Research Proposal: Impacts of Facebook on the Eating Pattern

Date: November 20, 2017

To: Tania Rahman
From: Md. Asif Al Mashrur, ID# 172 1069 030, ENG 105, Sec: 15
Subject: Proposal to conduct a research on the impacts of Facebook on the eating pattern of the
undergraduate students of Dhaka city.

Topic: Impacts of Facebook on the eating pattern of undergraduate students of Dhaka city.

Title: Impacts of Facebook on the eating pattern of undergraduate students of Dhaka City:
Promoting foreign and fast food over traditional Bengali foods.

INTRODUCTION

Bangladesh has a reputation for having tasty foods of its own tradition and culture. Bengali
people always enjoyed our traditional food and felt proud of it. Foods of foreign culture and fast
foods didn’t have much exposure or much attention in Dhaka city a few decades back. But with
the birth of a few local chains and a few foreign chains joining the market has changed the
situation a lot.
Facebook has been a very vital thing in this aspect. All of the entities mentioned above used
Facebook as a marketing platform for doing business. Meanwhile what they did is promoted
foods of foreign culture to our undergraduate students, especially the ones of Dhaka city, and
distracted them from the traditional Bengali foods.

BACKGROUND

Social media has made the world smaller and is putting its impacts on it. Facebook is the leading
social networking site based on Comscore Agency Reports (2010). Nowadays Facebook is used
for various purposes. Advertising is one of the most common things on Facebook. Moriarty et al
(2009, p. 342) submit that,
“The reason these social networking sites are so attractive to marketers is that they engage the
power of relationships. Because of these relationships, network members are more likely to
respond to message on the sites, including advertisements, if they are effective at becoming part
of the social context. Marketers are interested because these relationships also are influential in
consumer decision making”
Internet plays a big role in people’s everyday life (Abedniya and Mahmouei, 2010) and
especially so in students life’s (Deatherage, Servaty-Seib and Aksoz, 2014). Several types of
products are displayed over Facebook in the form of audio visuals, posters, GIFs etc. The
restaurants of Dhaka has not missed out this opportunity and used Facebook as a platform for
advertising their products. Furthermore a few groups on this platform, e.g. “Food Bank”, are
places where people seek for reviews of restaurants.
The focus of the research will be on how the abovementioned activities influence the
undergraduate students of Dhaka city and put impact on their eating patterns. I wonder if these
are promoting fast food, e.g. burger, pasta, etc. and foods of foreign countries, e.g. pizza, nachos
etc. or not; whether this means that we are gradually losing our interest and attraction on our
traditional foods. I hope to find answers to such questions through my research work.

RESEARCH_QUESTIONS

In my research I plan to investigate on undergraduate students who use Facebook and are losing
their healthy eating pattern. My research will address the following research questions:
1) How do they come across these fast foods and foreign foods on Facebook?
2) How do this change their personal preferences for food?
3) How do they get distracted from our traditional Bengali food and become fond of foreign
food cultures?
4) Is there any interaction between family members with them when deciding what they are
going to eat?
5) How does the fast food eating habit affect them to become overweight or to suffer from
obesity?

HYPOTHESIS

1) Undergraduate students of Dhaka city spend a lot of time on Facebook, during which
they come across fast foods and foreign foods.
2) Exposure to several ads on Facebook make undergraduate students of Dhaka city change
their preferences for food.
3) Watching these on Facebook several times they gradually get distract from traditional
Bengali Food and become fond of food of foreign culture.
4) Majority of the undergraduate students of Dhaka city did not get the opportunity to visit
restaurants on their own which they get now, resulting into no interaction between them
and their families while deciding what food they are going to eat.
5) Fast food and majority of the foreign foods are full of calories and fat, which makes
undergraduate students become overweight and causes them to suffer from obesity.

RESEARCH_METHODOLOGY

For my primary research, I will conduct a survey of a representative sampling of the

undergraduate students from different universities of Dhaka City to find out how their eating
taste and eating pattern is and how much influence Facebook has behind it. I will design a
questionnaire with different types of questions to get much useful data to find answers to my
research questions. And also take interviews for triangulation.
For my secondary research, I plan to use the resources from existing researches and besides
published materials. I will also browse the internet and visit several blogs and websites of
different NGOs who are working related to this issue. In addition I plan to use some journals and
newspaper to help my research.
The expected number of respondents and from where will be they picked are as follows
Sample Respondents : 40
Interview Respondents : 04
Questionnaire Respondents : 36
Gender : Male 18 Female 18
University Type : Public 18 Private 18
Concentration of study : Engineering 12 Business 12 Others 12
University : BUET 04 NSU 16 DU 04
IUT 04 IBA 04 BUP 04

ORGANIZATION
My paper will be divided into several sections, the most important of which are the
Introduction, Literature Review, Data presentation and Analysis and the Summary of Findings.
Within the sections my organization will be based on my research questions.

TIMETABLE

I hope to complete my primary research by the early November and my secondary research by
the middle of November. I shall complete writing the final draft of my research paper by the end
of November, and submit it by 1st December, the specified deadline.

REQUEST_FOR_APPROVAL

I hereby request your approval for my research proposal. If you wish me to modify or improve
my proposal, I will submit it after incorporating the changes. I would also be grateful for you
advice, guidance and help in conducting my research and completing the project.