Consumer Behaviour Theories in Marketing Activities: Evaluating an Organization

Detail requirements of the assessment 2: Report

Solomon (2016) argues that the average consumer is exposed to 3500 pieces of advertising information every day, up from a figure of around 500 thirty years ago. All of these advertisements will be underpinned by various different areas of consumer behaviour theory.

For the purpose of this assessment, you are required to write a 4000-word report which critically evaluates how an organisation makes use of consumer behaviour theories in their recent marketing activities. You could select an organisation of your choice but must be different from the one you already used in the Assessment 1. Alternatively, you could pick one of the following organisations

· John Lewis

· McDonald

· Amazon

· British Airways

· Samsung

The main content of the report must contain the following information:

· Introduction: Provide some background context of your chosen company, the market they operate within and how they are positioned compared to their competitors.

· Evaluate with examples, how your chosen organisation utilises consumer behaviour theory within its marketing activities. Focus on three areas of theory (select one from each of the block of topics below) and use examples from a range of channels that are applicable to your chosen organisation (e.g. in store advertising, email marketing, TV adverts, print adverts etc.)

· Critique your organisations application of this theory in the context of your organisations main competitor(s). You may wish to consider the main competitors and their marketing activities. Critically analyse any similarities or differences in their approaches, underpinned by commercial evidence and or academic literature.

· Conclusion: Summarise the key points of your report

It is expected that you will use a wide range of credible sources. These can be academic references (e.g. academic journal articles and textbooks) or commercial sources (e.g. marketing reports, trade magazines, database like Mintel, Passport Euromonitor and credible news articles).

RECOMMENDED FORMAT OF THE REPORT

Please write in report format, with headings, subheadings, figures and charts clearly labelled. Please note, if appendices are included, important information should be captured in the main body of the report as appendices are not part of the mark scheme therefore cannot be used as a substitute of the main content.

The maximum word count for this piece is 4000 words. Content beyond 4000 words will not be marked. The word count applies to the main body of the report, i.e. from Introduction to Conclusion. Title and content page, references and appendices will not be counted. A good length could be between 3800-4000 words.

Please submit your work via the Turnitin drop box on the MyBeckett module area for Agile Consumer Insight.  

TIPS

· Do your research thoroughly. For a good quality report at Masters level, it is expected that your reference list will consist of a bare minimum of 35 quality academic sources.

· Read the marking scheme. The marking grid attached will indicate what we are looking for within a given grade boundary.

· Use online library (Discovery) as your starting point to identify relevant literature or database. Leeds Beckett University has access to many of the major databases which host the major marketing journals and market reports.

· Using textbooks: At the master level, students are encouraged to read journal articles, so referencing textbooks should be kept to a bare minimum. Instead, utilise books as a means for gathering journal articles. More often than not, when a book author makes a given point based on research, they will reference an academic journal.  

· Be mindful of publication date: There may be some legacy theoretical articles date back decades ago. But, students should aim at reading a wide range of articles including most recent publications