Using a news article from the Hong Kong Standard to derive an MBA dissertation proposal prototype: an example

Using a news article from the Hong Kong Standard to derive an MBA dissertation proposal prototype: an example

 

I am a part-time MBA student, starting to do my dissertation project. I am interested in the following news and would ask you to come up with 3 terse research theme statements from this news:

"Police warn as scammers impersonate travel agencies to sell fake tours, concert tickets" November 2, 2026
(Source URL : Police warn as scammers impersonate travel agencies to sell fake tours, concert tickets | The Standard| https://www.thestandard.com.hk/news/article/347208/)
A surge of fake social media pages and websites is impersonating licensed travel agencies to sell cut-price tour packages and concert tickets, prompting police to warn the public against transferring money to unverified sellers.

According to Sing Tao Daily, the sister publication of The Standard, scammers have replicated the names, logos and itineraries of at least two local travel agencies to promote fraudulent trips, including a HK$20,999 Yunnan-Tibet tour and a HK$39,999 Australia package.
Fraudulent pages have also targeted fans by offering tickets to Andy Lau Tak-wah concerts, claiming to eliminate scalpers and asking for only a HK$50 service fee on top of the ticket price to trick citizens into transferring money.

When a reporter posing as a client contacted one of the pages, the seller offered a budget two-day Macau package, which included hotel accommodation, return transport, buffet meals, and tickets to House of Dancing Water and a water park. The seller pressured the reporter to make a quick payment, citing limited availability and providing both Faster Payment System (FPS) and bank account details.
The two affected travel agencies have posted warnings on Facebook. One agency stated scammers had copied its itineraries and stressed that it only accepts payments through corporate accounts. The other agency noted that fake accounts were using its full company name and urged consumers to use official channels and report any impersonation to both the platforms and police.
A spokesperson for one agency said it had received inquiries from two customers, but had not yet filed a police report. The agency had notified its management and the Travel Industry Authority.
Police recorded 6,973 online shopping scams in the first eight months of the year, with losses totaling HK$230 million. They advised consumers to buy from reputable sellers, consider face-to-face transactions and check sellers’ contact details, payment accounts and page names before paying.

Anyone who suspects a scam should stop the transaction, call the Anti-Scam Helpline on 18222 and keep relevant records for a police report. The public can also use the Scameter website or mobile app to check suspicious account names, phone numbers, payment details, email addresses and URLs."

My intention is to use a chosen crude research theme to further explore the topic, together with the key words of: "Sales management", "consumer trust", and "concert events" in the research theme formulation, and subsequently produce a dissertation proposal prototype as a result.

 

Here are three terse, dissertation-ready research theme statements. They deliberately keep sales management, consumer trust, and concert events central while allowing you to narrow the scope later.

Candidate research themes

1.                                            Sales management and consumer trust in concert-event ticketing: How legitimate sellers can counter impersonation-based online scams in Hong Kong.
Focus: sales-channel controls, verified payment practices, and trust-repair strategies for concert-event ticket sales. The news highlights fake pages selling Andy Lau concert tickets and pressuring rapid payment through FPS or bank transfers.

2.                                            Consumer trust formation and verification behaviour in online concert-event ticket purchases: A study of scam cues, perceived seller legitimacy, and purchase intention.
Focus: how consumers assess seller credibility—page name, contact details, payment account, price, urgency—and how these cues affect willingness to buy concert-event tickets. Police advise checking sellers’ contact details, payment accounts, and page names before paying.

3.                                            Sales management responses to brand impersonation in concert-event ticketing: Developing trust-enhancing sales practices for travel agencies and authorised ticket sellers.
Focus: how organisations can use official-channel communication, corporate-account payment policies, platform reporting, and consumer education to protect consumer trust. The affected agencies warned customers and stressed payment only through corporate accounts.

Recommended direction

For an MBA dissertation, Theme 2 is likely the most practical and researchable: it has a clear consumer-side research question, measurable constructs, and direct relevance to concert-event ticketing.

A possible working title would be:

“Building Consumer Trust in Online Concert-Event Ticket Sales: The Effects of Seller-Legitimacy Cues and Scam-Risk Perceptions on Purchase Intention in Hong Kong.”

This theme fits the reported context: scammers imitate legitimate brands, use low prices and scarcity pressure, and request direct transfers—conditions that can undermine consumer trust in online sales. Hong Kong police reported 6,973 online-shopping scams with HK$230 million in losses in the first eight months of 2026, underscoring the practical importance of the topic.

Possible research questions

·                                                How do seller-legitimacy cues affect consumer trust in online concert-event ticket sellers?

·                                                How do perceived scam risk, price attractiveness, and urgency influence consumers’ intention to purchase concert-event tickets online?

·                                                Which sales-management practices most effectively increase consumer trust in authorised ticket sellers?

·                                                How do consumers distinguish legitimate concert-event ticket offers from impersonation scams on social media?

Suggested keywords

·                  Sales management

·                  Consumer trust

·                  Concert events

·                  Online ticketing

·                  Brand impersonation

·                  Perceived scam risk

·                  Purchase intention

·                  Social commerce

·                  Trust signals

·                  Fraud prevention

The broader scam environment supports this focus: impersonation is reported as the most widely encountered scam type among Hong Kong respondents, and e-shopping fraud is a major category of deception cases.

 

I now choose theme 1 for my dissertation project work. Specifically, my research theme is "Sales management and consumer trust in concert-event ticketing in Hong Kong". I would like to include the following 4 key words to provide a more concrete research theme: pragmatism, exploratory research, impersonation-based online scams with regard to concert events, selling service effectiveness of travel agencies" At this point, could you provide some relevant research issues, some public media reported issues and 3 academic references to me (in Harvard reference format). With that, also produce a preliminary dissertation proposal (for a 4-month part-time dissertation project) with a dissertation title, 3 research issues to address and 3 public media-reported issues to address, 4 research objectives, 3 research questions, 3 academic theories to use, an research methodology (with a questionnaire survey with my friends, a semi-structured interview with 4 of my friends, a secondary data analysis, a rough project time line, a short reference list.

 

Below is a preliminary, feasible proposal for a four-month part-time MBA dissertation. It uses a pragmatist, exploratory approach to examine how impersonation-based scams affect consumer trust and how travel agencies’ selling-service effectiveness can support safer concert-event ticket sales in Hong Kong.

Dissertation title

Sales Management and Consumer Trust in Concert-Event Ticketing in Hong Kong: An Exploratory Study of Impersonation-Based Online Scams and the Selling-Service Effectiveness of Travel Agencies

Research background

Hong Kong consumers increasingly buy concert tickets through social media, messaging apps and online marketplaces. Police reported that concert tickets were the largest lure in online-shopping fraud, accounting for more than 30% of such cases in the first five months of 2026; scammers commonly request advance payment through online banking or stored-value payment tools and then disappear.news.rthk

The immediate trigger for this study is the reported impersonation of licensed travel agencies through fake social-media pages and websites. These pages copied agency names, logos and itineraries, advertised discounted tours and Andy Lau concert tickets, and urged customers to transfer money quickly through FPS or bank accounts.

From a sales-management perspective, the issue is not only fraud prevention but also how legitimate sellers can design trustworthy selling processes: verified channels, transparent payment arrangements, responsive customer service, clear service recovery, and credible communication during high-demand concert-event periods.

Research issues to address

1.    Consumer trust vulnerability: How do impersonation-based online scams weaken consumer trust in online concert-event ticket sellers in Hong Kong?

2.    Consumer verification behaviour: Which trust cues and verification practices influence consumers’ willingness to purchase concert-event tickets from travel agencies or authorised sellers?

3.    Selling-service effectiveness: What sales-management and service practices can travel agencies use to demonstrate legitimacy, reduce perceived scam risk, and maintain consumer trust in concert-event ticketing?

Public media-reported issues to address

1.    Fake travel-agency pages selling concert tickets: Media reports describe scammers copying the names, logos and itineraries of licensed travel agencies, then using fake pages to sell Andy Lau concert tickets with a small added “service fee.”eastweek.stheadline

2.    Urgency and direct-transfer payment pressure: Reports note that fraudsters pressure buyers to “transfer money quickly to reserve tickets,” exploiting fans’ urgency and limited-ticket perceptions.hkcd+1

3.    Difficulty of verifying ticket authenticity: Police and media reports warn that ticket photos and purchase-record screenshots can be forged, and that consumers should use official or authorised ticketing channels rather than judging legitimacy from screenshots alone.hkcd+1

Research objectives

1.    To explore how impersonation-based online scams affect consumer trust in online concert-event ticketing in Hong Kong.

2.    To identify the trust cues and verification behaviours that consumers use when assessing online concert-event ticket sellers.

3.    To evaluate how travel agencies’ selling-service effectiveness—including official-channel communication, payment transparency, staff responsiveness and after-sales support—may strengthen consumer trust.

4.    To develop practical sales-management recommendations for travel agencies and authorised ticket sellers to reduce scam-related trust damage and improve consumer confidence.

Research questions

1.    RQ1: How do impersonation-based online scams influence consumer trust in concert-event ticket sellers in Hong Kong?

2.    RQ2: What consumer trust cues and verification behaviours are associated with willingness to purchase concert-event tickets from travel agencies or authorised sellers?

3.    RQ3: How can travel agencies improve their selling-service effectiveness to build and protect consumer trust in concert-event ticketing?

Academic theories

Theory	Application in this study
Trust-commitment theory	Explains how trust in a seller encourages purchase intention, repeat buying and long-term customer relationships; it is directly relevant to consumer trust in ticket sellers. journals.sagepub
Signal theory	Explains how consumers interpret observable signals—verified pages, corporate payment accounts, official contact details, transparent pricing and service guarantees—as indicators of seller legitimacy.
Social cognitive theory	Explains how consumers learn from observed experiences, media warnings, peer advice and platform cues when forming beliefs about online ticketing risks and appropriate purchasing behaviour. inderscience

Research methodology

This study adopts a pragmatist philosophy. It combines quantitative evidence on consumer perceptions with qualitative insight into how consumers interpret scam risks and what sales practices they consider trustworthy. Pragmatism is appropriate because the research aims to produce actionable recommendations for travel agencies and ticket sellers, rather than merely test a single fixed theory.

The overall design is exploratory and mixed-methods, using a questionnaire survey, semi-structured interviews and secondary-data analysis.

Questionnaire survey

You will distribute an online questionnaire to your friends and extended personal networks, targeting consumers in Hong Kong who have bought, considered buying, or decided not to buy concert-event tickets online.

Suggested sample: 60–100 usable responses. This is realistic for a four-month part-time project and sufficient for exploratory descriptive analysis.

Sampling method: Non-probability convenience and snowball sampling.

Questionnaire sections:

• Screening: whether the respondent has purchased or considered purchasing concert-event tickets online.
• Demographics: age group, gender, employment status, frequency of concert attendance, and preferred ticketing channels.
• Scam exposure: awareness of fake travel-agency pages, fake ticket listings, impersonation scams, and scam-warning information.
• Consumer trust: trust in authorised sellers, social-media sellers, travel agencies, official ticketing platforms, and payment channels.
• Trust cues: official verification, corporate bank account, transparent pricing, customer reviews, response speed, refund policy, and platform reputation.
• Perceived scam risk: likelihood of fraud, financial loss, invalid tickets, personal-data misuse, and pressure to pay quickly.
• Selling-service effectiveness: clarity of information, staff competence, responsiveness, payment security, complaint handling, and after-sales support.
• Purchase intention: willingness to buy concert tickets through a travel agency or authorised seller.

Analysis: Descriptive statistics, reliability checks for multi-item scales, correlation analysis, and simple group comparisons. Because the sample is small and non-probability based, avoid claiming statistical generalisability; present findings as exploratory.

Semi-structured interviews

You will conduct semi-structured interviews with four friends who have experience with concert-event ticket purchases or online ticket transactions.

Interview themes:

• Recent concert-ticket purchasing experiences.
• Trust and distrust in online sellers and travel agencies.
• Reactions to fake pages, impersonation scams, low prices, urgency messages and direct bank/FPS transfers.
• Verification practices before payment.
• Expectations of travel-agency selling service and after-sales support.
• Suggestions for improving trust in concert-event ticketing.

Each interview should last approximately 30–45 minutes. With participants’ consent, record and transcribe the interviews; otherwise take detailed notes. Analyse responses using thematic analysis: familiarisation, coding, theme development, review, and interpretation.

Secondary-data analysis

Use publicly available secondary sources to contextualise the primary findings:

• Hong Kong Police and Anti-Deception Coordination Centre scam statistics and alerts.
• Travel Industry Authority notices and travel-agency warnings.
• News reports on fake travel-agency pages, concert-ticket scams, and consumer-protection advice.news.rthk+1
• Social-media posts or official warnings from affected travel agencies, where publicly accessible.

Analyse the data thematically to identify common scam tactics, consumer vulnerabilities, institutional responses, and sales-management implications.

Ethical considerations

• Obtain voluntary informed consent from all survey and interview participants.
• Keep responses anonymous or pseudonymous and store data securely.
• Explain that participation is voluntary and that participants may withdraw at any time.
• Do not collect bank-account numbers, passwords, identity documents, or other sensitive financial information.
• Make clear that the study is academic and that findings will be anonymised in the dissertation.

Limitations

• The questionnaire uses a small convenience sample of friends and personal contacts, so findings cannot be generalised to all Hong Kong consumers.
• Interview participants are friends, which may create social-desirability bias.
• The study focuses on consumer perceptions rather than internal sales-management practices of travel agencies.
• The fast-changing scam environment means findings should be interpreted as time-specific and exploratory.

Four-month project timeline

Month	Main activities	Output
Month 1	Refine research questions; review literature; develop conceptual framework; design questionnaire and interview guide; obtain ethics/approval if required	Finalised research instruments
Month 2	Pilot-test questionnaire with 5–10 people; revise instrument; distribute survey; conduct secondary-data collection; begin interviews	Pilot results, survey data, interview transcripts/notes
Month 3	Close survey; complete interviews; clean and analyse quantitative data; conduct thematic analysis of interviews and secondary data	Preliminary findings and interpreted results
Month 4	Integrate findings; develop sales-management recommendations; write discussion, conclusions, limitations and references; proofread and submit	Completed dissertation

Short reference list

Harvard referencing style.

• Hajli, N. (2015) ‘Social commerce constructs and consumer’s intention to buy’, International Journal of Information Management, 35(2), pp. 183–191.
• Kim, D.J., Ferrin, D.L. and Rao, H.R. (2008) ‘A trust-based consumer decision-making model in electronic commerce: The role of trust, perceived risk, and their antecedents’, Decision Support Systems, 44(2), pp. 544–564.
• Morgan, R.M. and Hunt, S.D. (1994) ‘The commitment-trust theory of relationship marketing’, Journal of Marketing, 58(3), pp. 20–38.

Additional academic references

The following sources are especially relevant to your chosen theme and can support the literature review:

• Xiao, L., Guo, Z. and D’Ambra, J. (2022) ‘Trust and consumers’ purchase intention in a social commerce platform: A meta-analytic approach’, SAGE Open, 12(1). This meta-analysis finds that trust positively influences purchase intention, with trust in sellers having a particularly strong effect.journals.sagepub
• Bond, C. and colleagues (2024) ‘How consumers’ attitude about ticketing companies mediates online purchasing process’, International Journal of Electronic Customer Relationship Management, 14(3/4), pp. 233–253. This study examines trust in ticketing platforms, attitudes, and online entertainment-ticket purchasing behaviour.inderscience
• Future Business Journal (2026) ‘Understanding repurchase intention in online ticketing: a hybrid PLS-SEM and ANP approach’, Future Business Journal. This study finds that perceived ease of use, perceived price, customer satisfaction and trust significantly affect repurchase intention in online ticketing.link.springer

Practical next step

Your next task should be to convert the three research questions into a conceptual framework:

Impersonation-based scam exposure → perceived scam risk → consumer trust → purchase intention, with selling-service effectiveness of travel agencies as a possible moderator or practical response variable.

This framework will let you connect the survey items, interview questions and secondary-data themes directly to your dissertation’s central concern: rebuilding and protecting consumer trust in concert-event ticketing through better sales management.

 

Please comment on the practical, academic, and originality of this dissertation proposal.

Overall, the proposal is practical, timely, and academically defensible, but its originality depends on narrowing the focus from “consumer trust in ticketing” to the specific interaction among impersonation scams, travel-agency selling service, and concert-event ticketing. The topic is strongly justified by current Hong Kong evidence: concert-ticket-related e-shopping fraud rose sharply, with 2,805 cases in 2025, up 61.8% year-on-year.

Practical value

Strength: high. The study addresses a real operational problem for travel agencies, authorised ticket sellers, event organisers, and consumers.

·        Travel agencies can use the findings to improve official-channel communication, payment transparency, staff responsiveness, verification guidance, and after-sales support.

·        Consumers may benefit from clearer guidance on which trust cues—such as corporate payment accounts, verified pages, and official contact details—should be checked before paying.

·        The topic has immediate policy and industry relevance because scammers use fake pages, urgency messages, and direct FPS or bank transfers to exploit buyers.

The main practical limitation is that your sample will mainly comprise friends and personal contacts. That is acceptable for an exploratory MBA dissertation, but you should avoid claiming that the findings represent all Hong Kong consumers. Instead, frame the contribution as contextual insight and managerial recommendations.

Academic value

Strength: moderate to high. The proposal connects several established ideas—consumer trust, perceived risk, purchase intention, seller legitimacy, and service effectiveness—in a current consumer context.

The theoretical base is sensible:

·        Trust-commitment theory explains why trust matters for ongoing buyer-seller relationships.

·        Signal theory explains why consumers rely on visible cues, such as verified accounts and corporate payment channels, to judge legitimacy.

·        Social cognitive theory explains how consumers learn risk-avoidance behaviour from media warnings, peers, and observed scam experiences.

The academic weakness is that “consumer trust” and “online purchase intention” are well-researched areas. To strengthen academic rigour, you should clearly define the relationships among your constructs and avoid treating every factor as equally important. A tighter model could be:

Impersonation-scam exposure → perceived scam risk → consumer trust → purchase intention, with travel-agency selling-service effectiveness examined as a trust-enhancing factor.

This would make the dissertation more focused and analytically coherent. Existing research already shows that trust influences purchase intention in social commerce, and that trust, perceived price, satisfaction and ease of use affect online-ticket repurchase intention.

Originality

Strength: moderate, with potential to become high. The general subject—online ticket fraud and consumer trust—is not entirely new. However, your original angle is the combination of:

1.    Impersonation-based scams rather than generic online fraud.

2.    Travel agencies as sellers or trust intermediaries, rather than only official ticketing platforms.

3.    Concert events as a high-urgency, emotionally driven purchase context.

4.    Sales management as a practical response, not merely consumer education or cybersecurity.

That combination is original enough for an MBA dissertation, particularly in the Hong Kong setting. The novelty is strengthened by the fact that police identify concert tickets as a leading category of online-shopping fraud and note that fraud rose significantly after Kai Tak Sports Park opened.

To improve originality, avoid framing the study as “consumer trust in online ticketing” alone. Emphasise the distinctive research gap:

How can travel agencies use selling-service effectiveness to preserve consumer trust when impersonation-based scams exploit concert-event ticket demand?

Main risks and improvements

Area	Current risk	Recommended improvement
Scope	“Sales management,” “consumer trust,” “scams,” “travel agencies,” and “concert events” together may become too broad.	Select one primary relationship: scam exposure, trust, and purchase intention, with selling-service effectiveness as the managerial response.
Sampling	Friends may provide biased or socially desirable answers.	Use screening questions, anonymise responses, and include people with varied concert-ticketing experience.
Theory	Three theories may be too many for a four-month project.	Keep trust-commitment theory as the core theory; use signal theory for trust cues and social cognitive theory only as supporting context.
Measurement	“Selling-service effectiveness” needs a clear definition.	Operationalise it through specific items: information clarity, response speed, payment security, official verification, complaint handling, and refund clarity.
Generalisability	A convenience sample cannot represent Hong Kong consumers.	State explicitly that the study is exploratory and generates propositions, not statistically generalisable conclusions.
Data access	You may not obtain internal travel-agency data.	Rely on consumer perceptions, public scam alerts, agency Facebook warnings, and police or TIA secondary data.

Overall judgement

The proposal is practically relevant and academically viable for a four-month part-time MBA dissertation. Its strongest feature is its timely Hong Kong context; its main weakness is potential over-breadth.

If you sharpen the focus on how impersonation scams affect consumer trust and how travel agencies’ selling-service practices can restore or protect that trust, the project will be both manageable and original. This is especially important because fake ticket sellers exploit urgency, social-media channels, and consumers’ difficulty in verifying authenticity.

A concise final positioning statement could be:

This exploratory study examines how impersonation-based online scams affect consumer trust in concert-event ticketing in Hong Kong, and how the selling-service effectiveness of travel agencies can reduce perceived scam risk and support trustworthy sales management.