Journal Article Review Assignment
You are asked to source an academic journal article relating to marketing theory/practice in services marketing (relating to the industry of your programme – Event / Hotel & Catering / Tourism) and answer the 12 questions below:
- Author, date, title. (Harvard Reference Style)
- How is it structured? (Just list the subheadings used throughout the article)
- What is the work about? Discuss this in your own words.
- What is the main hypothesis/question posed by this study?
- What gap in our understanding does it fill? What do you know now, having read the article that you did not know beforehand
- What is the research tradition/approach/method/information source used? (E.g. interviews, surveys, etc. Mention sample size and selection criteria for participants).
- Write down at least one unfamiliar term or point of confusion and explain what it means. Give the context for how the term was used in the article and how you might use it elsewhere
- What are the limitations of this work? Discuss what they are, why they are limitations and how you would suggest addressing them if you were to conduct similar research
- What final conclusions did you make after reviewing the data? Are they the same as the author’s conclusions?
- Develop your own position- State your own position on this issue and sketch how you might support or oppose it
- References- Are the references appropriate for the statements they are meant to support? Are they up-to-date?
- Pick out two useful quotations (with page references) from the piece. There is no need to explain why you have chosen these two quotations, but you may if you wish.
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Word count: Unlimited
Weighting: 10%
Learning Outcomes addressed and assessed in this Assignment
- Discuss the central role of marketing within the service organisation.
- Discuss marketing theory and practice within a service organisation.
- Apply analytical tools for market analysis.
- Describe and explain service marketing processes and their application.
Assignment guidelines
- This is an individual assignment
- The essay/report must be typed, size 11 font, Arial font, single line spacing
- Professional/academic standard expected in content and quality of report layout/presentation.
- Assignments must be submitted on the due date and time. No late submissions will be accepted unless a medical certificate is submitted. Late submissions will not be marked out of the full 100% (sliding scale reduction for each hour the assignment is late – 10% per day).
- Illustrations/pictures to be used where appropriate and to include a caption and details of people included if relevant
- Ensure you use the Assessment Cover Page available on Moodle. This includes the Plagiarism Disclaimer that must be signed by the student when submitting the hard copy in class
- Insert page numbers and run a spell check (avoid US spellings)
Marking Scheme
| Marks Available | |
| Q1 | 0.5% |
| Q2 | 0.5% |
| Q3 | 1% |
| Q4 | 1% |
| Q5 | 1% |
| Q6 | 1% |
| Q7 | 1% |
| Q8 | 1% |
| Q9 | 1% |
| Q10 | 1% |
| Q11 | 0.5% |
| Q12 | 0.5% |
| Total | 10% |
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Journal Article Background
The goal of the journal article review is to help you become familiar with contemporary hospitality issues while simultaneously developing your critical and independent thinking skills.
The following handout has been developed to structure your learning and help you make sense of the articles you will be asked to read in conjunction with this module.
Some suggestions on how to read a scholarly article
The first goal of reading any article is to understand the context. To do this, first identify the author’s purpose in writing the article. Is he/she sharing original research? Presenting a new theory? Summarising the literature in order to make a particular argument? At this point, it can also be helpful to identify for whom the article is written – peers, students, or an audience outside of the field, among others.
Next, identify what the author’s main conclusion is and what evidence he/she uses in favour of that conclusion. It’s only when you understand the author’s views that you are in a position to evaluate the argument and assess whether you agree or disagree with the author and determine which parts of the article are persuasive and which parts are not.
The best way to approach an academic article for the first time is to skim the whole before actually reading it. Quickly reviewing the text will give you an idea of the overall structure of the paper, the author’s purpose and audience, the author’s writing style, and often some idea of how the author presents evidence to support his/her point of view. The most important thing to do is locate the author’s main conclusion, as it is (usually) the main thesis that each of the various parts of the article support.
As you start to read the article, start keeping a list of terms and how the author defines or uses them. Sometimes during the course of the article the author will redefine a term, and if so, it’s important to keep track of what the author’s motivations are for adopting a different definition.
You should also keep a list of the evidence the author uses in support of the main conclusion. Making a list as you go along will greatly assist you in identifying the overall argument the author puts forth for the paper. As you might expect, each piece of the author’s argument in favor of the main conclusion must itself be justified and this often involves the use of sub-arguments for particular claims supporting the main conclusion.
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Adapted from: http://homepages.wmich.edu/~applegab/EMR640/Critical%20Review%20of%20Scholarly%20Literature.pdf