Marketing Research Assignment -

Developing a research proposal for the underperforming brand

Your task

You are to design and construct a research proposal. The research proposal is for the company (brand) you selected in Assignment 1 (i.e. Lenovo, Sprite or Dior). You may use information (and feedback) that you gained from completing the first assignment to help you to develop the rationale for the research problem and the rationale for the research and sample design. You may find yourself having to undertake further digital research to help you with your decision-making (and rationale) when developing the research proposal.

You may present your research proposal using MS Word. Please limit your assignment to 2500 words (excluding the reference list). Your research proposal should contain a Cover Page, an Introduction, the Management Decision Statement (MDS), the Business Research Objective (BRO), two or three Research Questions, an ethical and robust well-argued Research Design (and diagram of the research design), and the Sample Design (and rationale).

You may like to investigate different ways to develop, construct and present a research proposal. Investigating different types of research proposals is likely to help you with your design, structure and headings. We will judge your research proposal on the extent to which you demonstrate critical thinking and problem solving skills, your ability to compose, design, justify, prioritise and produce a research proposal as well as your demonstrated understanding of the research process.

Please remember to reference all of your information using the Harvard AGPS referencing guide. There is no limit on the number of sources for this assignment. Given that, you are likely to undertake some digital research to help you to develop and construct the research proposal. I am expecting you to use at least six references, possibly more.

Please ensure you check your assignment against the Marking Criteria when developing, constructing and editing and before submitting your assignment. More than likely you will need to undertake further digital research to complete Assignment 2. Any digital research undertaken will help you to make decisions to do with your research design, and will help you to develop, construct (and present) a rationale for those decisions.

Remember to reference any research used.

The digital research you undertake is also likely to help you to develop some research questions (interview, focus group, survey or observation) for this assignment. The proposal is to be general (over-arching). The purpose of the proposal is to give the manager an idea of what you are planning (and to give you practice at developing a research proposal).

We are not expecting you to develop a timeline or budget with your research proposal. We are more interested in having you go through the process of developing a research proposal and making the various decisions (and providing a rationale for them) that occur when undertaking research. The purpose of this assignment is to give you confidence about the research process, and understanding of what goes on, should you ever engage in research yourself.