The Consumer Behaviour course has three main objectives:

First, the major theoretical approaches to consumer behavior will be presented during the course. By doing so students will develop a better understanding of consumer behavior under low versus high effort. Knowledge of consumer behavior-related concepts such as motivation, ability and opportunity, exposure and comprehension, memory and knowledge, attitudes and (pre- and post) decision making processes. This will enable them to analyze, interpret, comprehend, and more effectively describe, explain, predict, and influence consumer behavior in concrete marketing settings. How to motivate consumers under low versus high effort is the central issue.
 
Second, the course provides a solid, research-based foundation for critical thinking on the many aspects of consumer behavior, especially the motivation of consumers to behave in a certain manner. By studying, reflecting on, criticizing, and presenting academic research papers students will deepen their conceptual understanding of the different aspects of consumer motivation to be applied when conducting research in consumer behavior themselves (e.g. when developing a marketing strategy and writing their Master thesis). What motivates consumers is the leading question.
 
Third, the course will show students how the studied consumer behavior concepts and models can be used to design and maintain effective marketing communication strategies in the realm of social marketing. Based on illustrative practical examples, students will reflect on and apply the theoretical approaches to practice, and develop a concrete communication strategy influencing a target audience to change their social behaviors and to benefit society. They will do so in order to develop a sense of practical relevance and feasibility of theoretical consumer behavior insights in concrete marketing settings. The question how head and hart lead to changing attitudes and behavior needs to be answered for the social marketing challenge.
 

The Consumer Behaviour course will provide students with in-depth and advanced level insights in the behaviour of consumers. More specifically, this course will focus on motivations of consumers to behave in a certain manner and/or to change behaviour in a certain direction. Different motivation theories will be studied and discussed. And these theories will be applied in a (social) marketing context, resulting in the development of  a marketing communications strategy, that should help to change consumer behaviour in a social responsible direction.

Questions that will be addressed within the Consumer Behaviour course are: what motivates consumers; what is the role of goals, values, norms and control; what’s the impact of product and situational characteristics; how does higher order versus lower order effort and conscious versus unconscious information processing impact behaviour? And the question why consumers sometimes behave irrational will be addressed, Moreover, the question how motivations theories can be used to change consumer behaviour will be discussed. And finally the question how to actually change consumer behaviour with a well thought through persuasion strategy, based upon the theoretical insights provided, will be raised.