We welcome Bachelor and Master students to write their thesis at the Institute for Marketing and Customer Insight. We generally offer students a choice from a variety of topics for bachelor’s or master’s theses.
Bachelor & Master Theses
We offer a range of exciting marketing topics for bachelor's and master's theses and provide complete supervision, from the choosing of a subject through to submission.
Process
Students can find the topics in the list below. If we do not have a suitable topic advertised, a proactive application is possible. Please familiarize yourself with the research areas of our professors and PhD students and address your proposal (see questions below) to the person who best fits your research project. Supervision of topics from outside this list is possible only to a limited extent.
Before you begin, please make sure that you fulfill the following requirements:
- Make sure you know and comply with the rules and regulations of the Dean’s Advisory Office concerning your specific program.
- Be ready to start working on your thesis (more than 50% share of work time per week) within the next three months.
- Be willing and actively plan to complete your thesis within nine months after you’ve started your work.
If you fulfill the above requirements, we invite you to continue with the application process.
Sign-up process:
- Fill out the form below: This form requires you to write a first draft of your outline. To ensure a successful outcome, we ask you to take enough time to do this and follow our guidelines.
- Confirmation e-mail: As soon as you submit your details you will receive a confirmation email.
- Feedback on the Evaluation: You will receive feedback on your outline, including the decision on whether or not we will supervise your thesis. Please bear in mind that we cannot accept all applications since we have limited capacity.
- Appointment: hould you receive positive feedback: meeting & completion of your outline. As a general rule, “feedback” takes the form of an invitation to a personal appointment with your future supervisor. After this meeting, you will revise and resubmit your outline draft along with your filled-out and signed sign-up sheet (see Dean’s Advisory Office web pages) via email to your supervisor. We will print out your registration form, physically sign it and return it to you so that you can submit it to the Dean’s Advisory Office. On request, this can also be done by email.
Topics
- Capabilities: Which marketing & sales competencies do we need in 2030?
- How to combine intelligence (data collection & analytics) and creativity (empathy, uniqueness, usefulness) in marketing?
- In- & outsourcing in marketing: Increased efficiency & flexibility via an inhouse agency?
- Hiring for talent (data scientists, creatives, cross-disciplinary teams), especially recruiting via social media
Target group: MiMM- and SIM-Students
Language: English or German
- Evaluation of all central customer-oriented structures, functions, and processes: ensuring a customer-oriented form of organization
- How should the future marketing department interact with other company areas?
- Fostering understanding within marketing (e.g., translating data into insight)
- New work in marketing and new forms & technologies for flexible & agile collaboration
- Employee activism in marketing & sales
- Ensuring diversity and inclusiveness in marketing teams
Target group: MiMM- and SIM-Students
Language: English or German
There is hardly any other industry conveying emotions as well as sports. Companies are increasingly using sports sponsorship as a communication vehicle to transmit emotional, unique and unforgettable experiences. The communication tools must be distinctive and cut through the noise. However, the digitalization of business and society is also reflected in a digitalized “fan journey”. From booking tickets via app, watching sporting events online, or cashless payments at the venue, many digital elements can be distinguished. Therefore, rights holders work closely with sponsors to plan and implement digital activation measures. The understanding of digital activation in sports sponsorship is still relatively low, although companies describe it as an untapped potential. Hence, it is essential to gain knowledge on how companies can digitally activate their rights and brands.
Target Group: Bachelor or Master
Language: English or German
Prices as a signal for the value of a good or service are a central variable in the market economy. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the price-setting behavior of the different market players especially in highly competitive industries like electrical retail in order to remain successful and gain competitive advantage. Organizations need to be aware what considerations firms take into account to set their prices, how often and how they adjust prices. The research goal of this thesis is to work out approaches for price setting in the electrical retail industry in the DACH-region based on a systematic literature review and best practice examples.
Target group: MiMM- and SIM-Students
Language: English or German
In recent years, more and more omnichannel business models have been established in the electrical retail industry, which on the one hand create a seamless shopping experience across different channels for customers and on the other hand provide them with simplified access to product and price information. As a result, suppliers are challenged to adapt and rethink their strategic price management accordingly. The aim of this thesis is to compare different strategic approaches to price management of electrical retailers in the DACH-region and to provide an overview of how different retailers coordinate their prices (e.g. uniform or differentiated price strategy) across different channels.
Target group: MiMM- and SIM-Students
Language: English or German
Keywords: price differentiation, flat pricing, multi-part pricing, dynamic pricing, price transparency, price trust, customer loyalty, price fairness
Target group: MiMM- and SIM-Students
Language: English or German
The Buying Center Concept has been a major step in explaining organizational purchasing behavior (Johnston & Bonoma, 1981). While the research foundation for this concept is strong, in the past few years, marketing research has focused on new phenomena and concepts (e. g. Macdonnald, Kleinaltenkamp, & Wilson, 2018). With the acceleration of digitization not least due to Covid-19 in the past few months, there is urgent need to update our understanding of the buying center by integrating recent developments in marketing research and further analyzing the concept.
Target group: MiMM- and SIM-Students
Language: English or German
Intensive Zusammenarbeit mit dem Institut für Marketing & Customer Insight (Führungskräfteweiterbildung) sowie mit der Agentur Dr. Marc Rutschmann AG; qualitative Befragung von (Nicht-)Seminarteilnehmenden; Erstellen einer Kundenprozessanalyse; Herauskristallisieren von Magic Moments; kritische Evaluation
Target group: MiMM- and SIM-Students
Language: English or German
Most B2B decisions are buying center decisions – whether they involve equipment transactions, IT investment decisions, or the listing of cancer drugs in a hospital. Different models distinguish decision makers, users, influencers, gatekeepers and information selectors or expert and power promoters. The aim of the thesis would be to critically reflect the current state of the discussion in science and practice. Furthermore, it should be shown which strategies for influencing buying center decisions are successful in which situation.
Target group: MiMM- and SIM-Students
Language: English or German
Although marketers increasingly rely on customer data, firms have little insight into the ramifications of such data use and do not know how to prevent negative effects. Possible topics can be looked at from a psychological or economic point of view:
Privacy psychology: Which costumers see themselves as vulnerable in regards to misuse of data? What kind of data do customers see as “valuable” and why? What does the customer expect in exchange for his data?
Customer economy: How can we address cultural difference in customer’s privacy needs? How can we gather reliable customer data under GDPR? How can privacy be sustainably implemented into a company’s strategy?
Target group: Bachelor or Master
Language: English or German
Wann und in welcher Form ist Marketing für Spitäler erlaubt? Welche besonderen Einschränkungen gibt es? Wie ist der Stand in der Praxis? Welche Graubereiche gibt es? Wie sind die Unterschiede im deutschsprachigen Raum? Besonderheiten für das Online-Marketing?
Target group: MiMM- and SIM-Students
Language: German
Proposal
Contact
Katja Söllner
Seminar- & Event Organization / Assistant to Prof. Dr. Sven Reinecke
Phone:
+41 71 224 28 73