- Project Summary: In no more than 200 words, provide a brief description of your project, including the key questions your project attempts to answer and a brief discussion of how you intend to answer those questions.
- Deadline: March 1st Friday, 11:59 pm
For my final project, I want to investigate how the emergence of neoliberalism has transformed the way in which companies market and sell their products to consumers. In the present day, companies no longer have a captive audience. People actively resist interruptive advertisements by registering for the do not call list for solicitations, not opening mail advertising a product, and skipping through TV commercials by recording shows or watching on platforms (i.e. Netflix) where there are no commercials. As a result, the changing climate has forced them to adopt more cryptic methods of search engine optimization and developing models to categorize user preferences and search history to deliver targeted advertisements. There are companies that have become wildly successful whose sole purpose is to develop software that helps other companies market and sell their product to consumers in the most effective and efficient manner.
I seek to examine what extent the role of neoliberalism played in transforming the marketing industry. I plan to analyze how neoliberal ideals are reflected in these new methods of marketing with traditional research on the new trend and strategies in marketing, supplemented by case study evaluations of marketing software company websites.
Comment:
This is a great topic, Lauren. I do not know much about it and I look forward to reading it.
I liked how you are framing your topic. It is clear and well-articulated. But my worry is that your focus might be too narrow for a final project. What if you cannot see much connection between neoliberalism and new marketing strategies? Do you have any preliminary thoughts about this? Also, do you have a backup plan if this topic does not work out?
A suggestion: do you think you could (and would want to) broaden your focus to include analysis of the changing content of marketing as well? For instance, how neoliberal ideals inform the ads today? or something like that.
This is just an idea. After the break, we should talk about your project in person.