A strong international-business thesis topic links one business decision to a defined cross-border setting, a measurable outcome and data you can realistically obtain. “Globalisation” is too broad; “how exchange-rate volatility affected export intensity among small food manufacturers in two countries from 2020 to 2025” is researchable.
The 50 ideas below are starting points for bachelor’s, master’s and MBA dissertations. Adapt the country, sector, time period and method to your programme. Before committing, confirm supervisor fit, data access, ethics requirements and whether the question can be answered within your deadline.
How to turn an idea into a viable research question
- Choose the decision. Focus on market entry, sourcing, pricing, finance, people, sustainability, risk or another managerial choice.
- Define the setting. Name the countries or regions, industry, firm type and period.
- Select an outcome. Examples include export growth, survival, productivity, employee retention, trust, cost, emissions or speed to market.
- Identify a plausible mechanism. Explain why regulation, culture, capabilities, networks or technology should influence that outcome.
- Check the data before finalising the title. A modest question with credible evidence is stronger than an ambitious question built on unavailable data.
For secondary research, the World Bank Enterprise Surveys provide comparable firm-level evidence on finance, infrastructure, competition, innovation and business performance across many economies. The WTO statistics portal, UN Comtrade, OECD Data Explorer and UNCTAD investment data support trade and investment questions. Read each dataset’s definitions, coverage and revision notes before comparing countries.
International strategy and market entry
- How does regulatory distance influence the entry mode chosen by digital-service firms?
- When do small exporters prefer distributors over wholly owned sales subsidiaries?
- How does prior regional experience affect a firm’s speed of entry into a new market?
- Do joint ventures improve survival in sectors with foreign-ownership restrictions?
- How do platform businesses adapt network effects when entering multilingual markets?
- What explains the withdrawal of consumer brands from a selected emerging market?
- How does diaspora knowledge affect opportunity recognition by exporting SMEs?
- Does a born-global strategy improve growth or increase early-stage risk?
- How do family-owned firms balance control and local partnership in foreign expansion?
- Which market signals best predict successful franchise entry across two countries?
Global supply chains, operations and resilience
- How does supplier geographic diversification affect disruption recovery time?
- What is the relationship between inventory buffers and profitability after a logistics shock?
- How do firms evaluate reshoring, nearshoring and continued offshore sourcing?
- Does supply-chain visibility technology improve responses to tier-two supplier disruption?
- How do port delays alter sourcing decisions in a selected product category?
- What governance practices improve labour-standard compliance among overseas suppliers?
- How does dependence on one critical mineral affect strategic risk disclosure?
- Do long-term supplier contracts support decarbonisation investment?
- How do small firms measure and manage Scope 3 emissions in imported inputs?
- Which circular procurement practices survive cost pressure across borders?
Trade, investment and international finance
- How do tariff changes alter import sourcing by firms in one industry?
- What explains differences between announced and realised foreign direct investment?
- How does exchange-rate volatility affect export intensity among SMEs?
- Do trade agreements increase participation by smaller firms or mainly benefit incumbents?
- How do capital controls influence multinational cash-management decisions?
- What is the relationship between political-risk indicators and greenfield investment location?
- How do sanctions reshape payment routes and supplier networks in a lawful, compliance-focused case study?
- Does export-credit support improve market survival for first-time exporters?
- How do transfer-pricing rules influence location decisions for intangible assets?
- What determines the use of local-currency pricing in cross-border contracts?
Trade datasets are powerful but easy to misuse. UN Comtrade records reported merchandise flows by product and partner; it does not directly measure firm strategy or services trade. WTO tariff data, national statistics and company evidence may be needed to test the mechanism behind a pattern.
International marketing and consumer behaviour
- How does sustainability-label familiarity affect willingness to pay across two markets?
- When does global brand consistency outperform local adaptation?
- How do translation choices change trust in environmental claims?
- What effect do local influencers have on entry by an unfamiliar foreign brand?
- How do privacy rules reshape cross-border digital advertising strategy?
- Does country-of-origin information matter differently for repairable and disposable products?
- How do consumers respond to refill or reuse systems across cultures?
- What drives scepticism toward carbon-neutral product claims in different markets?
- How do vegan brands adapt benefit framing across food cultures?
- Does standardised packaging design improve recognition but reduce local relevance?
A campaign comparison needs transparent selection criteria and comparable evidence. Our analyses of environmentally friendly marketing campaigns and vegan marketing campaign ideas show how claims, disclosure and local context can become research variables rather than decorative examples.
People, culture and international management
- How does psychological safety differ in remote multicultural project teams?
- Which onboarding practices improve retention after an international assignment?
- How do language policies affect participation in multinational meetings?
- What is the relationship between cultural intelligence and virtual negotiation outcomes?
- How do hybrid-work rules affect perceived fairness across country offices?
- When do global performance metrics conflict with local management norms?
- How does visa uncertainty influence talent-location decisions?
- Which practices reduce knowledge loss when expatriates return home?
- How do multinational firms respond to different employee expectations about climate action?
- What role do employee resource groups play in cross-border inclusion?
Sustainability, technology and responsible business
- Do mandatory climate disclosures change supplier selection by multinational firms?
- How do carbon-border measures affect investment in lower-emission production?
- What makes product take-back systems transferable from one country to another?
- How do firms verify human-rights due diligence beyond first-tier suppliers?
- Does AI adoption improve export productivity equally across firm sizes?
- How do data-localisation rules influence cloud-service market entry?
- What governance controls reduce bias in multinational recruitment algorithms?
- How do right-to-repair rules affect international product design?
- Which financing structures accelerate clean-technology transfer to emerging markets?
- How do multinational firms prevent inconsistent green claims across jurisdictions?
Methods that fit different degree levels
| Approach | Good fit | Main caution |
|---|---|---|
| Comparative case study | Bachelor’s or MBA project with access to two to four organisations | Define a common comparison framework; avoid choosing only successful cases |
| Secondary quantitative analysis | Master’s thesis using trade, investment or enterprise data | Check variable definitions, missing data, weighting and causal limits |
| Survey | Perceptions, intentions or management practices | Secure a realistic sampling frame and avoid claiming population effects from convenience samples |
| Interviews | Processes, decisions and under-documented phenomena | Plan recruitment, consent, confidentiality and coding before fieldwork |
| Experiment or vignette | Consumer response, negotiation or managerial judgement | Pre-register outcomes where possible and justify the sample |
| Systematic review | A mature literature with enough comparable studies | Publish a protocol, search multiple databases and report exclusions |
A topic-narrowing template
Use this sentence: How does [explanatory factor] affect [outcome] for [unit of analysis] in [countries or market] during [period], and through what mechanism? Then write down the minimum evidence needed to answer it.
Example: “How did mandatory sustainability reporting affect supplier-audit practices among listed apparel firms in France and Germany from 2023 to 2026?” This question identifies the rule, outcome, firms, countries and period. A feasible design might combine disclosed reports with interviews, while acknowledging that reported practices do not prove factory-level outcomes.
Data quality, ethics and scope
- Do not treat countries as uniform cultures; justify any cultural measure and avoid stereotypes.
- Separate correlation from causation. Policy changes often coincide with economic shocks and industry trends.
- Check whether money values are nominal or real and whether exchange rates distort comparisons.
- Respect dataset licences and disclosure controls, especially with firm-level microdata.
- Obtain ethics approval before recruitment or collection when your institution requires it.
- Protect interviewees who discuss corruption, sanctions, labour conditions or political risk.
- Document translations and test whether key constructs mean the same thing across languages.
- Use generative AI only within programme rules, and verify every citation, quotation and dataset description.
UNCTAD’s investment statistics and the OECD’s guidance on measuring foreign direct investment illustrate why definitions matter: flows, positions, ultimate ownership and greenfield project announcements answer different questions.
Final checklist before you propose the title
- The question is narrow enough to answer in the available months.
- The contribution is clear: a new setting, comparison, mechanism, dataset or managerial implication.
- At least one credible data source is accessible now.
- The unit of analysis is consistent: country, industry, firm, team, manager or consumer.
- The method can support the kind of claim you intend to make.
- Ethics, language and access risks have a fallback plan.
- The title avoids promising causality unless the design can identify it.
Choose the question you can investigate well, not the trendiest noun. A defensible international-business thesis makes its boundaries visible and connects cross-border evidence to a decision that managers, policymakers or researchers genuinely need to understand.
Hi Amund,
I just found your blog and as I am currently trying to find a master thesis topic for my degree in international business and management I really appreciated you writing this article! I am currently doing my internship in a french e-commerce company and therefore, I would love to do a topic within the e-commerce area. However, I am struggeling a bit in narrowing the topic. In the beginning I was looking at “how to stay competitive as a marketplace post covid 19 boom” However, now I am thinking to go more on overall impact of covid on the e-commerce industry with my company as a case study. Looking at interaction dynamics between the platform, retailers and consumers and how supply chain capabilities, seasonal/occasional promotions and overall consumer experience influences the overall performance of the website. What do you think about it?
I know the article is already 2 years old so not sure you still look at the comment but I would really appreciate your help!
Thank you!
Hi Lara, unfortunately, Amund isn’t longer part of the website team. I’d love to help you, however, I am not an expert for this topic.
Hi Amund,
Thank you for the blog, some really helpful advice.
Since I am doing this the first time, I really struggle to come up with a proper topic for my MBA Dissertation. Since my field of work is in the hospitality/tourism sector, I thought to choose a topic about this but I really do not know where to start. Do you have a suitable idea for me to start? I was thinking towards digitalization or loyalty (MBA International Business).
Hi Amund!
I am currently a 3rd year university student studying international business in Scotland.
This blog has helped me a lot whilst deciding what to do for my 4th year dissertation. I am really interested in choosing an issue relating to CSR and its influence on an organisation but I feel it is hard to chose a topic and an area where it influences within a business without it being too broad as I only have 10k words. Do you have any topics/areas that you feel would be dissertation worthy currently?
Thanks,
Megan.
Hi Megan, very interesting.
If you were to only write 10,000 words, I would dig deeper into one specific company.
For instance, what happened with Coca-Cola when they improved their logistics chain in order to become more eco-friendly?
Ford Motor spent 11 billion USD (!!!) to start making hybrid and electric cars instead of fossil fuel cars – how did that impact the companys’ profile and revenue flow?
Instead of writing in general about one specific topic, I would dig deep into one specific company that tried to change their business practice because of CSR.
And obviously, it would be a major advantage to pick a company like Ford or Coca-Cola where a lot of the information can be found online for free. 🙂 Another solution could be to contact a company and ask to interview them.
Wish you all the best!
Kind regards,
Hi Amund,
Thank you very much for the article, it helped me to start with my thesis idea. I’m wanting to write something related to sustainability and corporations, how to change them into eco-friendly companies. I’m going to graduate in a university in China as well!
Hi Taynara, I’m always happy to hear that students used my information to help them proceed with their thesis.
Good luck with your thesis! 加油！;)
Hi Amund,
Your blog is really helpful.
However, I have some difficulties to come up with a topic in the financial field. What i have in my mind was how the esg factors can affect the financial performance. But I think it still needs to narrow down. And have some international aspect to it.
What do you think?
Hi TJ. Thanks for your comment.
To be completely frank, I don’t have much eperience with the ESG factors.
However, it could be interesting to analyze some business that has taken a shift towards a more sustainable business model. See how that affected their profit in a negative way. For example some car company that previously made a lot of money making “normal cars”, but have been forced to make electric cars.
I mean: it’s potentially a bad example. But that’s the closest thing I can get to a proper proposal. 🙂
Hello! Thank you for your service, it is a great help.
Could you share your thesis?
I am still struggling which topic i should choose, i have 8. My professor says I should focus generally and then narrow it down later, although he requires a RQ – and I also need to address a way to answer it and where the data can be found.
Kind regards..!
Hi SV. I tried to find my thesis on my computer, but I couldn’t get a hold of it.
Quick recap:
– I contacted 5-6 companies that had taken their manufacturing back from Asia to Scandinavia.
– Asked them a lot of questions about how that reshoring process helped (or damaged) their innovation.
– And then I found an awful lot of theory on R&D and international business that I filled the thesis with. 😉
It came out quite successful (if I may say so…). But unfortunately, I do not have the thesis to share with anyone right now.
Hi Amund,
I am having difficulty in determining if my topic is is aptly covering the international business field.
I was looking into the salmon industry in the Faroe Islands (I am studying in DK), both in terms of export and global warming.
I am also interested in the phasing out of the Danish mink industry.
Even greenwashing has caught my interest, but my difficulty lies in it being a matter of international business.
Do you by chance, have an idea of examining greenwashing in an international business capacity?
Hei, og takk for din kommentar! 😉
I guess I’ll answer in English. That helps other people to find some inspiration in your question as well.
Neither of your two examples is bad. I would strongly recommend writing about something that you can relate to – and that hasn’t been written an awful lot about. Therefore, I would suggest writing about the mink industry in Denmark. That’s an extremely interesting case.
Greenwashing is very common in the car industry. However, you would NEVER get any of the car companies to talk about any of their marketing failures (believe me: you won’t). So it would be a thesis where you find objective information. Doing research on these companies is hard. No one wants to cooperate with a student that they would feel is stepping on their toes.
I presented my ideas to my supervisor, who only showed interest in greenwashing and disclosure.
He suggested looking into greenwashing as a core subject – I have found studies with artificial companies and stakeholder perception.
Would I be able to conduct a study in this way, and still maintain my international business area of study purely on the basis of it being an international phenomenon?
Yes, I think you would be able to get that overall international perspective on it.
You could even have a research quesiton related to different areas in the world:
E.g.
Which countries have the end-consumers that are most likely to buy greenwashed products?
Are there any government regulations on greenwashing anywhere in the world?
etc.
I’m not sure which studies you have found. But I am sure you would be able to use those to write a great thesis. 🙂 Finding real-life examples might be hard in this case. And having companies work together with you might be even harder.
Hi Amund, thanks a lot for your article.
I am enrolled at a bachelor related to international business in Leipzig.
Do you think that EU economy would be a great thing to write a bachelor thesis about?
I have heard that bachelor thesis doesn’t need to be related to any research you do yourself. But for master’s , you need to conduct some research on your own.
PS, sorry for bad english
Hi Rafael.
Yes, I believe that might be a good topic. You would need to narrow it down significantly and come up with a good research question.
The good thing about writing a thesis about the economy in the EU is the fact that so much information is available for free online.
the one about mobile phones is quite interesting.
not sure why Apple/Huawei keep make them bigger and more expensive. From the latest news, I also heard that Apple will stop adding the charger in the phone case, which is bizzare. According to them (and this also fits very well to write about on your website), they do it to “save the planet”. hahaha
WOW, what a guide The fact that you actually spent your free time writing this is nothing but amazing.
Thank you!
I’m a student in economics in Stockholm and will definitely use one of your topics for my masters’ degree 🙂
Just wanted to say: thank you! Or as you say in Scandinavia: tackar! 😉
Hi Amund,
Thank you for your article!!! I want to write something related to e-commerce, and your suggestions really helped me to find something. If you have any more information on how has online shopping changed peoples’ consumer behavior? I would be very grateful !!!
Best regards from Colombia
Hi Nicolas!
Happy to hear that you found the article interesting. I spent quite some time writing and structuring it. 😉
Well, I believe that maybe picking one large country and look at consumer behaviour there would be ideal. Maybe also dig into one specific market.
For instance, how has e-commerce changed the way people buy groceries in the US? It’s just an example.
Or you could look at how Chinas’ economy has grown largely because people in Europe and the US have decided to buy a lot of “cheap stuff online”. Alibaba and other Chinese companies have been profitable from this for decades already.
If I was deciding to write about organization and work culture, do you think I need to collaborate with a business?
Or is it possible to write such a master thesis only based on theory? I’m confused and I am in a super hard spot as I don’t know what to write or where to do my researhc. Need to submit a proposal to my professor by the end of the week, which stresses me out.
Hi Ole. I would definitely recommend you to collaborate with a business if you write a master thesis. Try to ask someone you know.
Going to a completely stranger and asking them about work culture can be difficult to say yes to.
I see you write a lot about China and the Chinese economy. Do you recommend taking your MBA Business Degree in China? Or is that too far-fetched?
Hi Paul.
I took my masters’ degree in economics in China. Not too far-fetched at all.
You better target the good and well-known schools though. Not the poor ones. Try to stick to either Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou.
hi Amund, thanks for your list. Just a question: do you think writing about the Chinese economy will be a good thing?
I mean the fact that it’s not going well at all, but they try to hide it by building a lot of “fake cities” and pretend to their people that everything is good. Not sure about how we would find good sources for it though.
I am a student in Ireland by the way, but originally from Venezuela.
Hi Jamal.
well. It might be good if you can get reliable sources. I wouldn’t trust the Chinese government sources on such a topic, but there are loads of other sources to be found online.
As long as the Chinese economy is a bit of a “blur” due to unreliable sources, it might be hard to choose for a master thesis.
The one with the housing prices is actually a good topic. Not because it’s super relevant nor interesting.
But because no one really understands the housing market prices. You see 50 % of the “experts” claim that the pricing will go down. Then the other 50 % claim that the housing prices will go up. In the end, 50 % of them will claim victory – and the other half will stay silent.
It’s ludacruis.
Hehe, I know what you mean.
There are loads of people out there who pretend to be “mr./mrs. know-it-all” when it comes to such topics. Another interesting one is the “ones who predicted the big financial crisis in 2008”. What the story didn’t say anything about, was the fact that they had predicted it like 5 times earlier. And it never went through – until in 2008.
It’s easy to be fooled.
I would probably stay away from such topics, but I don’t mind anyone picking them for their thesis. 😛
there isn’t really any websites out there that help out with stuff like this. so this article is, as you describe it: “super useful” 😀
I’m going to write about logistics within the new “Amazon and e-commerce era”. one of the few subjects I got an A in was logistics, and I want to use what I learned in that course to get a good grade in my bachelors’ degree as well.
I’m gonna write my thesis about e-commerce. I’m studyign Business Administration in Amsterdam (vrije universitet).
And my professor owns some type of e-commerce company. Therefore he realy wanted me to write about e-commerce in Netherlands, and I would just say thanks for this article. You pushed me in a direction where I’ve probably come up with a nice topic…gonna ask my professor tomorrow 😉
Hey Kurt, happy to hear you found your thesis! 🙂
E-commerce is something that’s super good to write about. The poor thing would get to come into the examination room and meet a 70-year-old professor that barely remembers Windows 95. But for most cases, I think it should be fine!
Hi Kurt,
How has your thesis developed since August?
I would love to read it if it is published anywhere.
As global warming isn’t real, why would anyone care to write about it? 🙂
Global warming will NOT affect businesses in the same way that Covid-19 did. Not a chance. So if you want to write about fantasy, be my guest. However, if I was your professor I would have given you an F. ;)))
Hahaha, well. I dare you to write a master thesis on a proper university about “global warming not being real”. Would be fun to see what grade you would get.
i guess these articles should always be written by previous students. I found your article by searching on Google. And almost all the other websites are clearly written by someone who has never been involved with international business or any university at all
Thanks! Happy to help out!
If I owned a website, I would probably not use it to help students. but thanks a lot. I am not going to ask you for topic help as you’ve already helped me a lot. But I have decided to write about garbage/waste in the US. A lot of dangerous waste needs to be disposed by private companies, which is a huge cost for them. So I have partnered up with an electronic company to analyze if they can do anything “better”/”cheaper” when it comes to electronic waste disposal 🙂
Hi Jamal, that’s a great topic to write about. I wrote my bachelor thesis about garbage/waste in the EU 28. And that was super interesting.
Cooperating with one single company to see how government waste regulations make an impact on their bottom line is a superb idea.