Consumer Psychology: Solving the Black-Box Mystery - Q3

Participation Prerequisites

No formal course prerequisites

Course Content

This course prepares students to 1) understand the processes and dispositions driving consumers’ behaviors in today’s marketplace; and 2) to be able to shape such behaviors in a responsible manner by means of marketing communication, customer experience, and brand management – grounded in current psychological knowledge. Our topics include:

• Timeless principles of consumer psychology
  • What psychology is about at its core
  • How consumers process (marketing) information
  • Consumers’ hidden motives
  • Consumers’ social ways of perceiving and thinking about the world
  • Fundamental types of (consumer) thinking
  • Powerful consumer heuristics
• How consumers make decisions
  • Decision types
    • Cognitive vs. emotional
    • High involvement vs. low involvement
    • Optimizing vs. satisficing
    • Compensatory vs. non-compensatory
  • Decision-making process
    • Pre-purchase stage
    • Purchase stage
    • Post-purchase stage
  • Managerial perspectives
    • Purchase funnel
    • Consumer decision journey
• The psychology of branding
  • How successful brand associations can be established
  • Different avenues of learning about a brand
• How environments impact consumers
  • Framing inner questions
  • Priming inner concepts
  • Behavioral recommendations
  • Direct behavioral shaping
• Ways consumers can be influenced
  • Critical role of consumer attitudes
  • Direct experience
  • Mere exposure
  • Evaluative conditioning
  • Selective exposure
  • Persuasion
• Identifying consumer segments and personas
  • Market segmentation
  • Consumer values
  • Consumer personality
  • Consumer lifestyle

Intended Learning Outcomes and Competencies

Successful participation will convey competencies to

• distinguish central consumer needs,
• outline consumers’ decision-making processes,
• translate behavioral principles and consumer insights into marketing managerial decision making,
• identify key psychological properties of relevant customer target segments,
• formulate promising marketing communication objectives and design effective marketing initiatives.

Instruction Type

Presence

Form of Examination