The Newcastle Business School

Masters Dissertation Proposal

Name _____________________________Programme ____BUSINESS WITH

MARKETING
_____________
(SURNAME) (FORENAMES)

This form MUST be accompanied by the Triplicate NBS PG Dissertation

Registration Form

The number of words for each section are for GUIDANCE ONLY.

1 Researchable Topic Area: you should include background and issue(s)

underlying the research (approximately 150-200 words):

Aims
The study will aim to investigate to what extent UK organisations are currently
utilising digital advertising methods in their communication plans and thus to
identify current advertising trends in the UK market. The study will also aim to
investigate the importance of digital advertising as a source of media
communication and will inevitably aim to identify what makes a digital media
campaign a success.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the recent surge in practice of

digital (online) advertising over the typical conventional method of traditional
advertising (television and radio) as a source of media used by UK
organisations. In the past decade there has been a rapid growth in the usage
of the Internet as a marketing medium for many companies. This has had a
significant effect on how advertising budgets have been allocated as
organisations attempt to embrace the digital era. This research will attempt to
investigate this rapid growth of online advertising and will help to explain the
importance and necessity of digital medium for an organisation’s advertising
strategy.

“The Age of Digital Advertising: Does This Spell the End for UK Tradition?”

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2 Objectives for the Research: you should state3-4 maximum research
objectives,relating toacademic theories, your proposed investigation, your
analysis and your conclusions (approximately 80-100 words):

Objectives
 To identify the theories/frameworks and current research related to the
purpose and importance of advertising and more specifically how it can act
as a source of competitive advantage for an organisation utilising research
undertaken on both digital and traditional advertising methods.
 To explore the impact of digital media campaigns on the relative
performance of UK organisations as a measure of success or failure.
 To assess current attitudes of managers and employees of UK
organisations in relation to digital and traditional methods of media
communication and to examine current beliefs into the importance of
successful advertising campaigns in relation to final product/service
consumption.
 To propose how digital media campaigns can improve the prosperity and
reputability of UK organisations with regard to product/service adoption by
new customers and retention of existing customers.
 To recommend to managers what makes a successful digital marketing
campaign by developing a consummate set of principles that help to
determine campaign success.

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3 Literature Review: you should identify and discuss the academic theories
and some current research relevant to your researchable topic area You
should use in text citations, Harvard reference style and add a full reference
list in Section 8 (approximately 500–700 words).

Marketing is more than just distributing products or services from the

manufacturer to the customer. The product or service itself, its naming,
packaging, pricing and distribution, are all reflected in advertising, which has
been called the lifeblood of an organisation (Jefkins & Yadin, 2000). The
Institute of Practitioners in Advertising states that:

“Advertising presents the most persuasive possible selling message

to the right prospects for the product or service at the lowest
possible cost” (Davis, 1997).

Digital advertising commonly refers to the form of media promotion that uses
the Internet for the intentional purpose of delivering marketing messages to
attract specific customers. This can include anything from adverts placed on
search engine results pages (e.g. Google or Bing), banner adverts, email
marketing and social network advertising (e.g. on Facebook, Twitter or
Myspace).

Digital advertising is one of the fastest growing channels of media

communications and has become an important tool in the advertising industry
in the past decade. Nowadays more and more people are spending an
increasing amount of time on the Internet and as such companies are looking
to exploit this in the form of their marketing communications mix (Tuten, 2008).

The Hierarchy-of-Effects model (Lavidge & Steiner, 1961) is a theory of

advertising that proposes seven stages through which the buyer/customer
passes from unawareness of a product or service to eventual purchase.
These stages include: unawareness, awareness, knowledge, liking,
preference, conviction and finally purchase. Franzen (1997) suggests that
advertising execution must meet a number of criteria to be considered
effective. It must:

 Be perceived with the senses;

 Succeed in gaining and retaining our attention;
 Succeed in getting us to register the brand well;
 Be likeable and not irritating;
 Contribute to the difference we perceive between the advertised brand and
its alternatives;
 Influence our choice in favour of the advertised brand; and
 Have a central message that is stored in our memory.

The Hierarchy-of-Effects model is therefore used to measure consumers'

attitude towards products, as consumers develop thoughts and feelings
towards products from the advertising they are exposed to, even though in

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numerous cases they may have had no first-hand experience of the product or
brand itself.

More recent research in this area indicates that there are four main
frameworks that provide a collective view on how advertising works (Fill,
1999):

 Sales Framework: This assumes that advertising has a short-term, direct

impact on sales. This effect is measurable and whilst other outcomes
might also result from advertising, the only important factor is sales.
 Persuasion Framework: Persuasion is brought about by gradually
moving buyers through a number of sequential steps. This relates back to
the Hierarchy-of-Effects model in that it presumes buyer decision making
is rational and can be accurately predicted.
 Involvement Framework: Involvement of the product develops as a
consequence of involvement with the advertisement. This can occur when
a member of the target audience gets so involved in the advertising that
they effectively “see themselves” in the situation depicted in the advert.
 Salience Framework: Salience models are based on the premise that
advertising works by standing out, by being radically different from all
other advertisements in the product class.

Further research done in this area indicates that there are two polarised views
of the subject (Koekemoer & Bird, 2004):

 Strong Theory of Advertising: This assumes that advertising is capable

of effecting a degree of change in the knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or
behaviour of target audiences. The theory holds that advertising can
persuade someone to buy a product that he/she has never purchased
previously.
 Weak Theory of Advertising: This states that the strong theory does not
reflect the real world and believes that a consumer’s pattern of brand
purchases is driven more by habit than by exposure to advertising.

4 Details of your research: (a) Identify who or what you will use to obtain
data or information (b) Explain how you will collect this data / information and
how you will get access (c) Identify how you are going to analyse your data /
information (approximately 500–700 words).

This study will attempt to investigate the recent emergence of digital

advertising through primary research conducted with managing directors and
employees of various advertising and marketing agencies across the north
east of England and secondary research in the form of analysis of company
publications/reports and company websites.

The researcher will conduct a face to face interview with his father; the
Managing Director of XXXX Advertising - a successful advertising agency
specialising in media buying and planning based in ??????. The researcher

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will also obtain secondary data in the form of the agency’s reports and
accounts relating to organisational advertising budget expenditure of north
east companies and will attempt to identify key regional advertising trends
emerging in the past few years. The researcher will also conduct face to face
interviews with the agency’s Media Managers, who specialise in the practice
of online advertising media, in order to gain a greater insight into why certain
organisations choose to use digital media over others and effectively how an
online advertising campaign is put together and as such what brings about a
successful campaign. These appointments have been confirmed to the
researcher in person.

The researcher will also conduct a face to face interview with the Managing
Director of YYYYY; an award-winning marketing agency also based in ??????,
specialising in public relations, design, digital media and advertising. YYYYY
offers a vast array of marketing services to potential clients including launch
events, new websites, email marketing campaigns and media relations
programmes. This appointment has been confirmed to the researcher in
person.

The researcher will also conduct a face to face interview with the Managing
Director of ZZZZZ; a company based just outside of ?????? that delivers
online marketing services specialising in search engine optimisation, pay per
click management and social media marketing. This appointment has been
confirmed to the researcher in person.

This research will therefore take the form of a qualitative study and will
attempt to identify the various beliefs and opinions of the respondents
involved. Qualitative research provides an understanding of how or why
things are as they are. Unlike quantitative research there are no fixed set of
questions but, instead, a discussion guide is used to explore various issues.
Primarily this research examines the attitudes, feelings and motivations of
respondents (Proctor, 2005) and is grounded in a broadly interpretivist
philosophical position in the sense that it is concerned with how the social
world is interpreted, understood, experienced or produced (Mason, 2002).
There are however some limitations of this method of research. Firstly it is
more difficult to determine the validity and reliability of linguistic data with
regards to qualitative research. It is also harder to determine the extent of
influence that the researcher has had over the results, i.e. through researcher
bias. Hence there is more subjectivity involved in analysing this type of data.

This study aims to use research based on a truly qualitative level, with the in-
depth face to face interview being the research technique of choice. An
interview is defined as “a conversation directed to a definite purpose other
than satisfaction in the conversation itself” (Bingham et al. 1931) designed to
reveal the underlying motives of the interviewee’s attitudes, behaviour and
perceptions. In-depth face to face interviews will be used as there is a free
exchange of information with no pressure on the participant to conform to a
group norm. In this case the personal one-to-one situation gives the
respondent the feeling of being the focus of the attention, whose thoughts,
feelings and attitudes are considered to be of great importance to the

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interviewer. This allows respondents to be questioned at length to reveal the
feelings and motivations that underlie their statements and beliefs.

To analyse the data the researcher intends to use a daily interpretive analysis
in order to review the notes and the tapes of all interviews. At the end of every
day of interviewing a report will be written summarising the key points of all
interviews, including direct quotes from respondents. This will be done in
order to draw sufficient conclusions of the results and to draw direct
connections between different ideas and processes that will be mentioned in
the interactive interviews. Each interview will be analysed thoroughly in order
to search for similar responses and phrases in which sections of each
transcript will be put together to form overall overriding themes that will
potentially be addressed by each respondent.

Access to each organisation has been granted to the researcher in person.

The researcher’s father has multiple business contacts due to him being the
Managing Director of one of the ?????? most established advertising
agencies. Therefore access to other similar agencies in the region has been
easy to acquire. It should also be noted that there is the option to arrange
more interviews with professionals in the advertising industry depending on
the quality of data obtained in the above stated research which would again
be obtained via the researcher’s contacts.

5 Research ethics: - if your study involves people, briefly describe what you
will consider in order to ensure that your research follows the University’s
Ethical Policies and Procedures, for example, individual consent and / or
organisational consent. If your study involves secondary data only, you should
advise us of any ethical issues or the absence of any ethical issues
(approximately 50–100 words).

In relation to ethical issues, the researcher has informed each organisation

that the data and information that they will provide will be strictly used solely
for the purposes of an academic dissertation and will not be used in such a
way that could hinder their business reputation.

6 Conclusions: you should describe what your research will achieve by

referring back to your objectives in Section 2 (approximately 100–200 words):

The research question can be addressed and suitably answered given the
nature of the primary research and more importantly the credibility of the
sources of information that have been made available to the researcher. The
scale of the research is both practical and viable, given the obvious time
constraints associated with academic procedures like this and thus the
dissertation itself is manageable in relation to size, structure and resources.

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 Due to the nature of the researcher’s contacts it could also be possible to
conduct a pilot study in order to test the feasibility of the interview procedure.

The results of this research will have important managerial implications for
both sellers and buyers of online advertising. As the business landscape of
the 21st century is becoming more and more obsessed with technology, digital
media is paving the way for organisational competitive advantage.
Companies which embrace this trend will be able to benefit by building long-
lasting relationships with their customers. Digital advertising is a flexible,
dynamic and modern approach to media communications and, if used
effectively, can bring in extremely high revenue streams for organisations that
choose to adopt it.

7 Timetable for your research: you should cover the whole period of time
available (by month). You should indicate below when you are going to work
on various parts of your dissertation, for example, your literature review, your
collection of data / information, your analysis of the data / information, your
conclusions and final revisions of your dissertation:

Month Dissertation Activity (parts)

June Refine Research Objectives
July Begin reading for the Literature Review

August Check on access

September Write Chapter 1; design data collection tools
October Complete Lit Review Chapter; write Methodology Chapter
November Conduct Primary Research;
December Analyse primary research and write Chapter 4
January Review all chapter drafts, finalise, proof read, submit

8 Reference List – in Harvard style.

 Bingham, W. V., & Moore, B. V. (1931). How To Interview, New York:

Harper & Brothers Publishing.

 Davis, M. P. (1997). Successful Advertising: Key Alternative Approaches,

Cassell: London.

 Fill, C. (1999). Marketing Communications: Contents, Contexts and

Strategies 2nd Edition, Prentice Hall: Hertfordshire, UK.

 Franzen, G. (1997). Advertising Effectiveness: Findings from Empirical

Research. Admap, Oxfordshire.

 Jefkins, F. & Yadin, D. (2000). Advertising: Framework Series, Financial

Times: Prentice Hall.

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 Koekemoer, L. & Bird, S. (2004) Marketing Communications, Juta
Academic.

 Lavidge, R. J. and Steiner, G. A. (1961). "A Model of Predictive

Measurements of Advertising Effectiveness", Journal of Marketing, vol. 25,
no. 6, pp. 59-62.

 Mason, J. (2002). Qualitative Researching 2nd Edition, Sage Publishing.

 Proctor, T. (2005). Essentials of Marketing Research 4 th Edition, Pearson

Education.

 Tuten, T. L. (2008). Advertising 2.0: Social Media Marketing in a Web 2.0

World. Praeger Publishing.

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