esade

Understanding & Influencing Consumers (2235.YR.009920.1)

General information

Type:

 OBL

Curs:

 1

Period:

 S semester

ECTS Credits:

 4 ECTS

Teaching Staff:

Group Teacher Department Language
Year 1 María Galli Marketing ENG

Prerequisites

N/A

Course Learning Objectives

Why are consumers willing to drive across town for 5 euro off a tank of gasoline, but won't even drive a minute to save 5 euro on a computer? What makes people so convinced that a more expensive bottle of wine tastes better or that a pricier medication relieves pain more effectively? Why can we be completely content with our hotel room view or restaurant seat assignment one moment, and then so totally dissatisfied once we realize how much better the next room or table seems to be?

Traditional economic theory has long understood consumers through the lens of "homo economicus" - the belief that people are rational, self-interested actors who behave in consistent, predictable, and utility-maximizing ways. But while this neat-and-tidy approach is convenient for economists and business managers alike, it does little to explain the quirky, sometimes puzzling, often paradoxical behaviors mentioned above - and the many more we will explore throughout the course. Indeed, any real examination of consumers' behavior (including an honest self-reflection of our own) reveals that humans are often anything but rational and utility-maximizing.

Thanks to research on consumer behavior, which blends findings from marketing, social psychology, and behavioral science, we now have a much better understanding of how consumers really behave - what they prefer and how they decide - and how susceptible all of those preferences and decisions are to the social and contextual factors that act upon them. Thus, this course aims to understand consumers through a more nuanced, realistic, behavioral lens. We will review consumer research across a number of substantive topic areas, with an eye toward applying these learnings in actual managerial settings.

In addition, with an emphasis on the experimental method (the means by which much consumer behavior research has been conducted), the course also provides an introduction to conducting basic experiments (a.k.a. A/B tests) so that students have the ability to generate their own consumer insights going forward.

Methodology

This ten-session course is roughly divided into two parts, which address two main questions: (1) What do we already know about how consumers behave? And (2) how we can learn more?

Sessions 1¬-5: What do we already know? (And how do we know it?)

During the first half of the course, we will focus on the state of current research: What knowledge do we already have about consumers and their behavior? And what are the methods researchers have used to obtain it?

We will start by exploring the importance of studying (vs. intuiting) consumer behavior (S1), and then spend each subsequent session focusing on one substantive consumer behavior topic: what consumers like and how they choose (S2), how they make spending and saving decisions (S3), how they experience products and engage (or don't) with firms and their offerings (S4), and how all of this is impacted by the presence of social others (S5). These five sessions will combine interactive lectures with student-led presentations and in-class exercises to help the research come to life. The goal is both to review the existing literature, and also to collectively generate the "so what? of it all - i.e., how these learnings might impact your own future decisions as a marketing manager.

Because most of the research we will review in the course uses experimental methods (a.k.a. randomized controlled trials, A/B testing, split testing), we will also do parallel methodological deep-dives to understand how that knowledge was attained. What are experiments? How do they work? (And when don't they work?) What's all the fuss about causality versus correlation? This foundational knowledge is intended to help you become a more discerning consumer of research and a more discerning researcher of consumers, which is the goal of Sessions 6 thru 10?

Sessions 6-10: How can we learn more?

Having surveyed existing consumer behavior research and established a basic understanding of experimental methods, the second half of the course focuses on using these tools to better understand your own (future) consumers. What kinds of consumer research-worthy questions might you face in your careers? What hypotheses do you have about how consumers might respond to a new product or intervention or store design ?and more importantly, how would you go about testing them?

The last five sessions therefore focus on designing and running your own simple experiments, and understanding how to think about and analyze the results. Using learnings from more basic in-class exercises throughout the first part of the course, students will build toward a more comprehensive group project: coming up with (and testing) a behavioral intervention to solve a managerial problem or consumer puzzle. Data will be collected and analyzed in the latter sessions of the course.

Assessment criteria

In-Class Participation 20%
Consumer Insights 10%
"Be the Teacher" Presentation 20%
"Hypothesize and Test? Project 30%
Data Quiz 20%

Timetable and sections

Group Teacher Department
Year 1 María Galli Marketing

Timetable Year 1

From 2023/10/11 to 2023/10/31:
From Tuesday to Wednesday from 10:30 to 12:00. (Except: 2023/10/18 and 2023/10/24)
From Tuesday to Wednesday from 8:45 to 10:15. (Except: 2023/10/18 and 2023/10/24)

From 2023/11/8 to 2023/11/29:
Wednesday and Friday from 10:30 to 12:00. (Except: 2023/11/10 and 2023/11/17)
Wednesday and Friday from 8:45 to 10:15. (Except: 2023/11/10 and 2023/11/17)

From 2023/12/12 to 2023/12/14:
Each Thursday from 10:00 to 11:30.
Each Tuesday from 10:30 to 12:00.