Asking AI to come up with 3 MBA research themes: on social conditioning (information from perplexity.ai)
My question 1: "Please suggest 3 MBA research themes based on the following key words: social conditioning, consumer behavior, marketing communication strategy for the Hong Kong retail business. These 3 research themes should endorse the research philosophy of critical realism."
The reply: "Here are three MBA research themes that integrate social conditioning, consumer behavior, and marketing communication strategy in the Hong Kong retail context, explicitly framed within a critical realist philosophy.
Theme 1: Deep structures of social conditioning and retail consumer responses
Core idea
Investigate how underlying social structures (e.g. Confucian values, class and education systems, family roles, media and platform ecosystems) condition how Hong Kong consumers interpret and respond to retail marketing messages.
Position critical realism as the meta‑theory: distinguish between the real (enduring social structures and cultural norms), the actual (mechanisms such as social conditioning, habitus, peer influence), and the empirical (observable attitudes, stated preferences, and purchase behavior).
Possible focus
Examine mechanisms like:
Intergenerational expectations (parents vs Gen Z/young professionals).
Social comparison pressures (face, status signaling, luxury vs value orientation).
Media‑driven norms (KOLs, short‑video platforms).
Apply a multi‑method design consistent with critical realism (e.g. in‑depth interviews + limited survey or retail data) to identify and retroduce the causal mechanisms behind observed consumer responses to specific campaigns.
Theme 2: Critical realist multilevel analysis of marketing communication and consumer agency
Core idea
Explore how marketing communication strategies both reproduce and potentially transform existing social conditioning in Hong Kong (e.g. gender roles, work–life identity, material success), while consumers exercise constrained agency.
Use a multilevel critical realist framework that links:
Macro level: socio‑economic conditions, policy environment, city narratives (e.g. ‘Asia’s world city’, high housing cost).
Meso level: retailer strategies, segmentation logics, omnichannel communication practices.
Micro level: individual consumer sense‑making, resistance, and adaptation.
Possible focus
Compare two or three retail formats (e.g. fast fashion, beauty, grocery, or lifestyle chains).
Study how campaigns target particular social identities (e.g. “smart budget shopper”, “aspirational professional”) and how consumers accept, negotiate, or resist these identity scripts.
- Methodologically, combine document/advertising analysis with semi‑structured interviews and possibly limited observational work in stores or online spaces, following critical realist guidance for multilevel business marketing research.
Theme 3: Social conditioning, digital retail touchpoints, and emergent consumer behavior
Core idea
Focus on how social conditioning interacts with digital marketing communications (social media ads, influencers, loyalty apps, e‑commerce platforms) to generate emergent patterns of consumer behavior in Hong Kong retail.
Treat phenomena like impulse buying on apps, reliance on peer or KOL reviews, or preference for cross‑border platforms as emergent outcomes of deeper mechanisms (e.g. trust/distrust in institutions, risk perceptions, time pressure, norms of tech adoption).
Possible focus
Examine specific digital tactics (personalised promotions, gamified loyalty schemes, AI‑driven recommendations) and how different socially conditioned groups (e.g. Gen Z vs older consumers; local vs Mainland visitors) respond.
- Methodologically, design a critical realist‑inspired multilevel or mixed‑method study (e.g. short survey or platform data + qualitative interviews or netnography of online communities) to surface and theorise the underlying mechanisms behind observable digital retail behaviours."
My question 2: "Please suggest 2 research issues on each of the 3 research themes as well as 5 academic and 5 non-academic references in Harvard reference format. Also indicate what theories have been considered in the academic references."
The reply: "Three MBA research themes from the prior discussion provide a critical realist lens on social conditioning, consumer behavior, and marketing strategies in Hong Kong retail. Each theme now includes two targeted research issues to sharpen focus for dissertation development. Academic and non-academic references follow in Harvard format, selected for relevance to Hong Kong retail contexts, with theories noted for the academic ones.
Theme 1 Research Issues
- How do enduring social structures like Confucian family norms and intergenerational expectations generate mechanisms that condition Hong Kong consumers' interpretations of value-oriented retail marketing communications, and what emergent behaviors result in fast fashion or grocery segments?
- To what extent do mechanisms of social comparison and status signaling, rooted in Hong Kong's high-density urban conditioning, mediate the gap between consumers' aspirational self-perceptions and their responses to discount-driven campaigns in department stores?
Theme 2 Research Issues
- In what ways do multilevel interactions between macro socio-economic pressures (e.g., housing affordability) and meso-level retailer segmentation strategies enable or constrain consumer agency when decoding identity-targeted marketing messages in Hong Kong beauty retail?
- How do causal mechanisms linking structural gender role conditioning to actual marketing tactics produce gendered patterns of resistance or compliance in consumers' omnichannel engagement with lifestyle brand communications?
Theme 3 Research Issues
- What generative mechanisms arise from the interplay of social trust deficits (conditioned by economic uncertainty) and digital marketing tactics like KOL endorsements, leading to emergent impulse buying patterns on Hong Kong e-commerce platforms for cosmetics?
- How do time-pressure mechanisms, socially conditioned by Hong Kong's work culture, interact with AI-personalized retail communications to produce adaptive or maladaptive consumer behaviors across hybrid online-offline shopping journeys?
Academic References
Non-Academic References
Hong Kong Retail Management Association (2025) Digital transformation and consumer shifts in HK retail. Hong Kong: HKRMA."
A collection of blog notes on using chatgpt for research purpose.
