Chapter 5 Project Plan

1. Refining objectives for the project plan section

In the chapter, it says we should sharpen the top rank objective and secondary objectives according to the clients and POC. Nevertheless the refinement of the thesis objective was made based a further study on the literature.

The research subject was narrowed down to Chinese and US TV commercials, because I found most of the previous research used countries as the research unit instead of areas. On the other hand, the amount of the commercials within two countries is pretty much to study already.

Meanwhile, to reduce the uncertainty of the length and categories of the commercials, the subject was focused on the commercials of some certain transnational brands, such as Coca Cola, Pepsi, McDonald and KFC and so on. That is the four brands I currently have in my mind, and it may change as the research goes on.

2. Identify a possible solution to the problem

One possible solution to identify the visual characteristics of transnational commercials would be to observe and count the number of times some certain visual strategies, such as long shots, direct addresses, subjective camera images, and the use of group images and so on. Currently, it requires more literature review to refine the research instruments and hypotheses.

On the other hand, it will justify the conclusions on the visual strategies’ functions through the observational experiment on the audience’s reaction to the counterpart commercials. The participants might be selected from Peking University and Clemson University.

3. Answering the Why questions

While reviewing this research design, there are several why questions suspending to be answered. For instance, why do you choose Coca Cola, Pepsi, McDonald and KFC as the transnational brands to study? I think perhaps they are among the most popular American brands in China? Well, here I will do some research to identify the most popular US brands first, and then pick up 4-6 from them.

Another why question: why is it necessary to conduct an experiment about the audience’s responses to the commercials from the counterpart cultures? Well, I just read that recommendation for future research from Zhou et al’s articles. They think that would be “especially interesting,” and on the other hand, it will prevent the study to be “descriptive” (Zhou et al 2005, 117). In my opinion, that step serves to justify the conclusion of the commercial strategy analysis part.

Again, it is also an area no one has done research before. I’m getting more and more excited about it now!