Marketing research brief.
Research the following topics:
1. Business models in the online video games industry: between the free-to-play and subscription models Free-to-play online video games (think for example massively multiplayer online role-playing game or MMORPG) are growing extremely popular in the last few years. The software is provided to the gamer for free, and there is no monthly subscription fee, unlike subscription-model based online video games. The developers can make profit through donations, in-game advertising, optional ingame items for purchase, or optional additional content. On the other hand, the issue with the free-to-play model is that the players can exit the game without any commitment, which can result in a highly instable revenue generation. Here, you may explore consumers’ attitudes to the different business models, including loyalty and value creation.
In this assignment, you will plan and conduct a small-scale exploratory research project. This assessment will give you the opportunity to plan, gather and analyse real data in a marketing situation. The research project will help improve your technical skills with regards to the data selection, analysis, and interepretation techniques. It will also get you to engage with the development of a set of theoretical and practical implications, thus equiping you with the adequate skills to work in the market research sector, or build the foundations to conduct research at a higher academic level. The project will focus on qualitative techniques. The poster format will help develop the skills for crystalising and presenting research outputs. Accordingly, the poster presentation accounts for 50% of the overall final assessment in the module for each student. Following that you will work individually on refining your research plan, and conducting your research – you are advised to start the individual research project immediately after receiving the formative feedback. 4. Each student will individually submit a poster to present your research project, alongside a 3 minutes audio pitch. Following the feedback received in tutorial
3, you are advised to start immediately and individually on refining and conducting your small-scale research project. Each student is expected to carry out at least 5 in-depth semi-structured interviews, 2 focus groups, or collect 3 forms of online interactions (be it online forums, comment sections on an online thread, etc. – this should follow CMC research techniques in lecture 5).There should prior desk research to clearly (re)define your research aims. Once you have carried out your qualitative data collection and have analysed the data – you are expected to develop theoretical and (most importantly) practical implications for your research. Finally, you need to design a poster to present your research project. You should address the project as consultant working for a market research agency. Please note that each student must complete a Research Ethics Form before carrying out any field work. The Research Ethics Form can be found at the link below. http://www.dmu.ac.uk/research/ethics-and-governance/faculty-specificprocedures/business-and-law-ethics-procedures.aspx What should the submission include? – A poster. – A three minutes audio pitch. – Appendices. What content should be included in the poster? (A3 size) – Heading that should include: o Project title. o Student name and contact details. – Research problem. – Research questions or research objectives. – Background information (incl. secondary research). – Research methodology. – Research findings. – Implications: these could be either managerial or policy-oriented depending on your research objective What should the three minutes audio pitch include? – Brief outline of the research project, including the connection between the various elements of the research project design, why is it important to study as a marketing research project. – The rationale of your methodology. – Summary of key findings and implications (be it managerial or policy-oriented). What should the appendices include? – Interview or focused group transcripts if applicable. – Copy of internet interactions if applicable. – References. – Ethics form(s)