The overall purpose of the assessment is for you to demonstrate an "advanced and integrated understanding of a complex body of knowledge"

The overall purpose of this assignment is to build your understanding of the consumer and how an understanding of consumers is a key input to the development of an effective (the right type) and efficient (minimal or no waste) marketing mix strategy.

You must develop and overall insight regarding the consumer, making the focus of the report on "proving" your insight to a marketing manager. The insight could be regarded as your "answer" and your analysis and the integrated theory is your "working out"; the same approach if you were explaining an answer to a math problem. See notes on Report Writing. The overall purpose of the assessment is for you to demonstrate an "advanced and integrated understanding of a complex body of knowledge" (AQF Level 9 - Masters http://www.aqf.edu.au/aqf/in-detail/aqf-levels/ )

First step

It is important that you begin (even before starting the data recording) by describing yourself as a consumer before you have analysed your shopping. For example, ‘
Age
Gender
Marital Status
Family
Education Level
Income (only if relevant)
Occupation
Generational Cohort e.g. Generation X (adults born between 1961 and 1981) Value Segment Real Conservatism & Conventional Family Life (Levine, Michele and Benjamin, Colin, 1997)

Psychographics
(The Whole Brain Group, 2012)
• Concerned with health and appearance
• Wants and enjoys a healthy lifestyle but is limited by time
• Finds fulfilment in family and career
• Prefers the radio over the TV
• Loves spending any time available with her daughter
• Does not enjoy shopping activities without a purpose
• Prefers to save than spend

Personality traits

Myer Briggs - ESFJ (ESFJ Personality Type According to MBTI Typology, 2013) Myer Briggs - ESFP (ESFP Personality Type According to MBTI Typology, 2013)

• Loves people and society, altruistic, supports and cares
• Tidy and willing to help
• No problem to adapt to the majority, avoids controversy
• Respects authority
• Seeks contact with other people
• Likes control over environment
• Strongly oriented to reality and presence
• Looks for meaningful activities

If you are studying in Australia you should place yourself in one of the Roy Morgan Values Segments. Go to www.roymorgan.com click on Products, click on Values Segments and then read all of the segments to decide which segment you belong to.

If you are studying at an overseas location you could look for an ‘equivalent' in your country to the Roy Morgan segments. Roy Morgan is a major Australian market research firm and there may be one in your country doing similar work.

At the end of the above description offer an overall insight as the consumers shopping profile. Use theory to support your insight - see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Loljm0Zlxgor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVsJhH_55wsfor general explanation on insight theory

Second step

You will track and detail everypurchase you make over seven days and note what occurred in the decision making process (DMP) and the influences on the DMP for every purchase decision. These purchases need to be recorded in a matrix-in an Excel spreadsheet. An example of a matrix is available on Moodle. This is an example-you should amend according to your needs. The purchases you record here will, in the main be those products you buy weekly, e.g. milk, food, fuel, rent, entertainment and the like but should also cover clothes, small household items such as a toaster, etc. These tend to be classified as low-involvement purchases (why are they low involvement? Are all your weekly purchases low involvement?).

Explain what influenced your purchase decisionover the week. Analyse of your purchase over the week and combine this withmarketing and consumer behaviour theories/concepts to explain your decision making process for your purchases. Integrating theory does not mean cut and paste of theory. It means using the theory to structure the logic of your argument or to justify a specific insight or to provide credibility / validity to an assertion.Please aim to provide at leastthree different academic (text or journals) for this section - see 658.8 in the library for text books. Use APA (in-text) referencing: FedUni Library -

Third Step

Detail a recent purchase of what is generally known as a high-involvement product, e.g. a new TV or a new car or an overseas family holiday (why is this purchase high involvement? It is higher involvement than some of your weekly purchases? Why?). Be sure to provide a full description of the product. If you have not made such a purchase then you can write about such a product that you will make in the near future. Please note that the term product includes services such as a family holiday.

You need to detail how and in what ways marketing and consumer behaviour theories/concepts, influence (or influenced) your decision making process for your nominated. Integrating theory does not mean cut and paste of theory. It means using the theory to structure the logic of your argument or to justify a specific insight or to provide credibility / validity to an assertion.Please aim to provide at leastthree different academic (text or journals) for this section - see 658.8 in the library for text books. Use APA (in-text) referencing: FedUni Library - Referencing

Fourth Step
Compare and contrast your buying behaviour for the products purchased over the week with your buying behaviour of your nominated product.This section is critical to the report and is the opportunity to fully explain your key contention or insight regarding the behaviour of the consumer developed as a result of the three steps above. Please aim to provide at leastfour different academic (text or journals) for this section - see 658.8 in the library for text books. Use APA (in-text) referencing: FedUni Library - Referencing

Fifth Step

Provide key overall insights and justification (use theory to support) regarding what you have discovered. Describe how Marketers could use these insights to develop more persuasive Marketing strategies.

You need to detail how and in what ways marketing strategy (changing / influencing consumer behaviour) can occur as a result of your insights from step four. Again, you will frame your response integrating theory to structure your response.Please aim to provide at leastthree different academic (text or journals) for this section - see 658.8 in the library for text books. Use APA (in-text) referencing: FedUni Library - Referencing

Report Overview

You will form a group (maximum of three group members) and choose ONE of the nominated products that group members wrote about in Assignment One. The second assignment requires the group to develop a NEW marketing mix strategy for a product that competes against the chosen nominated product. For example, your chosen nominated product may be the LG 55 inch full HD3D TV-the group then needs to develop a marketing strategy for a competing product, e.g. theHisense 55 inch full HD3D TV.