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21 May 2008

Too young to be published?

Undergrad project is peer-reviewed

YOUNG researchers have been praised by a business professor after an inspired undergraduate project led them to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Ben Scholes, Jonathan Shaw and Chris Thurgood, students in Marketing Management, took the popular option in Critical Consumption as part of their Bachelor studies at MMU Business School.

Elke Pioch, senior lecturer in marketing and retail, said their essay, on the Imperial War Museum in Salford and its role as a space of consumption, was so impressive that it was decided it should be submitted to the Journal of Place Management and Development.

Professor Cathy Parker, the journal’s editor, said: "Ben, Jonathan and Chris’s paper was an outstanding piece of undergraduate research. After external review the paper was accepted."

Brilliant

Ben, 22, from Blackpool, whose degree offered him a study year in the States and a placement year with Blacks Leisure Group as a marketing executive, said the critical consumption studies was brilliant. He said: "The module was extremely interesting looking uniquely at why people consume, why they don’t, where they consume and how space plays a role in consumption.

"Getting published is very well deserved after all our hard work on that assignment. It is more than just a personal achievement. I know that it will benefit men in the future when looking for a job."

Jonathan Shaw, 22, from Worcester, who worked in Germany for Hewlett Packard in his third year and won the Chartered Institute of Marketing prize in his second year, says his research interest lie in consumption, place and the impacts of neo-liberalism. He hopes to work for a humanitarian organisation.

Their paper employed social theories to argue that the war museum was not so much a space for the consumption of knowledge or products as a vehicle for the regeneration of Salford.