the results were not statistically significant, the propositions would be rejected. Findings then would be discussed and implications for practice and theory would be highlighted.
For this assignment, HOWEVER, there is no need to collect data and test your propositions. Assuming that your proposition is accepted, provide recommendations for practitioners in relation to the particular product/service (e.g. Volkswagen Golf, or Qantas business class international flights, etc.) you chose, and explain how your conclusions and findings based on the literature review can help them enhance purchase or repurchase of that particular product/service. In other words, provide recommendations about their marketing strategies based on your conclusions and literature review (To find out how this section of your report will be marked please see the file on the Moodle site).
This assignment will be explained during the first lecture (week 1) by the lecturer and in week 2 by the tutors. Please bear in mind that this is an individual assignment and it requires that you start working on it from early weeks of the semester to be able to submit it by the due deadline.
In addition to the instructions above, please make sure you read the file in which I have explained how your assignment will be marked. It is important to read this file to know about the evaluation criteria and expectations from early weeks of the semester. Furthermore, please read the checklist to know about the font size, minimum number of peer-reviewed journal articles you need to synthesise, etc.
Please note that you need to submit this work online through Moodle site and your work should be submitted to URKUND to check for text matching. Please bear in mind that I don’t give a second chance to anybody with high URKUND report and the reports will be sent directly to Associate Dean of Education Office for further investigation. As a student from University of Canberra you are responsible to familiarize yourself with UC policies about misconduct including plagiarism.
