The Final Report presents the results of your independent research project. Your research project must be based on an industry-relevant research question and should be presented in a professional format appropriate to the industry or sector under investigation. Draw upon your prior learning (e.g. concepts or issues previously studied) and synthesise this with new primary research.
Remember that this is a desktop research project: in addition to scholarly sources, your project findings should be based on industry-relevant primary sources available in the public domain. All sources should be appropriately referenced Harvard referencing style.
The marking rubric is included below.
The word count for this Report is 5000 words. You should present your Report using the following headings:
Executive Summary
- The Executive Summary provides an overall summary of the study and its key findings and conclusions. You should write this with an industry audience in mind: the summary should be clear, concise and accessible, and it should emphasise the project’s industry-relevant findings and recommendations.
Introduction
The introduction should:
- Provide a broad overview of the industry ‘problem’ that the project is investigating (i.e. why is this a relevant or pressing issue for industry?)
- State your research question.
- Summarise your project’s scope (what did you look at?) and approach (how did you do it?)
- If using case studies, provide any necessary background or context to the cases.
- Provide any definitions required.
- Provide a statement of the significance of your research (why are you looking at this question? Why is it important? In what ways might the new knowledge this project provides be useful or relevant to industry practice?)
- Provide a brief outline of the Report (don’t forget to include your conclusions!)
Background
- This section is your literature review (both academic and industry literature). It should outline what we already know about this topic, including from both academic and industry perspectives. You should use this section to identify key themes (and gaps, if relevant) in previous research/knowledge.
Methodology
- Outline how you approached your research question (i.e. how did you go about researching this question? What method/s did you use?) You should include details of any sampling strategies for collecting materials, and outline where your research materials (for example, industry reports) were gathered from. Try and be as specific as you can. Discussion of methods is always in the past tense.
- Remember that this is a desktop research project, so some research methods (e.g. interviews) are off-limits. However, there are a range of other approaches (e.g. content analysis, textual analysis) that can be productively used. You might, for example, analyse and evaluate new marketing strategies used in integrated marketing campaigns, using specific campaigns as case studies. Or you might trace how a particular industry issue is covered by industry or mainstream media to show how understandings of, and discourses about, industry practices have changed over time. Use the Methodology section to explain how you did your research, and why you did it the way you did.
- If you are adopting a case study approach, explain your choice of case studies (How/why did you choose your cases? How exactly did you gather your data about these cases?)
