Hello guys,

Currently, I'm taking my masters on Management. I have already done all the courses and this is my last semester (the master thesis semester...)

I'm working on it since September and my topic is "Online Shopping" (yeah, I know, what a broad topic). I asked my advisor to help me with the subtopic but all he says is to "keep reading papers, so you can do your literature review". Well, it's all that I'm doing, but it's kinda frustrating since I don't have any specific "direction". I have been searching papers with the following keywords: social media, online shopping, online retailer and so on.

In the past week I had another meeting with him and, besides saying, again, to keep reading papers he told me that the subtopic must be a problem-solving one and that it could be related with "What big retailers can do to avoid their extinction?" or the "Age gap in online shopping".

I'm still lost and tired of reading papers (that might not be helpful, ugh...) and I'm running out of ideas. Any advices or any ideas (or even, someone in the some situation)? Thanks in advance. :)

Stop reading and start writing? That way you will be able to find some direction and build up a pool of ideas, even if they are based on the last few sentences of other research papers, as that's where you often find gaps in the literature, or though bear in mind the researchers themselves may be covering these gaps!

You have a topic but have no question. Frame your research as a question and then you can review the appropriate literature to see if it has been answered.

I wish my supevisor had been stricter with me as my lit review and proposal ended up being far too broad and I would never have completed my dissertation in time.

Ecommerce and retail are very much my domain - ideas? How about how bricks and mortar can retain customers against pureplays? How to globalise ecommerce platforms? Is there are requirement for localisation for global ecommerce sites?

Feel free to pm me if you want more ideas :)

You really need to focus on a far more specific topic, online shopping is such a huge area! How about thinking about your own experience of online shopping (or that of others you know) and a problem you encountered? Or online shopping in terms of a specific product, maybe something that's not usually bought/sold online or something that poses particular difficulties?

Once you've got a more specific area to focus on you can target your reading more effectively.

Good luck! :)