Doctorial Qualifying Examination in Business Research Methods

2015WS-QEbrm

Doctorial Qualifying Examination in Business Research Methods

Department of Business Administration, Asia University

FRI, 03/27/2015 - 2:00~5:00pm

Name: Student ID No.:

(Answer the following questions in English or Chinese. Your answer must include both the main concept of the questions and personal response.Books, references, notebook, pad and notes be allowed.)

Please criticize the attached articleby following questions: (50%)

Type of research design. What are the underlying assumptions? 7%
What is the basic formulation of the theory (constructs and relationships among variables), and what drives the theory? 7%
Major participant characteristics, sample size, and sampling procedures. 7%
Statistics and data analysis. 7%
What is the main contribution of this paper? What are the interesting ideas? 7%
How generalizeable are the findings? What are the boundary conditions? (i.e., for whom and under what conditions do the findings apply or not apply? or How can we use it in the real world?) 7%
What do you see as its strengths and weaknesses? 8%

‘Web games’ have been competing with ‘online games’ over the video game market because of their characteristics of being more convenient. Owing to their popularity, web games have also become an ideal media for carrying commercial advertisements. On the other hand, it has been observed that both the ads positions (in-game1 vs. around-game2) and the relevance between ads and games might play certain roles when implementing product placement strategies on websites. Suppose you are interested in looking at this phenomenon. Specifically, you are most interested in examining the effect of the web game advertisement on marketing communication effectiveness. Design empirical research to address those issues. Describe your study in detail, thoroughly explaining the research design, sampling plan, data collection procedures, ethical issues and proposed data analysis for your research design.

Note:

In-game advertising(IGA) refers toadvertisingincomputer and video games.IGA can be integrated into the game either through a display in the background, such as an in-game billboard or a commercial during the pause created when a gameloads, or highly integrated within the game so that the advertised product is necessary to complete part of the game or is featured prominently within cutscenes.Due to the custom programming required, dynamic advertising is usually presented in the background; static advertisements can appear as either.One of the advantages of IGA over traditional advertisements is that consumers are less likely to multitask with other media while playing a game, however, some attention is still divided between the gameplay, controls, and the advertisement.
Around-game advertising simply refers to so-called traditional display or digital video units shown in conjunction with the game. These ads can be shown as companion ads, pre-rolls, inter-level, pre- or post-game, or even as “skinning” which brands the game play area but not necessarily the game elements themselves.