040087 KU Building Blocks of Marketing 1: Consumer Behavior (MA) (2024W)

This course provides you with specialized terminology and scientific explanatory approaches, as well as models of purchasing and consumption behavior from the field of “Consumer Behavior” and the underlying scientific disciplines (particularly psychology, sociology, and anthropology, as well as cultural and communication sciences, but increasingly also psycho-biology, neuroscience, and data science). Upon completion of this course, you will be able to answer the following questions, discuss a variety of related theoretical aspects in depth, and apply this knowledge practically:

How do consumers think, feel, and (re)act as buyers?
How can this be explained? And, not least:
How can providers use this knowledge to optimally design their marketing measures?

Specifically, by the end of the semester, you will have (1) learned about the psychological and social determinants of consumer behavior, (2) understood the influences of the physical environment and media-mediated influences, and (3) recognized the application areas of the acquired knowledge in marketing, as well as identified potential opportunities and risks from a consumer protection perspective. Based on the acquired knowledge, you will have the competencies to derive relevant implications for marketing practice in concrete situations (e.g., regarding product and store design, personal sales interaction, and various forms of marketing communication, among others).

The course units take place weekly on Tuesdays from 9:45 to 11:15 a.m. on-site in the lecture hall. UNIT 1: In the first course unit, you will receive an overview of the content and schedule of the course, and the course participants will be divided into working groups by the course instructor. Throughout the course, you will work in these groups of 4-5 participants; the groups will remain unchanged throughout the course. Attendance and active participation are expected in the course units (PARTIAL CONTRIBUTION 1).

UNITS 2 to 12: The following units two to twelve will each be prepared and conducted by one of the working groups based on the textbook and, if applicable, additional literature (articles). The content of the topic handled by the respective group should be presented to the other participants in the lecture hall as clearly, interactively, and comprehensibly as possible, based on the literature (PARTIAL CONTRIBUTION 2). => Notes: (1) Visual aids such as slides, etc., will be uploaded by each group in advance on Moodle; slides in ppt and pdf format; other material as photos or pdf. (2) The use of (generative) AI tools is permitted and must be clearly indicated.

Following the topic units designed by the course participants on various aspects of consumer behavior, an open-book exam will be held online in the lecture hall (PARTIAL CONTRIBUTION 3). => Please note: For the exam, you will need a mobile device, i.e., a laptop or tablet.

The course concludes with three units in which the central content of the individual groups is summarized and illustrated using posters, clustered thematically, and discussed in depth using practical examples. In these units, the connections between the various group topics will be highlighted and discussed in greater depth. The creation of the posters will take place in the lecture hall; the presentation of the poster content will be in an open space format. The group poster represents another partial performance for the overall assessment (PARTIAL CONTRIBUTION 4).