MKTG 3250 – Buyer Behavior



MKTG 3250 – Buyer Behavior

Summer 2004

| | |

|Class: |0730-0905, Daily, Room 301, Business |

|Instructor: |Professor Robert Taylor |

|Office: |Room 406, Business |

|Office Hours: |By appointment. Just before and just after class. |

|Phone: |303-492-4272 (but I never check voice mail, so use email) |

|Email: |email: rtaylor@colorado.edu |

| |Web Site: |

|Texts: |Consumer Behavior, 9th ed, Hawkins, Best & Coney, McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2004. |

Catalog description of this course

Covers both consumer buying behavior and organizational buying behavior. Consumer behavior topics include needs and motives, personality, perception, learning, attitudes, cultural sensitivity, and contributions of behavioral sciences that lead to understanding consumer decision making and behavior. Explores differences between business and consumer markets, business buying motives, the organizational buying center and roles, and the organizational buying process.

Course Objectives

Marketing involves transactions – the exchange of goods and services among individuals. These individuals may be acting on their own account, or as representatives of organizations, but they are individuals, driven in part by their histories, expectations for the future, needs, wants, motives, and a host of other factors. The study of individuals and what drives their marketplace behavior is called Consumer/Buyer Behavior, and it deals with what the behavioral and social sciences can teach us about the behavior of consumers.

There are two major sections of Buyer Behavior – individual behavior (needs, motives, personality, perception, learning, attitudes, and persuasion) and external influences (groups, social class, and culture). After covering these topics, we will then discuss how the individual, both driven by and constrained by external influences, makes purchasing decisions. The overall theme is market segmentation – dividing the market into distinct subsets, selecting one or more as target markets, and developing unique marketing mixes.

Course Structure

The course will be a combination of lectures, discussions, cases, and group presentations. While I will lecture on some aspects of Buyer Behavior, most of the material lends itself to discussion where you, as a class, discover and discuss the key concepts.

For discussions to work, you must have read the material ahead of time, and prepared any assignments. To insure that enough people have read the material so we can engage in a meaningful discussion, there may be daily quizzes. I will use the discussion questions at the end of each chapter as the basis for class discussions. I will occasionally have you read and prepare cases from the text, and these will also be discussed in class.

In addition to the assigned readings, I will occasionally pass out articles for you to read and discuss. There will also be videos shown in class. Book material, readings, videos, lectures, cases, and class discussion material will be open for quizzes and exams.

Exams will generally be multiple-choice questions, with an occasional essay. I will give you examples of both kids of questions. You can see sample questions at the web site for this text, (click on the on-line learning center – student edition).

Group Project

We will break into groups of about 5 people. Each group will be assigned a particular family unit/type (such as a young skilled laborer, or a middle class single mother with two children) and your task will be to track this family through all of the consumer behavior topics we discuss. Who are they, how do they live, how do they spend their money, where do they vacation . . .

I plan to give you a few minutes at the end of each class so you can put together a running profile of this family unit based on our daily class discussions. At the beginning of the following day, you will have a couple of minutes to describe the family. You should probably spend some time searching the internet and other sources for information about your assigned family unit.

Topic Outline

|Tue - June 1 |Chapter 1 - Introduction to Course |

|Wed - June 2 |Chapter 2 – Cross Cultural Variations |

|Thur - June 3 |Chapter 3 – Changing American Society – Values |

|Fri - June 4 |Chapter 4 – Changing American Society – Demographics and Social Stratification |

|Mon - June 7 |Chapter 5 – Changing American Society – Subcultures |

| |Video – Roller Blade |

|Tue - June 8 |Chapter 6 – American Society – Families and Households |

|Wed - June 9 |Chapter 7 – Group Influences |

|Thur - June 10 | Video – Teen Culture Marketing |

|Fri - June 11 |Review |

|Mon - June 14 |Exam 1 |

|Tue - June 15 |Chapter 8 – Perception |

|Wed - June 16 |Chapter 9 – Learning, Memory, Product Positioning |

|Thur - June 17 |Chapter 10 – Motivation, Personality, Emotion |

| |Video – Twins Study |

|Fri - June 18 |Chapter 11 – Attitudes |

|Mon - June 21 |Chapter 12 – Self Concept and Lifestyle |

|Tue - June 22 |Review |

|Wed - June 23 |Exam 2 |

|Thur - June 24 |Chapter 13-15 – Consumer Decision Processes (Handout) |

| |Video – Integrated Marketing Communications |

|Fri - June 25 |Chapters 16-18 – Consumer Decision Processes (Handout) |

|Mon - June 28 |Chapter 19 – Organizational Buying Behavior |

|Tue – June 29 |Chapter 20 – Marketing Regulation |

|Wed – June 30 |Review |

|Thur - July 1 |Exam 3 |

|Fri - July 2 |Closing Discussion |

Grading

There are three exams worth 100 points each. Quizzes are worth 5 points each (for a maximum of 100 points – depends upon how many quizzes we have). Attendance is worth 100 points (you get three free misses, then you lose 10 points for each absence). Participation in the group project will be worth 50 points (you will be evaluated by your peers).

I use a weighted percentage system to calculate grades. The conversion chart is:

|Grade |Percentage range |

| |to receive this |

| |grade |

|A+ |98-100 |

|A |94-97.99 |

|A– |90-93.99 |

|B+ |86-89.99 |

|B |82-85.99 |

|B– |78-81.99 |

|C+ |74-77.99 |

|C |70-73.99 |

|C– |66-69.99 |

|D+ |62-65.99 |

|D |58-61.99 |

|D– |54-57.99 |

|F | ................
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