Consumer Behavior

Content

This course aims to provide students with a fundamental understanding of how consumers decide and behave in the marketplace. Specifically, the course will focus on understanding (a) how consumers choose between competing options, (b) how emotions influence consumers’ decision processes, (c) how consumers are (unconsciously) affected by the order and presentation of different product options, and (d) how decisions are influenced by situational and social cues. Importantly, the course will follow a psychological approach for understanding consumer behavior and will be mostly based on scientific journal articles. Furthermore, students are expected to take an active part in class discussions.

Objectives

The course aims to provide students with a fundamental understanding of how consumers decide and behave in the marketplace and how they form their preferences for products and services. Specifically, the course intends to familiarize students with current research in consumer behavior and to help them understand how and to what extent this research can be used to address practical, real-life marketing problems. Another aim of the course is to enable students to critically reflect on and to develop the current theoretical discourse related to consumer behavior. To this end, students will develop their own research projects in small groups that focus on a specific aspect of consumer behavior. These research projects will be presented and discussed in class and will also be documented in a final report. Thus, the course also aims to help students improve their methodological skills and their communication abilities.

Prerequisites

Basic knowledge in marketing (e.g., Absatz und Beschaffung)

Literature

Further Information

Further information on this course and the application procedure can be obtained on RWTHonline and Moodle.

Lecturer

Univ.-Prof. Dr.oec. Daniel Wentzel