A new way to teach Consumer Behaviour

Hi I am in my 2^nd year of FPM program in Strategic Management area. As a part of our course work we have to take one PGP elective in the 4^th term. I choose to take Consumer Behaviour majorly for 2 reasons; first had an inclination towards marketing but second and the most important reason to take Consumer Behaviour is the feedback from our seniors. The FPM’s in marketing said that life is cool in his course and I won’t feel bored in his class. BORED …. Is this a joke …. He is one of a kind of teacher. If you ask , is he great?? I would say, I don’t know but he is definitely different. I had interacted with him a couple of times but I never could imagine someone teaching a subject of Consumer Behaviour or for that matter any subject this way. What is the way?? Why is his teaching different?? Is this his strategy??.... You’ll need to read the a bit further to get the answers.

We are into our first Consumer Behaviour class. I have brushed through the book a bit before going to the class. The first chapter contains “What is consumer Behaviour?? Their impact on marketing strategy bla bla (all gyan)… I thought it would be a nice class to have a nap.. But still it was the first class and I am an FPM ( 1 of the 4 samples of our batch) … How can a doctoral student sleep in class ?? So I decided to sit in the second bench where I would be more attentive (atleast I won’t sleep). He started the class with the regular course outline but in the evaluation component he has included 15% in writing blogs. Hmmm something different….

He started his lecture using a ppt. His first slide contained 4 points big bold and highlighted. Out of those first 2 are:

1. One in three girls aged 15–17 were having sex

2. 25% claimed to have had six or more sexual partner

Something interesting but acceptable as it was an Australian case, but still it was enough to shake me and most of other students. SEX just a 3 letter word, simple yet most powerful emotion of any human. We have heard, read, seen and may be experienced sex (some lucky ppl) from the day we grew up (age might differ but the feeling is same). But have you ever imagined sex can be used in educational purpose… Ya you heard me right I didn’t say sex education … I said use of sex in education… that too management education more over in IIM’s. So here is one professor who does it, and mind you, he uses it with perfection. He uses it like salt in a curry, just the right amount to make students sit on the edge of their chair and concentrate on the learning without getting distracted (thinking deeply and imagining themselves to be involved). Well as a professor to use this tool you really need to have some confidence. Do you want to know how he does that??

As I said, he is a professor of Consumer Behaviour and who better that he can know that we (students) are his consumers or customers. In his vast experience he has studied the behaviour or a typical class (young unmarried lot) and known that sex in verbal, written and visual mode draws attention. Most of the young professionals start paying more attention to the lecture when encounted with the work sex through any of their sences. Many studies have also proven the fact that sex and related exposure attracts most of the people. It is just that over stimuli of this can distract the people and make them wander into their dreamland. Hence if can hypothesise that if sexual stimuli can be induced in a proper amount then the students will be much more attentive. And if this can be embedded into the course content then it becomes even more effective.

Use of videos is seen in lot of courses but I have never seen the embedment of sensual context in slides, pictures, audio lectures and videos in the course so effectively. Let’s see how he has done it our course of consumer behaviour. The introduction of consumer behaviour is done taking a case of Australian sex education campaign, use of condoms and behaviour of teens towards use of condoms (especially girls). The case was to understand the behaviour of teens and design a campaign so that use of condoms amongst the teens increases leading to safer sex. That day the whole discussion about consumer behaviour revolved around this. Finally this was the campaign which the advertisers actually used the picture shown with the punch line: "Some boys will call you every night" so use condom.

Not only this, Professor showed videos every 10-15 min which was the sex campaigns of Russia, Kenya, Malawi etc. Other ads were to promote the use of condoms. All the ads were having adequate sensuous material which constantly kept the students to focus on learning of various aspects of consumer behaviour. Finally he showed a part of the movie “Gods must be Crazy” which also described the difference consumer behaviour of a tribal community and the city. Even this movie had naked tribal man and women using the bottle of coke in different activities and as the importance of the bottle increases the behaviour towards the bottle also changes. This was the end of the first class. I thought this was the first class and may be this was initial dose to keep the students active. But what about next class, I can only say it was even more interesting and trust me u can just not get bored, coz he won’t let you by his new strategy of gaining attention using sensuous ads and the discussion which imparts you knowledge and understanding and also keeps you at the edge of your chair. To know the details about how the professor used this technique in the next class please visit my blog soon.