You鈥檙e taking: Consumer Behavior, a course that applies behavioral science to the understanding of consumer decision-making.
Your professor is: Jim Muncy, professor of marketing.
You鈥檒l learn: Culture shapes what we buy. 鈥淲e crawl into the consumer鈥檚 mind. We look at their information processing: how they鈥檙e persuaded, their attitudes and their personalities,鈥� Muncy said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 psychological, sociological, cultural 鈥� anything that relates to human behavior and what makes people buy what they buy.鈥�
You鈥檒l discover: The best product doesn鈥檛 always win. What makes a consumer open their wallets is more complicated. Muncy emphasizes to students that you can have the most effective product in the world, but if you don鈥檛 connect with customers on an emotional, immediate and cultural level, your product will not resonate.
鈥淚鈥檓 trying to reorient my students鈥� thinking toward marketing; it is more than just telling the consumer, 鈥楾his is my product鈥� without considering the plethora of factors that affect their behavior,鈥� Muncy said. 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 know how much a culture鈥檚 (affecting) you on a daily basis, but almost everything that you buy is at least some way culturally determined. Social class and demographics also influence purchase decisions, so you have to consider them.鈥�
A big takeaway is: Persuasion skills are essential if you want people to buy your products.Jack Martinez 鈥�19 said the techniques he learned to influence buyers ranged from understanding human memory to what motivates consumers.
鈥淚nternal and external factors sculpt the way consumers perceive brands or products based on their attitudes, knowledge, values, reference groups and social class,鈥� he said. 鈥淐onsumers make decisions based on how they evaluate information, the emotions that brands or products stimulate, the need for expedience, and how an individual can express himself or herself through meanings associated to a brand.鈥�
When you leave the class, you鈥檒l understand: How Cialdini鈥檚 six principles of persuasion 鈥� authority, liking, reciprocity, consistency, consensus or social proof, and scarcity 鈥� can be leveraged to motivate consumers.
鈥淲hen you buy that box of Cheerios, all you鈥檙e thinking is, 鈥業 like Cheerios鈥� when you put them in the cart,鈥� Muncy said. 鈥淗owever, it goes a lot deeper than that and if you鈥檙e going to have a career in marketing, you need to understand that need them to go beyond saying, 鈥榊es, I like how my Cheerios taste.鈥� We explore how to get consumers to do what we want in this course.鈥�
What your classmates are saying: Martinez said this quote from Dale Carnegie鈥檚 iconic book, 鈥淗ow to Win Friends and Influence People,鈥� exemplifies the value of the Consumer Behavior course: 鈥淲hen dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.鈥�
