MSc Marketing / Course details

We will start with a “low level” psychological approach to understanding consumer behaviour such as motivation and perception, before graduating to fuzzier (but still important!) “higher level” psychological concepts like identity and symbolic consumption. We will end the course with the quantum leap in complexity that comes when all these fuzzy minded individuals we have talked about start interacting with each other, bonding and making friends and sharing. We will talk about the forces this gives rise to, that we can call culture, sub-cultures, tribal marketing, and brand communities.

BMAN70102 Programme Req: BMAN70102 is only available as an elective to students on MSc Marketing

The course unit aims to provide students with an understanding of consumer behaviour; to acquaint students with the factors which influence consumer’s thoughts, feelings, identity, and actions; and to outline links between consumer behaviour research and marketing theory and practice.

By the end of the course unit students should be able to:

• Use a range of theories that are related to consumer marketing situations. They should demonstrate this verbally, during class discussions and in their written work.
• Understand that there are a variety of possible perspectives that can be used in consumer markets and that these offer distinct marketing opportunities.
• Have a stronger background in how and why marketing activities affect consumers
• Understand that people have richly interrelated thoughts, emotions, impulses and understandings, and that these offer distinct marketing opportunities.
• Practice group work and presentation skills, in the context of consumer analysis
• Learn to extract insight from academic CB literature.

Formal Contact Methods

Minimum Contact hours: 20 

Delivery format: Lecture and Workshops 

15 minute group presentation and 750 word individual reflection (40%)

2 hour written examination (60%)

 

Written, verbally during class and via Blackboard.

Blythe, J. (2014), Consumer Behaviour, 2^nd Edition, Sage.

Much use will be made of academic journal articles in international journals - particularly from Journal of Consumer Research.  There are many other good texts on consumer psychology. Students might want to look at

Arnold, E., Price, L. and Zinkhan, G. (2004), Consumers, 2nd Edition, McGraw Hill.

Solomon, M., Bamossy, G., Askegaard, S. and Hogg, M. (2010), Consumer Behaviour: A European Perspective, 4th Edition, Pearson Education.

Informal Contact Methods

Office Hours

Online Learning Activities (blogs, discussions, self-assessment questions)