Consumer Behaviour

Field of Study: Commerce and Management (COM) unit

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About Course

This course examines how individual behaves, thinks, and feels and what this means for marketing activities in both business-to-consumer and business-to-business contexts. Theories and concepts from psychology, sociology, and economics are integrated to understand consumer behavior and how marketers use these tools to predict consumer behavior. This course will be delivered to students in a seminar-style, with a mix of instruction formats of case studies, in-class discussions, and assigned readings. Students are expected to finish this course by providing individual coursework.

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:
1. Understand psychological, sociological, and economic theories in consumer behavior
2. Select the appropriate theories to evaluate and assess marketing strategies and practices
3. Understand consumer behavior processes and challenges
4. Be able to design and assess marketing tactics based on consumer behavior theories

About the instructor

Kathy Chen

Module(s)/ Lecture(s)

Course Outline PDF

Chapter 1 Introduction to Consumer Behaviour
We start with some key definitions before going into depth on how consumers make decisions. This chapter’s material is fundamental to your understanding of how consumers decide to buy or not buy products and services, including fully considered purchases using the cognitive model of purchase and non-considered or slightly considered purchases using either the reinforcement model or the habitual models of purchase. We will have two weeks to learn this chapter.

Wee 1 Introduction to consumer behaviour part 1

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Week 2 Introduction to Consumer Behaviour part 2

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Purchase Decision
Quiz 1 (due on Week 2)

Chapter 3 Attitudes and behaviours
This chapter moves on to learn about attitudes, which shape the way consumers actually behave. First, we will define what an attitude is in psychology. Then, we will discuss how attitudes function in regards to directing the way consumers behave. We will explore this relationship in the Theory of Reasoned Action that was replaced by the Theory of Planned Behaviour. Then, we will look at how attitudes can change through the process of persuasion. We have two weeks to cover this chapter. You will not only understand attitudes and their function but also be able to predict how they might change consumer behaviour. Moreover, you will learn how attitudes can be changed through the principles of persuasion.

Week 5: Attitudes and behaviours part 1

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Week 6: Attitudes and Behaviours part 2

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Example of Ad. (Persuasion)
Final Coursework (due at 5pm EST on Tuesday of the following week of Week 10)
Quiz (Due on Week 5)

Chapter 4 Nudging, Satisfaction, and Word-of-Mouth
This Chapter will talk about customer journeys. During these two weeks, we are going to explore theories of customer satisfaction and service quality perceptions, understand what consumers think when they are evaluating service quality, and how that affects their satisfaction. We will build an understanding of the relationship between satisfaction and service quality and also think about how satisfaction is linked to profit. We will conclude by exploring the roles of digital technologies in the customer journey.

Week 7: Nudging, Satisfaction, and Word-of-Mouth part 1

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Week 8: Nudging, Satisfaction, and Word-of-Mouth part 2

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Service evaluation

Chapter 5 Advertising and Customer Responses
In this chapter, we will explore how consumers respond to marketing strategies. Specifically, we will look at responses to pricing, discuss consumer value and the value wedge, understand how price information is processed by consumers, discuss the price-quality heuristic, and understand the impact of price promotions. We will also look at responses to marketing communications and promotions. We will study Aristotle's Communication Model, which is sometimes called Transactional Communication Model or Elaboration Likelihood Model. We will also discuss effective advertising, concentration and breakthrough, and we will conclude with the advertising response model and its implications.

Week 9: Advertising and Customer Responses part 1

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Week 10: Adverting and Consumer Responses

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Word-of-Mouth

Chapter 2 Information Processing
This chapter talks about consumer brands. We will start off by talking a little bit more about what is going on between the ears of consumers, and we are going to look at a very influential model called ‘Dual processing theory’ by Daniel Kahneman. We are then going to look a little bit deeper into a more theoretical perspective on how people store information in their memory using the Mental Representations Model and learn how these different aspects are embedded in people's minds using Operant Conditioning. We will look at how mere exposure to something can add to people's memory and understanding of the world around them. Then, lastly, we will talk about cognitive fluency and understand how the links between the different attributes that make up what we know about a certain thing add to how we perceive the world, and how we think the world works.

Week 3 Information Processing part 1

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Week 4 Information Processing part 2

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Assignments
Group presentation (Presented at the Week 7 webinar) – Toronto clothing brand Kotn