Consumer Insight

Introduction

In this course, students will develop a broad set of practical skills that will enable them to gain insights into contemporary consumers. These skills will allow students to map and understand the needs, desires, motivations, attitudes, and mentalities that are relevant and current for consumers at a given time.

In a consumer society, viewed as a growth and innovation-driven society, trends and social dynamics, often linked to new products and services and the opportunities they provide, are in constant motion. This implies that today's consumers are not a homogeneous group with a fixed set of motivational patterns that can be thoroughly understood through a specific insight. The relevant insights are also continuously changing and subject to alteration.

The course is contemporary and future-oriented. It is essential to understand the nature and content of these changes and how they affect consumers so that students are always in tune with and ahead of developments. The course aims to equip students with the skills necessary to navigate a consumer landscape in constant motion. They should be able to establish insights into what influences and drives consumers, viewed in the context that a consumer society represents. This is a significant strength as consumers are always situated in various cultural contexts, which influence and affect their motivations and horizons of understanding, and are crucial for effective advertising and marketing communication.

The course offers a cultural breadth that reflects this interdisciplinarity, spanning cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, ethnography, philosophy, and marketing.

Course content

• In-depth insights into various approaches and perspectives concerning understanding customers/consumers/segments, and the contexts they inhabit. These approaches can be broadly divided into two parts: one consisting of the various theoretical positions in the curriculum and the other comprising the comprehensive toolbox of qualitative methodology.
• Comprehensive introduction to qualitative methods. Learning the strengths and advantages of the qualitative approach and how it is combined with quantitatively based methods and insights.
• Setup of qualitative designs, collection of empirical data, and analysis of qualitative data. Classical techniques such as depth interviews, focus groups, observations, and ethnographic approaches will be predominantly featured.
• Qualitative methods provide a type of in-depth insight, both into the individual and the culture. They also serve as a critical foundation for more precise definition of target groups, allowing marketers to be significantly more accurate and effective in their branding, marketing communication, and development of new products and business concepts.
• A thorough introduction to relevant, updated theories about consumers and contemporary society by presenting various theoretical positions from sociology, anthropology, ethnography, philosophy, and marketing that are part of the course curriculum. This theoretical content is then used to contextualize and perspective the information students gather via methods.
• Qualitative methods are capable of uncovering a form of insight into peoples lifeworlds, the relationships and contexts they are part of—a so-called “three-dimensionality” that quantitative techniques cannot provide. This type of three-dimensionality, when used correctly and combined with relevant theory, creates sharp competitive advantages.
• The course emphasizes that the development of students' theoretical and methodological skills not only equips them with attributes that are relevant and sought after in business but also provides invaluable advantages in a market where changes can sometimes be of a paradigmatic and accelerating nature.