Consumer Behaviour
Winter 2022
410-402-AB
David de Koos
Individual Research Paper
Objective:
This individual project provides an opportunity to research and understand specific behaviour that consumers exhibit based upon secondary and primary research data. The student will carry out a search for relevant publications and will conduct at least one interview. The research will lead to putting together recommendations which address an identified consumer behaviour (CB) related problem or opportunity.
Instructions:
Your role for this assignment will be to act as a marketing consultant given the responsibility to advise a business in your product category/industry on how they should change their marketing strategies to improve [a CB concept] based on how their target consumers manage the pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase of [product/service].
Your projects will focus on understanding CB concepts relating to your product category/industry and will address a specific research question.
Examples (based on prior students’ papers):
Client: Pharmaprix Research question: How are ‘dupes’ impacting the sale of branded cosmetics?
Client: Monster Gym Research question: Are there unmet needs and wants for target customers that Monster Gym might address with new services?
Client: TD Bank Research question: How do family members influence each others’ choices in where to bank and what products to select?
Client : Footlocker Research question: What attitudes do young target consumers hold about sports wear and what are the best strategies and tactics for changing those attitudes?
Your paper will need to address the following questions:
What are the pre-purchase, purchase, and/or post-purchase processes for consumers of this product category/industry?
What are the most relevant external influences on these processes?
What can my client company learn from these processes?
How can my client influence these processes?
How should the client company change their marketing strategies to address the CB concept you researched?
STEPS:
Step 1: Think about a topic you might want to research that seems important for your industry. Find and read secondary research (publications) relevant to your topic in business and trade journals or other media in the academic databases to give yourself some understanding of the issues for your industry. Start capturing citations for these articles in bibliographic format to save work later! (ex. Last, F. M. (Year). Article title. Publication/name of journal. Retrieved from URL.)
Start to develop your research question. A good starting point might be: “What influences how
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Consumer Behaviour
Winter 2022
410-402-AB
David de Koos
target consumers pre-purchase, purchase and post purchase?” This is a place to start, you will modify this according to your interests and your preliminary research. Develop a set of interview questions to address your research question.
Step 2: Turn in your preliminary outline, interview questions, and initial bibliography by March 18th, for feedback from me before you conduct your interviews.
Step 3: Conduct an interview with (at least) one target consumer. There are two criteria for your
choice of interviewee: (1) he/she must not be related to you, though he/she can be related to someone else in the class and (2) he/she must be a potential target customer for your client.
Notes, including some verbatim quotes, should be taken. You may record your interview, then type up your notes. These write-ups will be presented as separate appendices in the report (e.g. Appendix A, “How the Jones family manages their food buying” or “Barry Jones’ sports equipment buying behaviour”). Be sure to include the contact information for the person you interview. Please note this information will be known only to me and to you.
Deliverables:
You are writing a Business Report to your client who has given you the mandate to come up with solutions to a CB related problem/question. The report should be professional in presentation, and at least five (5) pages long. It should have a title page and be typed, single-spaced, 12-point font, one-inch margins, spell-checked, grammar checked, and proof-read. It should have appropriate headings. Relevant pictures, graphs, and tables would be a plus.
The report should contain the following sections:
I Title Page
II Table of Contents
BIBody of your report –
1.Introduction – Provide a compelling beginning to your paper (focus on the client being your audience). State the purpose of the paper, the CB issue being studied and why this paper is important. (~0.5 to 1 page)
2.Secondary research – Include a summary of your secondary research. (~0.5 to 1 page)
3.Method – Describe the target consumer interviewed and the type of questions you asked him/her. (~0.5 page)
4.Analysis & Results – Look for areas of agreement and disagreement and think about the target consumer’s strategies. Do you see a problem? Summarize the consumer’s approach. As you discuss his/her behaviour provide verbatim quotes and use relevant concepts from class (e.g., self-concept, shopping orientation, lifestyle, culture, attitudes, values etc.) to explain his or her behaviour. (~2 pages)
5.Implications – Now briefly describe how your company might use what you have discovered about their target consumers (make reference to what you learned and relate this to strategic decisions about segmentation, targeting, positioning, marketing mix development, etc. that the client might adopt). Provide recommendations for marketing actions based on your analysis. (~2 pages)
6.Conclusion – Restate your main points (key findings, implications, recommendations) and suggest future research. (~0.5 page)
IV Appendices – (interview notes, …)
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Consumer Behaviour
Winter 2022
410-402-AB
David de Koos
V Bibliography – using proper APA citation styles
(https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_style_introduction.html)
Possible Useful Information Sources:
•Internet – Try Google Scholar to find academic and trade publication articles. Academic journals are also indexed in Emerald, JSTOR, ProQuest and other databases.
•Library— Books, business magazines (e.g., Business Week, The Economist, Harvard Business Review, Fortune), academic journals (e.g., Journal of Popular Culture), trade publications (e.g., American Demographics, Advertising Age).
Don’t rely exclusively on a limited number of sources or those that contain redundant material.
The more sources you use, the richer your analysis is likely to be.
Evaluation:
This assignment will count for 15% of your course grade, distributed as follows:
Due Date Deliverable Variable Value
March 18 Preliminary outline, Relevance 5%
interview questions,
bibliography
Quality and relevance of research 3%
April 1 Research Paper Analysis and application of CB 4%
concepts
Recommendations to client 3%
Your assignments must be uploaded to Lea.
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