MKT1002 Consumer Behaviour Assessment
You have three pieces of assessment in this course.
1. 20% Assignment 1 – focuses on “unpacking” value in the exchange
2. 35% Assignment 2 – focuses on the various influences that contribute to the co-creation of value.
3. 45% Exam – focuses on the application of value from a managerial perspective and utilises some/many or all of the various concepts covered in this course.
We are judging your assessment items on the course learning objectives and the graduate skills required to complete this course.
We expect you to submit your assignments on time.
Managing your time is an important skill to develop and extend. To help you to manage your time here are some tips:
• Place all assignment due dates in a calendar
• Note any assessment items with similar or competing due dates and develop a strategy for ensuring you keep to the assignment deadlines, as having too many assignments is not ground for an extension.
• Allocate 2-3 hour blocks of time per week to work on each assignment, put these blocks of time in your calendar. Make this a priority.
Regarding extensions requests:
Circumstances are considered to be beyond the control of a student if a situation occurs which a reasonable person would consider is not due to the Student's action or inaction, either direct or indirect, and for which the Student is not responsible. The situation must be unusual, uncommon or abnormal.
Students seeking extensions must provide appropriate documentation to support their request before the due date of the assignment. Please view the USQ policy on this matter:
• Assessment – Assignment (Late Submission) Procedure: http://policy.usq.edu.au/documents.php?id=14749PL#4.2_Assignments
Valuing a service experience
The two assignments centre on a service experience, in which you are the client. Because you are a client of the service – you are also the target market (audience) for the service. You are developing a
piece of communication for the manager of the service (the manager is your audience). You are providing the manager with information about their target audience (you). Managers use information about their target audience to improve their service delivery (value in the exchange) and/or as an opportunity to expand or extend value co-creation. For a manager to develop strategy and ways to add/create/extend value for their target market (you), firstly, the manager must understand their target audience (you).
The assignment gives you an opportunity to build self-awareness skills by asking you to self-reflect and to learn more about yourself as a consumer.
A service experience
Please think carefully when selecting your service experience. Ideally, the service experience you choose should be one that is personally relevant to you, and therefore, easy to write about (e.g. gym, beauty spa, playing sport, going to the movies or a regular restaurant or uni). The service experience ideally would be something that you engage with (as a client/consumer) at least twice a month, and preferably, an experience you engage with on a more regular basis (e.g. once a week or more).
Some examples that are suitable to choose for your assignments are:
a) Gym membership and regular attendance
b) Playing member of a sporting club
c) Regular at a favourite cinema
d) Regular at a favourite restaurant
e) Regular at a favourite massage or beauty spa
f) University education (online or on-campus student experience)
Before selecting your service experience, you might like to read the assignment instructions.
Assignment 1 – Value in the exchange (20%)
Task
Develop a piece of communication using words, pictures, diagrams and/or charts. You might like to use MS Word or PowerPoint to do this. Design your piece of communication to communicate to the manager of the service. You are communicating a rich and deep understanding about “value in the exchange” in the context of a branded service. The specifics of this assignment are below.
1. Select a branded service that you engage with on a regular basis (at least twice a month). The service could be a favourite restaurant that you go to on a regular basis or a business that provides you with a regular massage and beauty treatments, or a favourite cinema where you watch movies, or regular sporting activity you play (e.g. futsal, tennis, football, etc.) or a gym where you regularly exercise. The service should be branded – that is have a brand name that is easily recognisable (e.g. Snap Fitness, Grill’d, Event Cinema, etc.).
2. Identify the service (product) and brand. For example, Grill’d is the brand and the service (product) is a restaurant. Snap Fitness is the brand and the service (product) is gym membership. Event Cinema is the brand and the service (product) are movies. Once you have identified the service (product) and brand, please develop a title for your assignment. Please make sure that the name of the brand and the service are in the title of your assignment. Your assignment should have a title page. The title page should also have a date, your name and student number on it and act as a cover page for your assignment.
3. Select a method for presenting your assignment. You may choose to develop your assignment in
MS Word or PowerPoint. If you are using PowerPoint, please place your written material in the “notes section” of PowerPoint. If you are using MS Word, please insert your diagrams and pictures with the words – that is insert the illustrations as close to as possible to the words. This way the pictures and diagrams provide meaning to the words. Regarding your pictures and diagrams, please ensure you correctly label all of them and reference those you have not developed yourself (using Harvard AGPS).
4. When developing your assignment, please aim the assignment at the manager or management team of the branded service. As such, write your assignment in second or third person. Essentially, you are providing the management team (or manager) with information about their target audience (you).
5. The assignment should be no longer than 1200 words or 10 slides (if using PowerPoint). Please write your assignment using the active voice (you may want to look up the difference between active and passive voice in written communication). The active voice is a clearer and a more persuasive form of written communication. Professional marketers communicate persuasively. We are judging you on your written communication. The active voice is preferred.
6. You are to develop an assignment that has a structure similar to below:
a. Title page (no more than eight words in the title)
b. Introduction
c. Value equation
d. Decision making perspectives
e. Risk and involvement
f. Atmospherics
g. Conclusion
7. The title page should have a catchy title limited to eight words or less. Ensure your student name and student number are on the title page.
8. In your introduction section, briefly introduce the service (product; product category) and brand (no more than one page or one slide). If you provide any history or background to the service (and brand), write no more than a paragraph and please ensure you reference any material using Harvard AGPS (http://www.usq.edu.au/library/referencing/harvard-agps-referencing-guide). If you are unsure what referencing is, or why we reference material, please visit the library or click on the following link to find out more http://www.usq.edu.au/library/referencing .
9. The value equation for the branded service should include all of the benefits (utilitarian, hedonic, social and other) as well as all of the costs associated with the service (refer to the valuation equation in the materials).
a. Clearly differentiate and categorise the costs and benefits. You may like to construct a diagram to show your customer value equation for the target audience (you). If you do draw a diagram, label the diagram and discuss the diagram.
b. The value equation should clearly identify the value associated with the brand/service. You are trying to demonstrate to or show management “customer value” for the target audience (you).
10. Of the various decision making perspectives, identify which one(s) are the most fitting for your service (e.g., which did you go through when making the initial and subsequent decisions).
a. Name and describe the different decision making perspectives you undertook.
b. Consider whether the decision-making type is rationale, experiential or behavioural. Refer the materials for information about the various decision-making types.
c. Think about your first visit (decision), consider whether you engaged in extended decisionmaking or a limited decision the first time; and whether your subsequent decisions to return are habitual or because of brand loyalty.
d. You might like to present a table or a diagram illustrating the relevant decision-making perspective(s) for your target audience (you). Refer to your table(s) or diagram(s) and write in detail the decision-making perspective(s) you went through to help the manager understand decision making from the perspective of the target audience (you).
11. Describe the concepts of risk and involvement (and ensure you reference your findings when you use them in your assignment). Refer to your materials or locate information from e-books or the Internet to help you understand and explain these concepts.
a. Identify which types of risk you experience and explain to what extent you experienced these risks.
b. Similarly explain the extent of your involvement with the consumption of the service when experiencing (consuming) the service (on a regular basis).
12. Explain the impact (influence or affect) of atmospherics on the consumption of the branded service.
a. For example, explain how the lighting, any smells, the colours, the floor layout, any spacing of equipment or the spacing of tables, the people (customers/staff), any crowding etc. influences your value perceptions (positively/negatively). In your materials, there is information on atmospherics, including the different groupings of atmospherics.
Atmospherics are an important component in a service experience. As such, it is important for managers to have a good understanding of the positive and negative impacts of atmospherics on the value perceptions of their target market (you).
13. Conclude your assignment (limit of one page or one slide) by briefly summing up and explaining the value in the exchange. In this section, you might like to assess and prioritise elements that influenced (positively/negatively) or changed/altered your value perceptions during consumption (value in the exchange) and decision-making (value in the exchange).
a. Consider that this section is useful to a manager as it provides him/her direction about the elements that are most valuable to the target audience. This is important to a manager when developing strategies to co-create value.
14. Save your assignment document as follows:
Student number_MKT1002A1
Assignment 2 – Co-creating value (35%)
When completing the second assignment, please use the same branded service as the first assignment. In this assignment, you will focus on co-creating value. In the first assignment, you looked at “value in the exchange” and in this assignment, you will be looking at value more deeply. You will look at the influences of customer value, and the ways to segment the market and position the branded service towards the target audience (you).
Your task
You are to develop a piece of communication that provides the service brand manager with information about their brand and socio-cultural and normative influences that affect and co-create value for the target audience (you).
Your assignment should be written in either second or third person and be limited to 1600 words or 15 slides in total. Please use the “notes section” for your words when using PowerPoint. When you are using MS Word, please place your illustrations in-text and close to the words describing the illustration.
You are to develop an assignment that has a similar structure to below a. Title page
b. Introduction
c. Brand-image
d. Brand congruency
e. Brand attitude
f. Social influences
g. Rituals and artefacts
h. Conclusion
i. Recommendations
1. The title page should have a catchy title limited to eight words or less. The title page should also include your student name and student number.
2. The introduction section should briefly introduce the assignment to your audience, which is the manager or the management team of the branded service you have selected (no more than one slide or one page).
3. Develop a brand-image. A brand-image is a way to describe your associative memory network, which includes various primary and secondary brand associations (or nodes) linked to the brand (in your memory). Brand-images are unique for each individual customer. The manager is interested in the “typical” brand-image for his/her brand.
To develop a brand-image, you may do this, by recalling everything you can think of, when you think about the branded service, and noting the order in which you recall information (see the materials and the learning activity associated with brand-image, you might find this useful in helping you to develop an accurate brand-image).
A useful brand-image is one that shows the relationships and the strength and weakness of the relationships between the various nodes linking to the brand and service (like the brand-image in your materials, where thick lines represent the strong relationships and dotted lines illustrate the weak relationships). Remember to label any diagram you create.
Explain the brand-image to the manager or management team. You might like to identify points-ofparity and points-of-differentiation in your brand image. Points of parity are nodes that are likely to be the same for other brands of services (e.g. weights room, spin classes, PT sessions are points of parity for many gyms). Whereas points-of-difference are likely to be unique to the brand of service (you have selected).
4. Discuss brand-congruency. In the section on brand congruency, please explain and reference the concept of congruency. In your explanation, discuss brand congruency. Explain the degree of congruency between the brand-image and the typical user’s-image, as well as the degree of congruency between your self-image and the typical brand-user’s image. Provide an overall summary of brand-image congruency. To complete this task, you may need to do some research on these various congruency terms. Reference any materials you find that help you to explain the congruency terms (or any other terms used in this assignment) using Harvard AGPS http://www.usq.edu.au/library/referencing/harvardagps-referencing-guide).
5. Explain the brand attitude of your target audience (you). When explaining the term brand attitudes, explain any beliefs (cognitions), affects (emotions or feelings) or behavioural intentions towards the branded service. Provide a summary explaining your overall brand attitude towards the service. You may also like to consider and write about whether any attitudes are positive/negative or strong/weak or indifferent.
6. Explain the social cultural influences of the branded service. Consider the informational influence, the normative influence and the identification influence. You might like to conduct some research on these concepts or refer to your notes or the course materials on these types of social-cultural influences to ensure you understand these and are able to write about them in your assignment. When writing about them, write about their impact (influence) on perceptions of value, and any ethical considerations.
Because as at times there are ethical considerations and implications for various target audiences (e.g., ethics of targeting minority groups, indigenous groups, because of gender and so on). Some of these targeted audiences are micro-cultural groups (see your course materials about social cultural influences) and as such there are ethical implications/considerations that may affect these groups. Some company’s consider the ethical implications others do not. When writing about the social and cultural influences for the branded service, discuss whether the company (brand) considered the ethical implications of their target audience (you).
7. Identify any rituals and artefacts associated with the branded service. Pick one ritual and explain each of the steps in the ritual. You may like to provide a diagram to assist your explanation. Discuss any artefacts associated with the branded service. Explain how the rituals and artefacts provide meaning and value to the branded service.
You might like to refer to your course notes about rituals and artefacts or search through consumer behaviour textbooks, e-books or online articles to help you to understand and write about the various rituals and artefacts that provide you with meaning and influence your perceptions of value about the branded service. When discussing the rituals and artefacts discuss them in light of the meaning and the value they provide the target audience (you).
8. Develop a conclusion section. The conclusion section should provide a summary of your assignment and finish by briefly discussing the key elements that provide the target audience (you) meaning and value.
9. Develop the recommendations section. You should base this section on the key elements of value that you have identified above (conclusion section). You are making recommendations to a manager about how s/he can co-create value.
This will require some novel thinking and creativity. Co-creating value requires a good understanding of customer value, what is meaningful and of value to the customer.
Start by brainstorming various ways to create value for the customer, and then prioritise which of those ways might be the best, and then develop some sound recommendations on ways to cocreate value. These novel ideas might be ways in which service is improved or ways in which value is expanded or extended.
The recommendations section should be strong – and have a reasoned-based argument and be at least one page or one slide in length.
Save your assignment as follows:
Student number_MKT1002A2