As a master student I didn’t have to write final exams, instead I had to write a master thesis for circa 80 pages. At the beginning it sounds more easy to write a master thesis than to learn for final exams. Believe me, it’s not!
There are some reasons why it is not so. First of all, as a master student you don’t get topics for your master thesis. You must find your own topic! This being said, you decide which area do you want to do the research and after you come up with a topic, you must write a research proposal and submit it to the department for which you want to do the research. It is more an individual approach, and as some may like it, some (like me) get frustrated. For my bachelor thesis I got a list with topics from which I choose one, and that’s it. I just started writing.
For the master, I applied first to one department, than I’ve been redirected to another, which told me that they are busy for the next year, so it wasn’t an option either. After half a year I managed to find a topic for which I wanted to do the research. I wrote a 8 pages proposal, arranged a meeting, so that the professor would tell me that the topic is not good because I will have to collect primary data and it wasn’t possible. But the professor was interested and offered a topic which was a part of a bigger project. I happily accepted.
I researched the topic, I found so much literature. The topic was “Trust in Online Shopping. The case of Moldova.” As you can see it was for the marketing department, which means that I needed to collect primary data.
The steps I took to write it were:
- Gathered literature and read it
- Formulated the hypothesis
- Built the model
- Elaborated the survey (it took a lot of time and many meetings with the supervisor, but the outcome was great)
- Decided which online survey tool I wanted to use (http://esurv.org/ – very professional, which I recommend confidently )
- Opened survey for responses (https://eSurv.org?u=trustonlineshop )
- In mean time, wrote the literature review and the introduction for the master thesis
- Collected data (target 200 responses)
- Data analysis:
- used SPSS for demographic data
- and SmartPLS for the model and for testing the hypothesis (which is a great model, easy to use and the graphics are so explanatory)
- and, of course, in the end wrote about limitations encountered, summary of the empirical results and discussion, and conclusion.
I appreciate to have written such a master thesis, because I liked the topic and now I decided to find a position in this direction (Online Marketing), also it was a pleasure to work with my coordinator, which was always there when I needed and I learnt so many new things from her. I also appreciated the opportunity to do the research about Moldova, which made me closer to my country. It was a lot of work, but I also had fun doing the research. I learnt important things about the development of the e-commerce in Moldova, which I will share with you another time.
If someone needs any tips about writing a master thesis in the marketing area, feel free to contact me. I will happily help (if I can 🙂 ).
AmbiGirl 