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Instructor: David Campbell
Office: 444 BSS
Phone: 826-3721
Office Hours: Wed 8:00-11:30
E-mail: dec1@humboldt.edu
Web site: www.humboldt.edu/~campbell/psyc.htm
Texts: (Be sure to purchase
the correct edition.)
The Solomon text is your main text and is required. You will be writing a term paper based on
either the Schlosser or Pollan text so purchase one of these two items. The Rosnow & Rosnow text is recommended
only; contains excellent advice on writing papers in APA style.
Solomon, M.R. (2004). Consumer behavior.
Schlosser, E. (2002). Fast food nation:
The dark side of the All-American meal.
Pollan, M. (2006). Omnivore’s dilemma.
New York: Penguin.
Rosnow, R.L., & Rosnow, M. (2006). Writing
papers in psychology.
The Rosnow text is not required but
highly recommended for term papers. If
not at HSU Bookstore, order from any source.
Course Overview:
We are all
consumers. We all must decide daily how
to spend our precious time and money. This course is designed to shed
light on why we behave as we do in the role of consumers. We examine the
role of advertising and marketing campaigns in shifting our choices. We
also analyze how our collective actions contribute to and shape our
contemporary culture. But this course goes beyond understanding of
ourselves and of those around us. Virtually everyone in the class will
spend much of their adult lives working in some context. The fruit of
this labor will be some combination of products, services, and information
that a target group will consider desirable. If efforts are not made to
study and understand the perceived needs of potential "customers,"
then there is a very real risk that the productive labor will fail. The
ideas and information encountered in this course will have direct value in
helping students to become successful in their chosen careers. While
covering this information, we must be mindful that there is a "dark
side" to consumer behavior. Persuasive advertising and effective
marketing can result in addictions and destructive behavior that raise
disturbing questions regarding our materialistic values. We will confront
this dark side and debate the implications for our way of life.
This course satisfies an upper
division GE requirement in Area D: Communication and Ways of Thinking.
Course
Procedure:
Class time will be split between
student presentations and review of the current reading assignment. You are expected to actively engage with the
assigned reading. Come to class prepared
with notes on your ideas, reactions, and questions so that you can contribute
to the discussion and review of the assignment.
Grading:
Short quizzes will be given
each week over the assigned reading. A
set of study questions is provided on our web site to guide your
preparation. Quizzes count 30% of your
course grade. The lowest quiz will be
dropped. Make-up quizzes require
prior arrangement with the instructor.
Several team projects are
assigned. Team performance and class
participation (including attendance) will total 15% of your course grade.
Each student will treat the class to
an oral “mini-report” on a topic of interest. This could be a summary and analysis of a provocative research
report or a discussion of a consumer-related issue found in the popular
media. The report should take 8-10
minutes of class time and a 3-5 page written summary of the report should be
turned in at the time the report is delivered.
These mini-reports will count approximately 10% of the course
grade. Guidelines for these reports are
at www.humboldt.edu/~campbell/p309minireports.htm
The comprehensive final exam
counts 25%.
A term paper is
required. For this assignment, you must
read Fast food nation by Eric Schlosser or Omnivore’s dilemma by
Michael Pollan. Your paper should be an “extended” review of the arguments and
issues in your chosen text. You must identify and thoughtfully discuss
the major themes and issues raised by the author. But this should
be only a start. You must do additional research to check on the author’s
positions, update his arguments, and bring in related ideas for comparison and
critical analysis. You can support your points using information from
your main text in this course, from texts in your other courses, and from
sources obtained through the library databases. (Note that your paper
should be much more than a simple summary of the book. In fact, if your
review consists merely of a condensation of the book's message, you will get
partial credit at best.) Your paper should be free of spelling, grammar,
or punctuation errors and should exhibit good writing style (well-organized
overall, good paragraph structure, interesting beginning, leads to a thoughtful
ending, etc.) APA format must be used in the preparation of this paper (title
page, abstract, running head, topic headings, correct format for references,
etc.). The expected length is 8-10 pages. Excellent advice on how to
format a quality term paper is provided in the recommended text by Rosnow and
Rosnow. General advice on how to
prepare a term paper (library use, APA format, grading criteria) is at http://sorrel.humboldt.edu/~campbell/termpaper.htm
, but you must adapt this advice to the particulars of this assignment. Your term paper will count approximately 20%
of your course grade.
Student
Responsibilities:
You are expected to tackle this
course in a constructive and mature manner.
Your goal should be to find out what psychology and related disciplines
know about consumer thinking and behavior.
It is expected that you will attend almost all classes and will
participate fully in the class activities.
If you will have to miss a class or turn in an assignment late, advise
the instructor in advance (e-mail is convenient). Also, be sure to review the HSU policy on academic honesty. You need to be aware of what constitutes
cheating and plagiarism (e.g., is it OK to turn in essentially the same paper
in two classes with similar assignments, or is it OK to make use of quizzes
provided by your roommate from the same class last semester?).
Make it a practice to arrive in
class early. Use this time to review your
notes, get focused, and socialize with your classmates.
Extra
Credit:
You can earn extra credit in this course by participating
in one or two hours of research as a participant (subject). To sign up for experiments, you need to
first create an account in the participation pool system. Instructions are available at http://www.humboldt.edu/~cla18/partpool.htm Extra credit in this course does not carry a
specific point value but it will be helpful if you are between two course
grades at the end of the semester.
Cell phone
policy:
Schedule of Topics and
Date Topic
Solomon
Jan 18 Orientation
--
25 Introduction
to Consumer Behavior 1
Feb 1 Perception
2
8 Learning
and Memory
3
15 Motivation
and Values
4
22 The
Self and Sex Roles
5
Group Project #1 due
Mar 1 Personality and Lifestyles
6
8 Attitudes,
Attitude Change
7, 8
15
SPRING BREAK!
--
22 Individual
Decision Making 9
29 Buying
and Disposing
10
April 5
Group Influence and Opinion Leadership
Group Project #2 due
11
12 Organizational
and Household
Decision Making
12
19
Income, Social Class, Ethnicity, & Religion 13,14
26 Age
Subcultures
15
May 3 Cultural Influences, Consumer Culture
16, 17
10
(3:00) Final exam & Term Papers
Due
Group Projects
Project #1—The
Business and Marketing Perspective: Analysis of Product Advertisements.
It is the job of marketing departments within business organizations to
conduct research on potential consumers, and then design advertising campaigns
that will reach and persuade these customers to purchase the product. With this in mind, you are to collect print
ads for five different brands of the same product. Identify the emphasized product attributes involved in each
ad. Describe the consumer segments that
are the apparent targets. This is not
an individual activity. You are
expected to work with your team in locating the ads, analyzing their content,
and discussing the segmentation issues.
Come to class ready to give a brief oral report of your work (all term
members participating). Have a brief
report of your activities and conclusions ready to hand in at the end of your
oral report (2-3 pages). All members of
the group must sign this report.
Project #2—The
Sociological Approach to Consumer Life Style: Self-Report Measures of Consumer
Behavior. This project relates to problem of temporal
and situational factors in consumer behavior.
Your task is to devise and complete a two-day record of how you spend
time. Prepare a recording form on which
you can note all discrete activities that you engage in, including: beginning
and ending times, name of activity, location, and whether conducted alone or
with others. Initially, you might
decide as a group on your activity categories (school, job, transportation,
exercise, cooking, cleaning, personal care, TV, etc.). Decide what additional information to
collect (e.g., feelings while engaged in an activity, alone or not,
self-instigated or not). Before you
begin this 2-day time diary, write down your predictions: What percentage of
your time will be spent with others, what percentage engaged in academic study,
etc. Gather activity data for 2 days,
then analyze and summarize your results.
Categorize each activity as to type.
Note the percentage of time given to each category.
As a group, compare results and
discuss similarities and differences.
You might discuss differences in location of activities (in-home vs.
out-of-home), social vs. solitary activity, monetary cost of activities,
self-instigated vs. reactive activities, active participant vs. passive
observer, obligatory vs. discretionary activity, pleasant vs. unpleasant,
etc. Consider the reasons for the
differences found between yourself and others in your group.
Finally, discuss how analysis of the
use of time by students such as yourselves can be used by marketers to identify
and develop new goods and services. You
might critique the diary methods and suggest alternative ways to learn how
consumer behavior is distributed in time and place. Prepare a summary report of your work to be signed by all and
handed in at the end of your oral report to the class. (To minimize redundancy, the oral report
will consist of each group briefly describing their summary data—preferably
with the aid of a figure or chart.
Issues of validity and commercial uses of such information will be
discussed by the class as a whole.)
Project
#3—Critique of TV Commercials. Each group must take responsibility for
leading a class discussion critiquing TV ads.
Your group should decide on what category of ad to examine. Choices include ads targeting children
(Saturday mornings), housewives (mid-day soaps), sports enthusiasts (ESPN,
weekend sports), prime time viewers (mid-evening), late night viewers (after
midnight, and teenagers (MTV). Dates
will be assigned for each group. This
exercise works best if you limit your analysis to a small number of ads that
differ in interesting ways. It is
suggested that you show one ad at a time, discussing it with the class, before
going on to your next one. Prepare a
summary report of your work to be signed by all and handed in at the end of
your oral report to the class.