WANTED :P Dissertation ideas relating to domain names and economics.

[GUA]

Hey all,

I am starting my third and final year at Leeds University doing a BA in Economics.

One of the main constituents of the third year is the dissertation - an 8,000 word, self directed piece of research on absolutely anything as long as it has to do with Economics.

I have been thinking through ideas, and ways of integrating my interest in both Economics and domain names into a large scale piece of research. I was considering something based around the value of intangible economies.

I just thought i'd post on here to see if anyone had any ideas, or anything they had always wanted thoroughly researched by someone..

So if you have any thoughts, throw them in and i'll try and piece together a research topic that will be useful and informative to all.

Cheers

Thomas

 

[urlurl]

thats a great idea: why not take the view of domaining as an alternative to other regular forms of investments: such as stocks, bonds, small businesses, metals and realestate.

 

[Theo]

An analysis of the optimal method to succeed in the domain industry, resisting the temptation of white noise generating venues; in depth presentation of historical data from the early days of the .com era with emphasis on the performance of the three original TLDs versus the secondarily introduced ones.

 

[Anthony Ng]

Since you are doing an undergraduate assignment, a good starting point is to search about domain names related works in the academic databases available in your school library. You may want to know what has already been researched and not waste time on writing something which looks like plagiarism. And because you are not required to add substantially new knowledge as Master's and Doctoral degrees, a good literature review of existing works may not be a bad idea, esp. if you compare and contrast some different takes on the topic. Good luck.

I really miss my days in grad school.

 

[chipmeade]

The evolution of the domain aftermarket. Got lots of good material. Drops market, Auction Markets, Parking, Forum Marketplaces, UDRP, Google's impact, Development vs. PPC, ccTLDs, New Gtlds, Sunrise & Sunset periods of releases, 4L.com craze, domain Thefts, valuation engines, Industry Scandals...etc.

 

[Ian]

For starters check out idnx.com - good luck.

 

[GUA]

Ok.. I did reply to this.. but something clearly went wrong. Apologies.

Thanks for all the ideas. The link to idnx.com was particularly informative.

I have decided to look at this essentially as why domain values have changed over time.

There are of course many obvious reasons - I intend to look into them in a lot more depth. Things that are not initially obvious.

If you have any outside the box, or simply less obvious ideas or explanations, I'd love to hear them such that I can integrate them into my research.

Thanks again.

 

[Gerry]

It would be interesting to see how successful Overstock.com's strategy of rebranding itself as o.co has paid off.

This would involve you speaking directly with their marketing people.

Why did they adopt this change? How successful has it been (based simply on traffic)? What was/is the cost of this campaign? What is their ROI or expected ROI on this? Based on all these factors, would it not have been money best spent on solidifying their brand rather than attempt to rebrand itself?

Honestly, getting someone to actually speak on this would be interesting. If a mistake, most are very reluctant to admit it was/is a mistake. Seriously, the money spent on this effort to date has to be well into the multiples of tens perhaps hundreds of millions. And it just seems that money would have been better spent on solidifying their brand and gaining market share in the discount goods market rather than to come out as same goods and company repackaged and rebranded.

 

[GUA]

Doc,

Excellent points, excellent suggestion. I will definitely look into it.

In principle given the word limit (8,000), I was intending to look at the theoretical aspect of what you have said in a more generalized case.
Although obviously a single, well investigated case study could well be very interesting, and informative - there are a variety of downfalls - most notably the fact that all the information would have to come from overstock, and their could be a lot of validity issues with that.

I will definitely get in touch, and see how much they are prepared to let into the public domain per se. Then, if it is informative in the wider context of the question (which I believe it will be ), i will definitely give it its place.

Thanks a lot.

 

[Gerry]

Although obviously a single, well investigated case study could well be very interesting, and informative - there are a variety of downfalls - most notably the fact that all the information would have to come from overstock, and their could be a lot of validity issues with that.

Case studies always seem to carry more weight (as well as prestige) in the academic and research arenas.

 

[GUA]

An update on this.

Having spoken with, and discussed with the powers that be, It was felt that where I was heading was not specific enough, or feasible enough as regards getting results of statistical significance. I am thus looking somewhat elsewhere.

I am considering specifically companies/businesses/end users, and what gives a domain name value to them.
I am not looking to quantify values of domains but rather I am looking to investigate what factors make a domain valuable specifically to companies.

So the new question is as follows... What makes a domain investment worthwhile to a company? Is it the reach of the internet? Is it the type in traffic? The brand recognition? The search engine rankings?

Many Thanks once again.
Thomas