Consumer Behaviour
MSc Business Administration Feb 2024
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,Content
Week 1: The Psychological Core............................................................................................................................4
KC1.1 – Perception............................................................................................................................................4
KC1.2 – Attention..............................................................................................................................................6
KC1.3 – Memory................................................................................................................................................8
Lecture notes week 1........................................................................................................................................9
Week 2 – Consumer Rationality..........................................................................................................................10
KC2.2 – System 2.1 vs. System 2 Thinking.......................................................................................................10
KC2.2 – Decision-making Heuristics................................................................................................................10
KC2.3 – Biases..................................................................................................................................................11
KC2.4 – Framing...............................................................................................................................................11
KC2.5 – Anchoring Bias and the Zero Price Effect...........................................................................................12
KC2.6 – Absence vs. Presence.........................................................................................................................13
Week 3: Affective and Emotional Consumer Reactions......................................................................................14
KC3.1 – Consumer’s emotional system, and Appraisal theory of emotion....................................................14
KC3.2 – Affect, Mood, and emotion................................................................................................................14
KC3.3 – Emotions: Valence and Arousal.........................................................................................................15
KC3.4 – Ad evoked Emotions: Positive Emotions............................................................................................16
KC3.5 – Ad evoked Emotions: Negative emotions..........................................................................................17
Week 4 – Social Influence...................................................................................................................................18
KC4.1 – Social influence an introduction.........................................................................................................18
KC4.2 – Groups................................................................................................................................................19
KC4.3 – Others influence on food choice........................................................................................................19
KC4.4 – Normative (Utilitarian) social influence.............................................................................................21
KC4.5 – Social influence in retailing................................................................................................................21
KC4.6 – Impact of audience size on sharing information................................................................................22
Lecture notes week 4......................................................................................................................................24
Week 5 – Cultural Consumption and Consumers’ Lifestyle................................................................................25
KC5.1 – Intro to consumer culture..................................................................................................................25
KC5.2 – Consumer culture normative standards of beauty............................................................................26
KC5.3 – Consumer culture status....................................................................................................................27
KC5.4 – Consumer culture self-concept and lifestyle.....................................................................................28
Lecture notes week 5......................................................................................................................................30
Week 6 – Consumer and Marketing for a “Better world”..................................................................................32
KC6.1 – Motivation and consumer behavior...................................................................................................32
KC6.2 – Needs and consumer behavior..........................................................................................................32
KC6.3 – Goals and self-control........................................................................................................................33
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,KC6.4 – Self-control failure..............................................................................................................................34
KC6.5 – How to change behavior for the better.............................................................................................35
Lecture notes week 6......................................................................................................................................36
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, Week 1: The Psychological Core
KC1.1 – Perception
Perception: Is the awareness or understanding of sensory information. The awareness and interpretation of
reality.
Elements of consumer’s perception: (Brining the stimulus to the consumer) Exposure, attention, comprehension
How do we process what we’re exposed to?:
Sensing: immediate response
Organizing: assembling sensory evidence into something recognizable
Reacting: physical and mental responses to the stimuli
How do we organize?:
Assimilation: Share the same characteristics/ fit to the category (Coffee)
Accommodation: Share some but not all characteristics/ Need an adjustment for fit (Ice Coffee)
Contrast: Does NOT share any characteristics/ No fit to the category (Wine)
The traditional dissociation paradigm – Erdelyi, 1985
Is awareness of the stimulus necessary to influence consumer? → Consumers are influenced by stimuli even
when they are not aware of
them?
Problem: How can we measure something that consumers are not aware of?
Reingold & Merikle (1988): Whenever an indirect measure of responding is more strongly influenced by
stimulus exposure than is a comparable direct measure of responding, perception without awareness can be
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