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CM J40 - Social Responsible Consumer Marketing*

Faculty
Christine Sestoft, Torsten Ringberg & Niels Kornum
Course Coordinator
Niels Kornum
Prerequisite/progression of the course
A basic knowledge and understanding of marketing and consumer behavior is a good preparation for this course
Course content, structure and teaching
Consumers are met with an increasingly intense stream of signals concerning issues like sustainable development, such as climate change, political consumption, social responsibility (e.g. work conditions of employees in developing countries, environmental issues, organic foods, animal welfare, simple living). Many consumers do care about at least some of these issues, but in having to include ordinary parameters like price and quality, may end up feeling overwhelmed during the decision process given the complexities of, and at times dissonance between, societal expectations, cultural norms and categories, personal values, and everyday budgetary constraints. This course will examine these (hyper)complex decision-making processes of the consumer, including how consumer participation in subcultures, online communities and social networks affect consumers’ understanding of themselves as (consumer) citizens as well as consumer related ethical issues (e.g., Fair Trade), social trends, and social responsibilities (e.g., climate changes).
The academic world has only recently begun to study how these developments and trends affect consumer decision making. The course will be based on primarily consumer behavior and supplemented with recent studies relating to consumer culture, ethical consumption, CSR, online communities, etc.
The main topics of the course are:
  • Consumers and hyper complexity in decision-making
  • Consumer culture and the political consumer
  • Consumer ethics
  • Ethical aspects of consumer culture, -communities and social networks
  • Theoretical perspectives on ethical and CSR initiatives by companies.
  • The use/meaning of labels, such as Fair Trade, Organic, Ecological, Climate Friendly, Sustainable
Teaching will be lectures, mini exercises/action research and casework, along with topical lectures by guest speakers from selected companies. The miniproject will play a core role in the learning process of the course.
The course's development of personal competences
The course aims at developing students’ competencies within ethical areas of consumer behavior, consumer culture and communities. These include a more detailed understanding of how firms use, rely on, and manipulate ethical marketing communication through the use of communicative tactics, including labeling like Fair Trade, Organic and Sustainability.
Learning Objectives
At the end of the course the excellent student is expected to be able to:
  • Based on the models, concepts and theories presented throughout the course to discuss the complexities inherent in consumer decision making. This includes the ethical dilemmas and trade-offs consumers deal with when having to choose between social, ethical, and personal values on the one side and an economic reality on the other; and the broader consumer culture / -community context relating to this
  • Apply these models singly or combined to fit the concrete case situation under study
  • Identify and analyze the relationship between relevant models, concepts and theories from curriculum
  • Critically assess the value and relevance of models, concepts and theories presented through the course in relation to their practical application in relevant cases
Type of examination, exam aids and assessment
Oral exam on the basis of a miniproject (individual or in groups of 2-4 students).
Course literature
  • Arnould, E.J. & Thompson, C.J. 2005, "Consumer Culture Theory (CCT): Twenty Years of Research", Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 868-882.
  • Autio, M. 2005, "The morality of spending in Finnish youth consumer culture", International Journal of Consumer Studies, vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 332-341.
  • Beckmann, Suzanne C. og Langer, Roy (2003):” Consumer-citizen boycotts : Facilitators, motives and conditions”. Paper presented at the 32. EMAC-symposium, Glasgow, May 20th-23rd 2003
  • Bettman, James R., Luce, Mary Frances and Payne, John W. (2001): “Emotional decisions: Trade off difficulty and coping in consumer choice”. The University of Chicago Press
  • Chatzidakis, A. & Mitussis, D. 2007, "Computer ethics and consumer ethics: The impact of the internet on consumers' ethical decision-making process", Journal of Consumer Behaviour, vol. 6, no. 5, pp. 305-320.
  • Craig, Geoffrey (2007): “Power to the People. Lifestyles Politics and Public Communication in New Zealand Electricity Grid Protest”. In: Cultural Politics, Vol. 3, 2, pp. 231-248
  • DoRomualdo, Tony (2007) Corporate Social Responsibility/ Burden, Sham, or Opportunity. Short case study
  • Ess, C. (2009), Digital Media Ethics, Polity Press, Cambridge.
  • Ferran, Florence de and Klaus G Grünert (2007), French fair trade buyers’ Purchasing Motives: An explanatory Study using Means-end Chains analysis, Food Quality and Preference, no. 18, pp. 218-229
  • Halkier, Bente (2001): “Consuming Ambivalences – Consumer Handling of Environmentally Related Risks in Food”. In: Journal of Consumer Culture, vol. 1, no. 2
  • Hollenbeck, C.R. & Zinkhan, G.M. 2006, "Consumer Activism on the Internet: The Role of Anti-brand Communities", Advances in Consumer Research, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 479-485.
  • Jensen, Hans Rask (2001): "Antecedents and consequences of consumer value assessments: implications for marketing strategy and future research". In: Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 8, pp. 299-310
  • Josefsson, U. 2005, ‘Coping with Illness Online: The Case of Patients' Online Communities’, Information Society, vol. 21, issue 2, pp. 133-153
  • Kornum, N. (2008). Three Types of Online Community. In K. Tollin & A. Carù, Strategic Market Creation A New Perspective on Marketing and Innovation Management, (pp. 337-361). Hobroken:John Wiley & Sons
  • Kucuk, S.U. 2008, "Negative Double Jeopardy: The role of anti-brand sites on the internet", Journal of Brand Management, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 209-222.
  • Luce, Mary Frances (1998): "Choosing to Avoid: Coping with Negatively Emotion-Laden Consumer Decisions". In: Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 24, pp. 409-433
  • Palazzo, G. & Basu, K. 2007, "The Ethical Backlash of Corporate Branding", Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 73, no. 4, pp. 333-346.
  • Sestoft, C.P. (2005), Behind the Values: Understanding Consumer Behavior and E-grocery Business from a Dialectic Culture Perspective in Kornum, Niels og Bjerre, Mogens (eds.)(2005): ”Grocery E-Commerce - Consumer Behaviour and Business Strategies, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., pp. 122-159
  • Shaw, D. and Shiu, E. (2003), Ethics in Consumer Choice: A Multivariate Modelling Approach, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 37, No. 10, pp. 1485-1498

Last updated by The Electives Office 18/08/2010