Module BUSS3141: EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY AND CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

Department: Economics, Finance and Business (Business) [Queen's Campus, Stockton]

BUSS3141: EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY AND CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

Prerequisites

• Practice of Marketing

Corequisites

• None

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None

Aims

• To enable students to:
• Understand consumer responses to the products and services of everyday life, and to the marketing of those products and services
• Display a critical knowledge of the central tenets of the evolutionary psychology paradigm, together with its implications for marketing practice
• Apply and critically assess evolutionary explanatory tools in the context of contemporary business practice and the consumer society

Content

• The science of human nature may enlighten the world of marketing and consumerism, and vice versa. Building on the introduction to buyer behaviour in the Level 2 module 'Practice of Marketing', this module explores the latest research connecting the evolutionary psychology of human preferences, motivations and decision processes to the contemporary world of consumer behaviour, marketing, advertising, and the media.
• The central theme of the module is the extent to which effective marketing can ever only really begin with a comprehensive understanding of how and why customers behave as they do.
• Evolutionary origins of consumer preferences, tastes, and motivations.
• The psychology of product recognition, branding and advertising.
• Conspicuous consumption, costly signalling theory, romantic gift buying and human courtship.
• Happiness, utility and fitness.
• Advertising strategies and the "stone age brain".
• Gender differences in consumer behaviour.
• Fads, fashions, 'crazes', information cascades, etc.
• Genes, memes and "viral" marketing.
• Spatial cognition, landscape aesthetics, landscape products, and the leisure and tourism industries.
• Intuitive cost/benefit/risk perception and the design of financial products.
• The psychology of service industries and corporate public relations.
• Darwinian aesthetics of new product development and design.
• The design of news, entertainment, and education as "products".
• The evolutionary psychology of computer games.
• Darwin Goes to Hollywood - evolution and the global entertainment industry.

Learning Outcomes

• Knowledge of the key principles of evolutionary psychology and the extent to which they shed light upon the nature of marketing and the modern consumer society
• Comprehensive understanding of consumer interactions with the products and services of everyday life, and with the marketing of those products and services
• The skills needed to apply neo-Darwinian psychological tools and frameworks within a marketing and consumer research context

• Assess and critique consumer behaviour and marketing practices from a range of theoretical and positional perspectives in evolutionary psychology
• Demonstrate the ability to think independently, work individually and as part of a group to locate, assess and use information
• Reflect on and better understand one's own behaviour in the roles of both consumer and prospective marketing manager

• Written communication - through summative assessment
• Verbal communication - presentation skills, giving and receiving feedback in group assignment, class discussion
• Computer literacy - word-processing and layout of summative essay, interrogation of electronic and web-based academic databases

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Teaching is via lectures and seminars. Learning takes place through attendance at lectures, preparation for and participation in seminars, and private study. Formative assessment is by means of one group presentation and short written report. Summative assessment is by means of one written assignment and one examination.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

One group seminar presentation/poster and short individual written report

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University