The approved topic for this paper is consumer behavior towards sustainable and ethical products.
The final paper will be a 1,500-2,500 word (approximately 6-10 pages double-spaced) research or review paper. The word/page count does not include the title page, abstract, or references. Focus on quality over quantity of words. Students often lose points for being too verbose and/or not being succinct. The paper should be formatted in the APA (7th Ed.) formatting style and submitted as a Word document (i.e., .docx). In academia, “research” generally refers to primary research that you conduct yourself (e.g., you run your own study and/or conduct formal analyses). If you just read and cite other sources, that is more of a “review.”
The purpose of this paper is to give you a chance to learn about a consumer behavior topic in-depth. The topic can be on practically anything related to consumer behavior, but it must be approved by me. This is intentionally broad to give you flexibility. If you currently own your own business, then you could write about how you might improve your business based on what you learned in this class. Similarly, if you plan to start your own business or plan to work as a marketing manager, you could write about how you will use what you learned in your future business or job. If you plan to continue your education with a research degree (e.g., a Ph.D.), you could write about potential topics that you might study (e.g., how does personality affect consumer behavior, ethics in consumer behavior, or cross-cultural differences in consumer behavior). Other potential ideas include examining how peer pressure affects consumer behavior, how changing technology has affected consumer behavior, or consumer and/or marketing ethics. You could also do an in-depth study of a certain brand.
