Assignment 2.1 – Peer Review of Jonathan’s Research Proposal

To: Jonathan Ho

From: Ashley Yuan

Date: October 18, 2020

Subject: Peer Review of Proposal for Improving Shelf Talkers at Shoppers Drug Mart

Your formal research proposal was concise and well-organized. This was a very easy and enjoyable read. Please see the suggestions below:

First Impressions:

The organization of the proposal made it clear and easily comprehensible. The solution proposed was also straightforward and carefully formulated.

Organization:

The proposal followed a sequential organization—it was easy to follow how the problem led to the proposed solution.
The use of bullet points also made the details of your problem and the scope easily identifiable.
The order of questions in the scope could correlate with the order the primary and secondary sources were presented (i.e. advantages and disadvantages could go after the questions that will be explored using primary sources).

Expression:

Throughout the proposal, the consistent use of a professional tone was excellent.
In some areas, active voice could be used instead of a passive one. For example:
- “As such, communicating prices to customers is a crucial role belonging to the shelf labels for each item, also known as shelf talkers.”
- To improve clarity, this could be reworded as: “As such, shelf talkers (shelf labels that include information about products) are crucial in communicating prices to customers.”
The definition of shelf talkers in the Statement of Problem could also be clearer. For instance:
- “shelf talkers are simply label paper held in place by a plastic cover”
- The contents of a shelf talker could be added into the definition for further clarity (see the parenthetical definition in the example above).
The points listed in Statement of Problem are well-formed. The sentence structures could be made parallel to improve the readability of those points.
- For example, “Reflects incompetence onto the store” could be changed to “Shelf talker errors reflect incompetence onto the store” to make it parallel to the other statements.

Content:

The content included all requirements of a research proposal, such as:
Introduction
Statement of Problem
Proposed Solution
Scope
Methods
Qualifications
Conclusion
The details about your intended reader should also be included in your introduction, as it was an additional requirement for this assignment.

Grammar/Typos:

The proposal had no typos and was grammatically correct throughout, except for one minor error:

“Both customer and employee time are wasted while verifying price-talker differences.”
“time” should be “times” as each person’s time is seen as separate in this case.

Concluding Comments:

The proposal was very interesting, concise, and well-organized. With these minor improvements, this would be a very compelling research proposal:

This proposal was very well-written. Feel free to ask any questions regarding this review. Looking forward to your research!

Link to research proposal: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-99a-2020wa/2020/10/13/assignment-2-1-research-proposal-for-a-formal-report/