1500 word Research Plan (40%) In preparation for Capstone projects in your final year, and in order to meet the relevant Learning Outcomes for this module (please see Module Guide), this assignment is designed to help you develop the skills involved in planning and designing small-scale research projects in Management and/or Marketing. With this in mind, the assignment requires you to work through the following process: • Choosing a topic • Searching and reviewing literature • Critically evaluating published research • Identifying research aims and questions • Selecting suitable case studies for analysis • Starting to develop a research plan (i.e, deciding what data you what you would collect and analyse) For this assignment, you must write a 1,500 word Research Plan focusing on ONE of the topics listed below. Once you have chosen your topic, you should complete the following seven sections (ideally using the headings and structure suggested): 1. Introduction: Topic, Research Question and Road Map for the Coursework: In this first section, briefly introduce your chosen research topic, state your research question, and provide an outline (“road map”) for the coursework assignment (i.e, say what you will do, and in what order). Tip: Don’t write this section until you have finished writing the rest of the document – it is always best to write your introduction, and provide a road map, once you know exactly what rest of the document will be saying. 2. Key Terms: List the five best key terms you have used to search for relevant academic literature on your topic, explaining why these terms have proven to be the most appropriate for your literature search. There may be a very large body of published work on your topic, or not very much at all, depending on how emergent the topic is within management and marketing research. Your aim is to focus, not to try to cover everything — so try not to be too broad. Your key terms may change as you do your search, and come across more relevant or useful terms, but list the five that have proven most appropriate in the write-up of your coursework assignment. 3. Annotated Review: This is a ‘mini’ literature review, and could provide the basis for a more thorough review at a later date. Produce a list of FIVE relevant articles in academic journals that focus on your topic. For the annotated review, first give a full Harvard-style reference for each article. Then, for each article, provide a short summary of what each article is about. This section should be about 500 words overall, so you should aim to write about 100 words for each article. We are looking for you to clearly summarize the main focus of each article, and to briefly explain and evaluate its contribution to understanding the topic (What does it tell us? What can we learn about the topic?). Ideally, you should be able to identify any gaps or questions, or avenues for further research that the papers you have read so far open up. You do NOT need to compare and contrast each paper, but you may want to identify areas of overlap and similarity, as well as any significant differences in approach. Your focus should be on the substance of each article, not its style. Tips: Please refer to the “ Harvard Referencing Quick Guide” posted, for guidance in properly formatting your references. A sample annotated review entry, with a properly formatted reference and a summary, will be posted for you, so you can see what these are meant to look like You do not need to have ‘one article for each key word’. Some articles might focus in depth on just one of your key words, others might address several or even all of your terms. It is useful to find articles that are quite recent and/or have been widely cited. You can tell this from Google Scholar, which tells you how many times the article has been cited in other word – this gives you an idea of how important and influential it has been in the area. 4. Research Question/Aim: Based on the reading that you have done so far, identity ONE research question/aim that you think would provide the basis for an interesting, important and timely contribution to research on your chosen topic. You will have very briefly introduced this question in your introduction. In this section, state again what your question/aim is, and then explain why you have chosen to focus on this particular aspect of the topic.
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