Faculty
Associate Professor Dr. Stefan Schwarzkopf

Course Coordinator
Associate Professor Dr. Stefan Schwarzkopf

Good command of English necessary, as is a strong interest in political and legal philosophy.

Public life becomes increasingly structured around the idea of ‘free choice’. People demand not only choice of products, but want to have choice of hospitals and of the schools they send their children to. Even the decision to end one’s own life is increasingly framed within the language of freedom of choice – the freedom to choose the way one lives a life. It seems that we have become choosers and consumers in all aspects of our life. At the same time, consumers are called upon to use their spending power to make a positive change to the world we live in, for example by buying ethically produced and environmentally friendly products. In the discussions around the limits to consumer freedoms, choice is frequently linked to the idea of democracy. Democracies are seen as constructed by sets of political and social institutions that enable choice and which, in turn, rely on freedom of choice. The connection between the political structure of democracies and the principle of free consumer choice feeds directly into the narrative of the ‘powerful consumer’ as a keystone of American and European public life, business strategy and intellectual production. Future leaders of business, politics and civil society need to have a firm grounding in the political arguments surrounding the idea of consumer power and free choice. This course is therefore designed to give students knowledge about what power(s) consumer really have and why different groups in society, industry, politics and marketing, might wish to exploit the idea of the powerful consumer for their own purposes.

In order to deliver the course content, classes will be centred around the problem of whether the principles of consumer power and consumer democracy are connected to democracy at all. Do democracies for example rely on consumer spending and freedom of choice? The course will also discuss whether markets are actually driven by consumer choice and whether consumer choice (‘power’) is the best way to organise markets and govern consumption. In addition, the course aims at a discussion of the factors that constitute and influence choice. Do consumers actually choose freely? Is free choice the same as ‘good’ choice, and if not, why are democratic societies so uncomfortable about regulating choice? Finally, the course will discuss the way marketing systems provide prescripted sets of choice, by that turning the notion of the free and powerful consumer into an illusion (branding and neuromarketing, consumer behaviour theory).

Week 1 – Introduction: Markets, Democracy and Freedom of Choice

Week 2 – The Meanings of Freedom: Christian and Islamic Thought vs. Liberalism

Week 3 – Power: What is Power? Are Consumers Powerful?

Week 4 – The Microeconomics of Consumer Choice

Week 5 – The Marketing System: Brands

Week 6 – Neurobehavioural and Consumer Psychology Perspectives

Week 7 – Alternatives I: Fair Trade, Co-operatives, Ethical Consumer Behaviour

Week 8 – Alternatives II: Autonomy, Freeganism, Violence

Revision and Project Preparation

The course will strengthen students’ ability to encage in contemporary debates about consumer choice and its limitations, the role of state and civil society in the regulations of market(ing) activities and the limits of state regulatory power. Competences acquired will include analytic and communication skills needed by business, political and social leaders in democratic debates about global stewardship and market regulation. Through the group project, students will acquire relevant team-, self-organising, project management and time management skills as well as skills in relation to project presentations. Finally, and in addition to the teaching of merely theoretical skills, this course aims at equipping students with high levels of self-control, patience and long-term orientation, values without which sustainable communities and healthy democracies cannot exist. This course is, therefore, as much a class in the classic virtues of citizenship as it is a course about recent debates in marketing theory.

The main objectives of the course are to provide students with a basic grounding in a number of micro-economic and business ethical theories and concepts that are at the heart of modern marketing and economic education, yet often little reflected:

After taking this course, students should be able to:

Oral Exam in weeks 1-3, 2011, based on a mini group project. Students who join the course will be required to form groups of 3-4 students and work on the following question:

“Choose a product or service market and analyse to what extent consumers can exert free choice in that market. What forces influence consumers’ choice in that market? How can consumers get better choice within that market?”

Groups will write a report of no more than 15 pages on that set of questions; this report has to be submitted 2 weeks before the exam date and will form the basis of the oral exam. Students are examined individually and need to indicate which part(s) of the project they are responsible for.