BUSINESS MARKETING RESEARCH PROJECT

A Business Marketing Research project is required. This is either an individual or a group (2 people) project where you may choose to work with ONE other person in the class as your group. You may pick your teammate however Spouses, significant others, boyfriends or girlfriends, roommates, individuals who date or dated, and siblings may not work with each other—those breaking this rule at my discretion will get a zero. A Dropbox folder will be available for you to submit your final project files. Use the class D2L email system to contact your team members. The Communication Classlist feature in D2L lists the names and D2L email address of all class members.

You will be graded as a group or individual on the quality of your submission and how well you work together as a team. If you have group members who are not participating and sharing the load, notify the instructor. Group members who are not participating may be removed.

Your task is to identify Business Marketing activities being covered by business trade publications and business newspapers, then discuss the business marketing implications associated with that event. Your project will be evaluated based on your ability to:

1. Choose one or more related topics we studied in B2B that interest you.
2. Find appropriate articles on the relevant business marketing topic, from which to extract useful information on that topic.
3. Summarize and organize this information using good business writing style (use good organization that the reader can follow easily, complete sentences, paragraphing, and proper referencing).
4. Analyze the issues identified in these articles and highlight relevant business marketing implications, commonalities, trends, concerns, etc.

For this project, you (individually or as a team) need to find a minimum of 6—individually, or 9—as a team, or more recent articles on a current (written in the past two years – 2015 – 2017) B2B topic in business trade publications and/or business newspapers concerning one or more related topics which we learned about in class.

The topic must be related to one or more concepts covered in this class (for example, Business Strategy, or Pricing, or Communications (See Topics and Assignments or Table of Contents in your text for more topics). Use only publications that are available in pdf format. You can also select for only pdf format in the advanced search feature of the UCO Library Business Source Complete database. You must research popular press articles and not company websites or company published material.

After you have located the articles, synthesize and summarize your research to discuss what you have learned about your topic from an industry perspective, making sure to cite your sources. Make sure to identify agreement or disagreement among the various authors of the articles you just summarized to give an idea what the issues and perspectives are found among knowledgeable experts in these fields. What did you learn as a whole? What common threads did you identify in your research? What did you learn that was different or similar to what you learned in class? What new issues, challenges, concerns or new trends did you identify from your literature review?

See the example paper provided.

MAKE SURE to research newspapers or trade publications (articles written by marketing practitioners – not scientific or academic articles). You will find trade publications much more interesting and easier to read. At least half your articles should be available in print form, not just online.

Do Not Research Academic Articles Or Journals. If the source of the article includes the words “Journal of . . .”, has extensive references, has other journals as references, begins with an abstract, has scientific notation, formulas, complex statistical analyses, experiments, or surveys and is long (10-50 pp.) it is probably an academic or scientific paper and is NOT ACCEPTABLE. If the article is short (1-3 pp.), easy to read, has advertisements on the page, is written by a marketing manager, etc., it is probably a trade publication. Do not make this project any harder by finding and trying to read complicated, boring academic/scientific publications. We want to know what problems, issues, solutions, business marketers out in the real marketplace are encountering and resolving.

The easiest way to search in business trade publications or newspapers is to use the UCO Library Business Source Complete database. Use the advanced search feature to limit your search to the time period, the type of publication (periodical articles, trade publications, and business newspapers), full text, pdf format. Do not use academic/scientific publications or company websites.

Start your assignment by reviewing the current marketing literature on the topics that interest each group member. Using the keywords which are highlighted in each chapter in the text and listed at the end of each chapter is a good way to start your search. While there are many research resources on the Internet, the UCO library is the best place to start your current marketing literature review. A library search has the immediate advantage of containing sources whose credibility can be easily tested and which have the APA style reference included.

First login to the UCO Library and record the complete reference listings of several articles that you think you might find interesting. There are many other resources available in the UCO Library to help you search for articles. For more information about these go tohttp://library.uco.edu/databases/. Do not use an Internet search engine like Google or Yahoo and just copy the first ten or so links that appear on a key word search.

Use articles written by outsiders– NOT company / organizational representatives (not websites). Articles appearing on company websites and company literature are more likely to be public relations/publicity rather than objective observations of the organization. Use articles that are fairly recent (published in 2015-2017). If you would like to check with the instructor before using a particular article you may. However, you do not have to have the articles approved before submitting the project.

If you follow the above procedures, you should find that the actual task of writing your paper will be easy. This project is worth a maximum of one hundred and fifty points but will be converted to the percentage corresponding to the grading criteria. Late submissions are not accepted because I must turn grades in on time and I need time to grade the research projects. No submission will be accepted after the submission deadline.

USE YOUR EMBEDDED LIBRARIAN!