Consumer Behaviour: Writing a Critical Review

Mart 210         Consumer Behaviour: Writing a Critical Review                (JG 2015)

A critical review is a detailed commentary on a piece of writing or any other form of presenting an argument.

Critical means you assess the arguments provided and weigh up their validity in as far they support the conclusion. This includes an appraisal of the strength and weaknesses of the piece.

Hence, it is necessary to provide the reader of a critical review with a concise description of what the author or presenter has done, how it was done and what steps were taken to get to the conclusion. The latter refers to the methodology which often needs particular scrutiny and evaluation.

Normally, academic writings include,

• an abstract,
• an introduction
• literature review,
• a statement of the gap that needs to be researched (research question),
• the methodology chosen (including why this is the best for the problem)
• results or findings
• discussion or conclusions/ recommendations, (including a self-critique or section on the limitations, or how the work could be improved)

Each of these sections should be mentioned in the critical review, and evaluated at whatever depth is necessary or required (i.e., a 500 word critique would be more concise than a 1000 word one but not less critical than the other– just with more detail).

Your evaluation should summarise the points you made and  say what is good and what not so good about the article, and how useful you think it is for the purpose it states that it has been written for (esp. the findings and conclusions: do they really and clearly answer to the research problem?).

When planning the review, read the article at least once before you take down general notes. Then read the piece again in detail taking notes on

• clarity of arguments
• helpfulness of graphs and tables
• what are the main aims, findings etc. (as above)

In your evaluation you should note whether each section is achieving what it is meant to do, including whether the results are consistent with the aims, the findings clearly presented and why they are (not) convincing, and the limitations section sufficient.

It a literature review, this task should be repeated for each source BEFORE you summarise the relevant points under the topic you are writing for. The first step is important so you can evaluate the strength of the evidence you provide in support of your own argument under your topic.