Consumer Behavior: This course aims to familiarize the students with (1) how and why people buy and use products and services; (2) how to conduct consumer research; (3) what types of internal and external factors are influential in consumer decision making process for understanding and affecting consumer behavior.
The course introduces a wide range of behavioral concepts, and explores the strategic implications of customer behavior for marketers. The course challenges students to explore the realities and implications of buyer behavior in traditional and e-commerce markets. Key to the course is demonstrating how an understanding of buyer behavior can help to improve strategic decision making.
| Week | Topics |
|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction to the course |
| 2 | Introduction to Consumer Behavior (5-50) |
| 3 | Perception (72-104) Customer perception refers to how a customer feels about a company. This includes their thoughts, emotions and opinions related to a brand and its products or services. Customer perception can be positive or negative. The customer perception process occurs when customers interact with your brand, products or services. |
| 4 | Learning and Memory (108-145) Consumers have prior learning experiences, which are accumulated in their minds. The total accumulation of past experiences are known as memory. Memory can be divided into short-term memory or long-term memory. Short-term memory: It is the memory that can be recalled immediately and, is activated and in use. |
| 5 | Motivation and Affect (149-176) Motivation. When a person is motivated enough, it influences the buying behavior of the person. A person has many needs such as social needs, basic needs, security needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs. Out of all these needs, the basic needs and security needs take a position above all other needs. |
| 6 | The self: Mind, Gender, Body (180-224) The self-concept is a knowledge representation that contains knowledge about us, including our beliefs about our personality traits, physical characteristics, abilities, values, goals, and roles, as well as the knowledge that we exist as individuals. Throughout childhood and adolescence, the self-concept becomes more abstract and complex and is organized into a variety of different cognitive aspects of the self, known as self-schemas. Children have self-schemas about their progress in school, their appearance, their skills at sports and other activities, and many other aspects. In turn, these self-schemas direct and inform their processing of self-relevant information (Harter, 1999), much as we saw schemas in general affecting our social cognition. |
| 7 | Personality, Lifestyle, Values (228-270) Personality refers to a person's unique psychological makeup and how it consistently influences the way a person responds to her environment. In other words personality made up from the sum of characteristic such as thoughts, behaviors and feelings by which a person can be unique or different from others. |
| 8 | Attitude and Persuasive Communications (274-316) Consumer attitude may be defined as a feeling of favorableness or unfavorableness that an individual has towards an object. As we, all know that an individual with a positive attitude is more likely to buy a product and this results in the possibility of liking or disliking a product. |
| 9 | MIDTERM EXAM |
| 10 | Decision Making (320-350) The consumer decision-making process involves five basic steps. This is the process by which consumers evaluate making a purchasing decision. The 5 steps are problem recognition, information search, alternatives evaluation, purchase decision and post-purchase evaluation. |
| 11 | Buying, using and disposing (354-388) The consumer decision-making process involves five basic steps. This is the process by which consumers evaluate making a purchasing decision. The 5 steps are problem recognition, information search, alternatives evaluation, purchase decision and post-purchase evaluation. |
| 12 | Group Influences and Social Media (392-435) Reference groups are groups (social groups, work groups, family, or close friends) a consumer identifies with and may want to join. They influence consumers' attitudes and behavior. A reference group helps shape a person's attitudes and behaviors. Opinion leaders are people who influence others. |
| 13 | Income and Social Class (439-470) A higher real income means a higher purchasing power since real income refers to the income adjusted for inflation. A CPI can be used to index the real value of wages, salaries, pensions, for regulating prices, and for deflating monetary magnitudes to show changes in real values. |
| 14 | Culture and subcultures (474-550) In the context of consumer behavior, culture is defined as the sum total of learned beliefs, values, and customs that serve to regulate the consumer behavior of members of a particular society. Beliefs and values are guides for consumer behavior; customs are unusual and accepted ways of behaving. |
| Method | Qty | % Each |
|---|---|---|
| Midterm Exam(s) | 1 | 15 |
| Project | 1 | 50 |
| Final Exam | 1 | 25 |
| Attendance | 10 |
Michael R. Solomon, 'Consumer Behavior, Buying, Having and Being' Pearson Prentice Hall, 8. Edition