Writing a Marketing Term Paper

Writing a marketing term paper can be a little different than a paper for another class. For one, it is often required that you use primary research in your term paper.

Unlike with most papers, which fully utilize only secondary sources (that is, research conducted by someone else and not yourself), marketing papers may use research that you do on your own. Since marketing is a hands-on field and requires personal research on the job, it only makes sense that you would have to do it for term papers as a method of preparation.

The reason primary research is included with a marketing term paper is because the term paper is usually not the only assignment. Projects are assigned in conjunction with the term paper, and they are supposed to be complementary to each other. Data collected from the project should be referenced in the term paper.

Thus, your data collection and analysis skills must be advanced along with your writing capabilities. It is best to work on the term paper after your project is finished, so you have all the necessary data ready and can decide when and if to use parts of it.

Obviously the topic of the term paper must have some relevance to the project, or you will not be able to use any of the data. Keep in mind that you do not need to use every piece of data that you collect, and it would actually be unwise to try to fit all of it in. Pick whatever you think is applicable and discard the rest, as if you put unnecessary content in to the paper, it will only drag your grade down.

As with any term paper, it is critical that spelling and grammar be accounted for. Even if all of your data and conclusions are valid and concise, the credibility of your paper can be reduced because of simple errors. Some people think that the simple F7 button (which is the shortcut for SpellCheck) is the solution to all of their grammatical problems, but that is far from true.

Many errors are physically incapable of being caught by a machine, such as switching up words or using the wrong word form. For example, a common error is using there instead of their, and spell checking software often does not pick up errors of that type. There is no substitute for human proofreading; whether it is done by you or a colleague, it simply must be a person (preferably your term paper should be looked over by multiple people).

Since there will be multiple sources included in your term paper, you must be sure to tell the reader where you used what source. This is accomplished through the use of parenthetical citations and a work cited page. Whenever you have a block of content in your paper that you either paraphrase or quote, you must end it with a parenthetical citation.

At the end of the paper, a works cited page will be constructed that has a list, in alphabetical order, of all your sources, and thus it can be easily referenced. Unless the content is common knowledge or your own thoughts, it must be cited. Failing to do this will result in an automatic failure and, in some cases, suspension or expulsion, so including this step is critical to success.