Consumption Narrative

Overview of the Assignment

In class we have discussed the consumer decision-making process and the vaiious internal and external factors that affect our consumer behaviour. Observing your own consumption behaviour is an excellent way to grasp the significance of the various theoretical concepts. For this assignment you are required to choose a single purchase or consumption activity and write a rich, descriptive narrative about that experience using consumer behaviour theory.

Instructions

A hard copy of this assignment is due on Monday 26th of November at the beginning of class. Two electronic versions of your assignment must be submitted within 24 hours of the due date. The first of these must be submitted via ePortfolio (http://eportfolio.zu.ac.ae). This version of your assignment will be used to assess the major learning outcome (MALO) addressed in this course: to think critically, solve problems and be creative. In addition, another electronic version of your assignment must be submitted via the 'Safe Assignment' function on Blackboard. 'Safe Assignment' is a web-based tool which provides an online plagiarism prevention service. The plagiarism detection software will compare your assignment with your classmates' assignments, previous year's assignments and search the intern& and electronic journal databases for instances of plagiarism. Late submission of the hard copy or either of the digital copies will be penalised at rate of 10% per day or part thereof. The word limit for this assignment is 1000 words (excluding the reference list).

Assignment Brief

You are required to write a rich, descriptive narrative of a single purchase or consumption experience. This narrative should be focused around a single unifying theme. The theme in the example below is 'gift-giving'. Some examples of other interesting themes are group nfluence, sports consumption, ritual consumption, situational influences, brand communities, or complaint behaviour. However, you can choose any theme you want, we have discussed many in class - so be creative!

I have given this assignment many times before and the most common theme discussed is the consumer decision making process as it can be easily applied to any purchase experience. However, please note that this is a very broad topic and in order to demonstrate a deep understanding of the related theoretical concepts within 1000 words you may need to narrow your theme down to a certain aspect of the consumer decision making process (i.e. ',formation search or evaluation and selection).

Another recommendation that I would like to make is to suggest you choose to discuss either a relatively high involvement purchase, a symbolic purchase, or a consumption activity (i.e. going out with friends).This will allow you to provide more in-depth insights into your cognitive thought processes as well as make assumptions about the role of the internal and external influences on your consumption experience.

Even though you are required to write a narrative about a personal consumption experience, this is very much a research assignment. I expect that all students will use the textbook to research the unifying theme of the narrative. However, in order to do well you are required to go beyond the textbook and research the unifying theme using academic journal articles.