The marketing study project gives MSc Marketing students the opportunity of making a synthesis of the prior knowledge they acquired throughout the program, and of showing their ability to put it into practice. Parallel to this course students are pursuing an empirical marketing project.

This course offers a stimulating environment to learn and to discuss how to fine-tune research questions, (ii) how to derive an empirical approach to provide answers to these questions, (iii) how to select adequate methods to analyze quantitative and/or qualitative data, and (iv) how to translate empirical findings into managerial value and to provide management implications of our research. Moreover, this course offers a platform for MSc Marketing students to meet and discuss their marketing study projects with each other and experienced researchers.

The emphasis of this course is to enable students to translate their conceptual marketing know-how into an empirical project of practical relevance.

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

• Successfully integrate their marketing and methodological background knowledge into an empirical approach.
• Plan and conduct an empirical project of practical relevance and importance.
• Provide constructive feedback on their colleagues’ projects, to defend their own project against critical comments and to integrate theses comments in their current research work.
• Further improve their presentation and team working skills.

First and last sessions are mandatory. Minimum 70% attendance of total project.

While some parts of the seminar are held in a colloquium-style teaching format, the course will also utilize a mix of interactive faculty lectures, class discussions, and student presentations. The instructors will provide students with additional advice, individual and/or group coaching sessions, and feedback. Active participation is crucial for a favorable outcome of this course. Thus, all students are recommended to attend the entire seminar.

The logic underlying this course is as follows:

 (1) As will be made clear during the kick-off for the course, the objective of this course is NOT to evaluate your (final, written) thesis (this is the task of your supervisor), but to create a constructive environment to critically reflect, to discuss, and to review central aspects of the research questions underlying your thesis project and the approach you develop to provide answers to these questions.

 (2) At WU's Department of Marketing, we strongly believe that there is NO ONE BEST approach fitting to resolve certain research problems, but there is a multitude of methods available to marketing researchers and practitioners, each with its' specific merits and drawbacks. This is why we put so much emphasis on teaching you all these methods through the course of the MSc program. Against this background, a substantial part of the course (including its' evaluation) focuses on students' capabilities to develop, justify, defend, and, if necessary, to revise and improve their research question(s) and empirical approach(es). This also includes to deal with criticism (every empirical approach can be criticized for various reasons), and to integrate the concerns raised by colleagues and faculty members in their ongoing work on the project.

 (3) Students are advised to get back with the feedback from peers and faculty to their individual supervisors and try to integrate it in their study (at least, we hope to contribute to the "future research" and/or "limitations" section of your thesis). Overall, we hope to contribute to improve the quality of your research by opposing you to an ongoing discussion.

 (4) The course structure and the above described logic aims to mimic real-world settings, which include review processes of academic papers, business consulting projects with discussion rounds involving clients (who, by experience, most of the time also have different opinions than the consultants), or company projects involving different parties, positions, and opinions.

 (5) Overall, we aim to train and to further develop your capabilities in dealing with criticism, to define and to convincingly argue your position throughout the course, as well as to respect and to integrate others positions in your research work.

 (6) Finally, the final grade has different components that might or might not be strongly correlated with the “true” quality of the final thesis per se (the poster presentation, the final presentation etc.).

Grading of this course is based on the following components:

• quality of final presentation (your Master Thesis project) - 50%
• progress of your project (based on class-participation and faculty evaluations of progress report sessions) - 30 %
• peer feedback quality - 20 %

Note: To successfully pass this course, your weighted final grade needs to exceed 60% (marks are assigned in equal percentage increments)

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