MKTG 3250 – Buyer Behavior

Summer 2004

Class:
Instructor:
Office:
Office Hours:
Phone:
Email:
Texts: / 0730-0905, Daily, Room 301, Business
Professor Robert Taylor
Room 406, Business
By appointment. Just before and just after class.
303-492-4272 (but I never check voice mail, so use email)
email:
Web Site:
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, 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 / <54

In grading essays, I typically assign a letter grade, which will then be converted to a percentage by assigning the mid-point of the grade range. For example, someone receiving a B+ on an essay will have 88 points assigned for the purpose of calculating grade averages.

A weighting is necessary since different aspects of grading are worth different amounts. For example, on exams the essay is typically worth 25 percent of the grade, and multiple choice questions worth 75 percent. Someone who got an A– on the essay (worth 92 points) and 81 percent correct on the multiple choice portion (which is in the B– range) would have an overall grade on the exam of

(.25) x (92) + (.75) x (81) = 83.75 (which is in the B range)