The purpose of the writing assignments is to train the doctoral student to focus on one narrow topic. “Tell me a lot about a little”. Do not go off on tangents. Stick to just one topic. The student needs to write in the academic format. We describe this as the funnel approach. The top of the funnel is wide and the bottom of the funnel is narrow. This requires the student to start wide by describing the history of the topic and narrow their focus to make just one point of the literature.

There are three main parts of the assignment. These are the introduction, literature review, and the conclusion. The introduction lets the reader know what the topic is, its magnitude and then tells the reader what’s coming in the literature review. The literature review needs to define all terms and the history of the topic. The conclusion is your analysis or your one take away on the topic. Explain why it is important to the marketing industry.