Kuluttajatutkimus

Consumer psychology, consumer culture, consumer research methods.

Out of all the subjects that you as a business student might encounter during your studies, consumer behavior is the one you have the most intimate first-hand knowledge with. You were all consumers long before stepping into the hallowed grounds of Aalto University. Yet this familiarity with consumption sometimes makes it difficult to develop a necessary critical or analytical distance. The purpose of this course is to fundamentally challenge the way you understand consumption as an activity and as a topic of study. We will move you beyond colloquial or taken-for-granted understandings of consumption such as conceptually limited tropes like shopping. Understanding consumption is essential for marketing managers in developing effective marketing strategies. That said, we will repeatedly emphasize that to study consumption is not the same as studying customers. The class explores a multitude of concepts and theories from different behavioral sciences to fully appreciate what drives consumption choices and experiences. The course is split into two main paradigms of consumer research: consumer psychology and consumer culture.
 
The consumer psychology side inform participants on psychological processes and biases underlying the decisions made by individuals, with a special emphasis on how to incorporate such insights into consumption-related decisions. As consumers, we are challenged by a large amount and variety of choices every day; current research estimates that an adult makes about 35,000 remotely conscious decisions each day. Each choice we make, i.e., a decision between various options, bears consequences, positive or negative. During decision-making, we generally attempt to estimate with varying degrees of intuition and elaboration the likelihood of an outcome as well as the ramifications of that outcome. Research analyzing such decision-making is typically referred to as Behavioral Science. The module gives participants a broad overview of important results from two major Behavioral Sciences: Behavioral Economics and Consumer Research. To do so, it discusses seminal theories from Economics and Cognitive and Social Psychology, which explore how people make decisions. Moreover, the module offers participants advice about applying these insights to topics in Marketing and Management. Although a number of important concepts will be covered throughout the module, the focus will be largely on understanding heuristics (mental shortcuts or rule of thumbs that are used to increase the efficiency of decision-making) and biases (a systematic error in thinking, in the sense that a judgment deviates from what would be considered a rational choice).
 
In the consumer culture side, we move beyond the individual decision-making brain and investigate the cultural, social, and historical underpinnings of consumption. Here, culture is not to be understood in the colloquial sense ( Finnish culture is like this, Swedish culture is like that ). The view of culture we adopt in this course sees consumer culture as the way in which we, as consumers, make sense of and organize our lived experiences through the various resources provided by the marketplace. We investigate issues like how social class structures consumption, how consumption informs the construction of identity, how gender is performed through consumption, and the inner workings of consumer collectives like subcultures and brand communities, just to name a few.
 
Though the concepts presented during the course will be numerous, we will actively encourage reflection, criticism, deeper exploration, and creative applications based on your own interests. This should also sensitize you to understand that when it comes to understanding consumer behavior, there is no one correct answer; rather different perspectives and explanations are often complementary.

In addition to gaining theoretical undestanding, students will carry out a sizeable, practical research project from design to reporting findings and discussing its implications.