Research proposal Topics on Marketing

Marketing is a process of attracting customers to purchase the product or service or a business. It creates financial and moral value to the associated product or service. With the advent of Internet, marketing revolutionized all the traditional marketing concepts.

Submitting a research topic or dissertation is an important component in completing one's degree in marketing. Thus, selection of the right topic for research is highly crucial to attain higher grades in the management studies. There are many research topics and segments in the field of marketing that could make the best research proposal topics for the students of marketing. Following are the few of the best research proposal topics that will help the students to get started on the dissertation.

Brand Positioning

Brand positioning can be one of the most interesting research proposal topics that will appease to the evaluation authority. It is highly essential to decide on the positioning of the brand before getting the brand into the market. For instance, you need to position a shampoo in the hair care segment but not in the cosmetics section. Though a shampoo adds a cosmetic value to the buyer, but it does not attract out target customer segment. Anyone who wishes to buy a shampoo would look for the shampoo among hair care products but not among cosmetic products. Hence it is utmost important to decide on the position of the brand we want to get out in the Market.

Creation of Market Value

Marketing in simple words is creation of the value to the product or service of interest. The value can be of materialistic or non-materialistic. After the position of the brand in the market, it is essential to create its own market value that keeps the product in its own position against and amongst its competitors. The value of the product can be built by marketing the pros of the product in comparison to the other products that fall in the same niche or segment. In the research topic, the student can include various use cases where a product succeeded with the apt creation of its own market value among its competitors. The failure use cases can also be included in the research proposal topics on Marketing.

Market Segmentation

Understanding the behavior and needs of the customers is very important. All the customers do not have similar needs. Thus, it is vital to divide the broad set of target customers to small groups based on their common needs. Based on the needs and demographics, each of the smaller set of groups need to be devised a separate marketing plan to target the set of our interest. The market segmentation is based on one or all of the following parameters of the segmentation

• Demographic or Geographic - Segmentation of customers based on the age and the location.
• Behavioral - Segmentation of customers based on their behavior towards the product or market of interest.
• Psychology - Segmentation of customers based on the psychology, attitude, societal values and culture.

Marketing Strategy

Marketing strategy is to create a strategy to attract the target market and implement various marketing plans to ensure better outreach of the brand in the segment of interest. An effective marketing strategy ensures better penetration of the product to the targeted population. The marketing strategy has to adapt the performance of product over a period of time. For e.g. a product which is new in the market should have a market strategy that ensures better launch and growth of the business as early as possible. An established product in the market needs a market strategy that maintains and sustains that position in the market for the longest period of time possible. However, for any given product the growth cycle slows and reaches a point where ROI (Return of investment) becomes minimal, thus making the product a non- profitable one to the business. At this point the divest strategy will be applicable to reduce the losses. There can be many segments in marketing strategy that can be worth writing a research proposal topic

Marketing Plan

A marketing plan is the comprehensive document that summarizes the marketing efforts of a product or a business unit or a company. A typical marketing plan consists of all the above topics in addition to the company objective and its implementation in creating the overall marketing plan, sales objectives for the specified time period, along with the incentive structure for the sales and marketing teams to motivate them to achieve the goals. A solid marketing plan will come from a strong marketing strategy. Marketing strategy is the backbone for a well-devised marketing plan.

Inbound Marketing

Now with the Internet rage among all the people, it is essential for the business units to keep up with the growing inbound and out bound marketing concepts. Inbound marketing is promotion of a company or a product or a business through social media marketing platforms (Face book, twitter, Slide share etc.), blogs, white papers, newsletters, webinars, email campaigns and other forms of content marketing. All the inbound marketing will come from the team of internal marketing team and it does not need any significant investment to market our product or business. Inbound marketing essentially involves all the target consumers through the above channels and engage them in fruitful marketing associations. This over a period of time, attracts customers and makes them buy the product or services.

Outbound Marketing

Outbound Marketing, in contrast needs significant investment. TV Advertisements, Conference participations, Journal advertisements, cold calling, telemarketing, brochures etc, are outbound marketing tools. Outbound marketing employs traditional concept of buying customer's attention. With the introduction of inbound marketing techniques the outbound marketing which once was one of the most sought after marketing strategy is now losing its importance and giving way to new and revolutionary concept of inbound marketing which is also called as permission marketing.

With the right amount of creativity, the above mentioned broad areas of marketing can give loads of custom topics for the students to choose and write the marketing reposts that cover one or few of the topics mentioned above.

Here are few more research proposal topics that can be explored by researchers:

1. The Impact of Brand Image on Customer Taste and Preference
2. Factors That Affect Impulsive Buying
3. Deceptive Advertising Can Backfire - Why and How
4. Consumer Reactions to the Von Restorff Effect - An Analysis
5. A Study of Waste Management and Recycling in India - An Analysis