Assignment Guide:
By now most of you would have gone through the assignment brief after the class discussion last week. Here are a few guidelines on how you might want to approach the assignment. Of course, these are guidelines only and you may prefer to choose your own format.
Consider the classroom discussions you have every week. You all discuss topics and express yours views related to the topic. Some of you agree with the key point being discussed whereas some others don’t. Also as a part of these classroom discussions, you highlight relevant theories. You are using the same style for the assignment except you are doing this by yourself.
The Assignment Process.
The assignment places the notion of digitization and controversies within the food sector at the centre of the assignment.
For the first part, you need to consider the food retail industry. Be mindful of the fact that you are looking at a massive industry The easiest way to tackle the assignment is to conduct a thorough search with a view to understand what is happening in this industry.
Based on your reading and understanding:
Identify the key digital innovations and controversies which currently dominate this industry.
Discuss each one of them by using appropriate theories and journal articles. Other examples may be from the media and practitioners’ reports.
In your discussion you can refer to various organisations and sub sectors (such as the ‘fast-food industry or the restaurant business’) within the food retail sector to enhance your points.
This is a straight forward approach which will enable you to go through the assignment smoothly. This will also take away the task of choosing a specific sector within the food industry.
For psychological and demographic variables, you can choose the same innovations and controversies as identified above, you may or may not be applicable in your situation. In this context, You will need to get other existing theoretical views, in addition to the lecture notes. For this, you have to do a journal search to see how other academics have used theories, which would facilitate the discussion. For instance, if you identify Facebook (in the context of the food industry of course) as an innovation you need to indicate if specific demographic or psychological variables have been associated with the adoption and use of Facebook. Your discussion needs to have depth, therefore, you will need to link your discussion to established theories. For instance, in the case of personality variables, you can illustrate what role do Freud’s personality structures play in the context of Facebook adoption and use? Ensure that you have referenced your information sources using the Harvard referencing style.
The whole assignment can be viewed as one big discussion topic and if you prefer you may discuss it as that. For instance, you may use the innovations/controversies from the previous section and further build on them in the second part. But please make clear that you have included all discussion points listed in the brief, for instance by starting a topic with a new paragraph. Alternatively, you can discuss the topics as they appear in the assignment brief, one at a time. There will be a slight overlap if you do this but make sure it remains small.
As far as the word count is concerned it is recommended that you stick to the overall word limit. A slightly different approach (this is only a suggestion and may be slightly more difficult) if you allocate more for one question but this will mean that other sections will have less word count (to stay within the overall word-count). Please note all discussion questions are equally weighted (25% each) as they all significantly contribute to the assignment.
Moving on the next question which requires you develop a website. You choose a product which is already out in the market within the food sector but still relatively new. You provide a critique on its existing marketing with a view that the website you are going to create will address these limitations.
The word count does not include the information within the website. Both the content and presentation will be crucial in this context, therefore, you need to consider both aspects. With the presentation, you need to pay particular attention to issues such as the ease of navigating and so on. The content aspect should provide pertinent information considering the topic in hand.
There will be several assignment-help sessions through the duration of the module and I would encourage you to bring your queries and clarify any doubts you may have. Please note it is entirely up to you as to how you use the help sessions. The nature of discussions in these sessions will be determined by you in terms of what queries you bring and how useful these sessions are for you will be determined by what you take with you from them. Therefore how you perform in the module and the success and failure is in your hands and not the tutor.
