Dissertation topics

[alex]

I need to come up with a dissertation topic and was hoping to look into domain names in line with my marketing module I’m taking next year. I was thinking about investigating the importance UK eCommerce companies put on good generic domains in comparison to branding a domain using traditional pay-per click. Does anyone have any comments?

 

[wb]

I had a similar idea for my upcoming dissertation , see the thread below from a little while ago:

http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/general-board/64801-business-domain-related-dissertation-topics.html

In the end I decided to do a topic a bit more closely related to business management though, so none of the ideas mentioned are being used by me .

 

[aZooZa]

What is your dissertation candidate subject? Marketing, computer science etc.? 'Domaining' encompasses many. If as you say it's marketing of generics, look at Edwin's site for inspiration.

 

[accelerator]

Being a domainer, I would find this subject quite interesting, but at this point in time, it has a "done before" feeling about it. If your tutor would find it acceptable, I think it could form the basis of a dissertation, but I can't help thinking something more technical and less obvious might be better, e.g. a focus on the dropcatching market.

Rgds

 

[alex]

I had a similar idea for my upcoming dissertation , see the thread below from a little while ago:

http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/general-board/64801-business-domain-related-dissertation-topics.html

In the end I decided to do a topic a bit more closely related to business management though, so none of the ideas mentioned are being used by me .

Thanks for the link - I hadn't seen it, but it's fairly useful. I hadn't realised there were any other students on here, are there many?

I'm currently studying business at Durham which encompasses Law, Accounting, Marketing, Management etc. Next year I'm studying business transformation and marketing which are the two modules that tie closest with domains. I'm not fixed on the topic yet, but I was hoping to study the perceptions of a good generic compared to advertising (using examples like bank.co.uk, news.co.uk etc) although I feel that if I am more specific and focus on eCommerce it may be easier to get discuss the data. Does anyone know of any similar studies?

 

[alex]

Being a domainer, I would find this subject quite interesting, but at this point in time, it has a "done before" feeling about it. If your tutor would find it acceptable, I think it could form the basis of a dissertation, but I can't help thinking something more technical and less obvious might be better, e.g. a focus on the dropcatching market.

Rgds

I certainly considered dropcatching, do you have any suggestions of what could be looked at? I have a meeting with a tutor tomorrow to discuss ideas so just trying to get a handful for now.

 

[wb]

Sounds like the same course modules format think there are only a few students on here. I'd discuss some suitable topics with your tutor, as one of the issues I found was that it didn't appear as very 'interesting' to someone completely unrelated to domains.

Haven't checked for any previous research, however do you have access to an 'Athens' login for searching previous research papers/journals etc?

EDIT: Just noticed you mention a meeting with your tutor tomorrow, should be a great benefit in steering your ideas towards a business research approach.

 

[accelerator]

OK, here is a 2 min brainstorm for topics:

- The psychology of successful domain investors. What attributes led to people winning big in the domaining revolution.

- Multi-millionaires created by the domaining revolution.

- Why domain investment is more attractive than share investment for those in the know.

- What makes a given online sector profitable. Why some sectors are massively profitable and others aren't, and how to identify these sectors through freely available data.

- Why domaining was a sector where the little guy could win, and why big companies were often caught napping when it came to registering domains.

- The demise of parking revenue. Why parking was a great revenue source to begin with and then tailed off.

- Creating an accurrate domain name valuation algorithm for keyphrase domains. Can it be done?

There you go, that's my 2 mins up.

Rgds

 

[crabfoot]

Well, not necessarily domaining, but a subject - "the power of suggestion".

A lot of companies, especially big supermarkets, get a lot of their forward impetus from suggestion schemes.

I can show you a couple of regular lines in Asda supermarkets that arose from my suggestions.

I can tell you that my local Tesco had several shelves laden with stuff that wouldn't sell after they turned me down for a Christmas job...

But if there's one free suggestion that takes the biskit, it stems from the case I pointed out earlier this week in this thread -
http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/domain-research/70846-domain-names-copyright-example.html
Not only did the chap who was generating income for Tesco never get paid out, he had to hand over all his domains. Then Tesco started the Tesco Diets business using those domains, and it is not small beer. It is also a case of "branding" turning over the need for a generic domain.

It might be worth investigating how suggestion schemes operate for a dissertation subject ...

 

[alex]

Thank you for all your suggestions. I've been talking to various people at uni and no one seems to know much about domains, which is not necessarily bad.

The general reaction was DO NOT GO FOR SOMETHING NEW! This is because most of the marks are for critiquing previous research, therefore a pioneering project into dropcatching is out of the question.

Although it needs a lot of refining, and the question is too long, out of all the suggestions put forward to my tutor he reworded and proposed the following:

What benefits do UK eCommerce companies perceive from investing in industry-specific domain names compared with Pay-Per-Click advertising?

As I said, this is just the early stages of planning the topic, but what are your immediate reactions (you can be brutally honest), but before you do, the criteria suggested to me are:

- Interesting topic, the findings of which can form suggestions to be proposed to companies.
- Not new, i.e. literature exists that can be critiqued.
- Not purely practical (uni is academic)
- Ability to gather primary research

I’ll keep working on it and update with new ideas, but as this is very industry specific I would appreciate it if you could put forward suggestions for research that you feel would be beneficial and not just filed and forgotten.

 

[wb]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the question is relating to comparing the purchase of domains with spending money on PPC advertising?

If so, one issue I can see is that some eCommerce companies will invest in domains to use for PPC (Edwin's example of how this works shows a clear difference between the CTR of a generic domain and a standard one).

This is just an idea, but using a question like the following may allow you to gather research, apply it to your academic modules (i.e. business psychology, marketing etc) and do some costed examples:

To what extent are industry-specific domain names beneficial for PPC advertising compared with standard (i.e. brandable) domain names?

 

[crabfoot]

The first thing that pops into my mind is that nobody will talk to you - you are attempting to delve into "trade secrets".

Interesting subject, but you need a pragmatic approach. Think about the tools you have available, for example, what you can achieve by using site tracking tools. See what data you can get, what info you can derive, then fashion the question.

In academia, the key to good marks is to visualise a successful outcome from your research before you ask the question.