COURSE NUMBER: MBA 260.1
COURSE TITLE: Consumer
Behavior
UNITS OF CREDIT: 3
INSTRUCTOR: Barbara Mellers
E-MAIL ADDRESS:
mellers@haas.berkeley.edu
CLASS WEB PAGE LOCATION (Change
from default of Catalyst if you are using something else.):
MEETING DAY(S)/TIME: Tuesday
and Thursday,
PREREQUISITE(S):
CLASS FORMAT (Will there be
lectures, cases, or a mixture?):
We will have lectures,
cases, demonstrations, experiments, videos, and other activities.
REQUIRED READINGS (Not a
list of specific readings but a statement of whether you will use a textbook,
cases, course reader, readings on reserve,
or a mixture.):
Textbook, cases, and
selected articles and chapters.
BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE
(midterm, final, paper(s), project(s), class
participation, or a
mixture):
Midterm, individual paper,
group project, and homework assignments.
ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT
AND OBJECTIVES:
One of the biggest problems
in business is figuring out what makes consumers happy. This is especially
problematic for product-based companies. The goal is to create profitable
products, but too often companies do inadequate market research and don’t know
what it is that the customer really wants. It is difficult to create a
high-demand product by guessing.
To create successful
products and services, one needs to get close to consumers and understand what
makes them tick. This course will help you build solid mental models of
consumers. You will gain insights about behavioral processes that help predict
and explain consumer behavior including cognitive mechanisms (sensation,
perception, attention, memory, and learning) and affective mechanisms
(surprise, pleasure, and satisfaction) as they relate to critical business
decisions. We will attitudes, persuasion, and impression formation as well as
social epidemics and tipping points.
In addition to these general
processes, we will examine methods and procedures for learning about consumer
preferences. What quantitative and qualitative research tools are available to
measure and understand consumer preferences? You will get hands on experience
with surveys, experiments, regression methods, and scaling techniques.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Barbara
Mellers is Milton W. Terrill Professor of Business Administration at the Haas
School of Business. She has taught and
done research on human judgment and decision making for over 20 years. Her
research has been supported by numerous grants from the National Science
Foundation. She has published over 50 papers on topics in judgment and decision
making including, perceptions of fairness, jury decision making, contextual
effects in judgment and choice, and problems that occur when measuring
preferences. Mellers is also interested in why people make so called
"irrational" decisions and when so called "rational"
decisions are maladaptive. Her current research focuses on the connections
between emotions and choice. Mellers has been a past president of the Judgment
and Decision Making Society. She has served on the editorial boards of many
journals and has participated in national research committees. Mellers has
consulted for the State of