Consumer Behaviour

• Credit value: 15 credits at Level 7
• Convenor and tutor: Wendy Hein
• Prerequisites: Principles of Marketing
• Assessment: a 4000-word individual essay (100%)

This module develops a theoretical and practical understanding of processes and factors that influence the consumer behaviour of individuals and organisations. By learning about how consumers make decisions, what motivates them, and how contexts and practices influence consumption, you will be able to strategically apply these insights to the creation of customer value, and learn how to critique and challenge current marketing practices.

You will be able to evaluate how consumer research has been undertaken, and develop your intellectual and analytical capabilities vis-à-vis interpreting cultural and societal trends, parallel to psychological consumer processes, to inform marketing decision-making. Overall, the course provides frameworks that enable you to address the issue of understanding consumers responsibly, systematically and creatively.

By the end of this module, you will have developed:

• your analytical skill base and marketing decision-making abilities
• your intellectual appreciation of the factors that affect consumer and organisational behaviour and their decision-making
• the ability to reflect critically on the links between individual factors, social-cultural and economic issues, and marketing practices
• the ability to relate theory and practice through the application of case studies
• individual reflective, team working and problem-solving skills
• the ability to apply knowledge gained to marketing theory, and to contextualise knowledge gained within strategic marketing frameworks and processes
• the ability to take diverse consumer behaviour perspectives into account when forming strategic marketing decisions.