content, correspondence and meta method analysis of marketing theses in selected universities in tehran

the aim of this study was to identify the recurring themesand to evaluate methodological components of 204 marketing theses(1384-1389) in four selected universities including: shahid beheshtiuniversity (sbu), tehran university (tu), allameh tabatabaiuniversity (atu) and tarbiat modares university (tmu). contentanalysis showed that the most favored subjects in marketing theses areconsumer behavior (54 cases), product mix (35 cases), electroniccommerce (26 cases), promotion mix (15 cases) and customerrelationship management (11 cases). simple correspondence analysisrevealed the meaningful proximities between sbu with retailing(b2c) and traditional marketing, atu with electronic and servicemarketing, and tmu with product marketing. tu was not found to belinked with any marketing subjects. meta method study of themarketing theses indicated the high dominance of such components:survey, questionnaire, probability sampling, content validity,cronbach’s alpha coefficient, sample size ≤300, t-test, conclusivedesign, replication and extension of current models and single crosssection for data gathering.