MKT 115 CONSUMER BEHAVIOR (4 Credits) This course provides marketing students with an understanding of consumer behavior in the marketplace. The course will address the consumer behavior from the individual and group dynamics perspective, consumer’s impact on marketing strategies, market ethics and public policy, behavioral learning theories, perceptual positioning, the interrelationship between the individual and their social realities, how the products, services, and consumption activities contribute to the broader social world, and the role the consumer plays in the marketing mix. The course will also address the role that consumer behavior plays toward an organization’s marketing strategy. Prerequisite(s): FYE 101, MKT 114
Plastic Water by
How did branded bottles of water insinuate themselves into our daily lives? Why did water become an economic good -- no longer a common resource but a commercial product, in industry parlance a "fast moving consumer good," or FMCG? Plastic Water examines the processes behind this transformation. It goes beyond the usual political and environmental critiques of bottled water to investigate its multiplicity, examining a bottle of water's simultaneous existence as, among other things, a product, personal health resource, object of boycotts, and part of accumulating waste matter. Throughout, the book focuses on the ontological dimensions of drinking bottled water -- the ways in which this habit enacts new relations and meanings that may interfere with other drinking water practices. The book considers the assemblage and emergence of a mass market for water, from the invention of the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle in 1973 to the development of "hydration science" that accompanied the rise of jogging in the United States. It looks at what bottles do in the world, tracing drinking and disposal practices in three Asian cities with unreliable access to safe water: Bangkok, Chennai, and Hanoi. And it considers the possibility of ethical drinking, examining campaigns to "say no" to the bottle and promote the consumption of tap water in Canada, the United States, and Australia.
Good Profit by
THE REVOLUTIONARY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM BEHIND ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL COMPANIES OF OUR TIME In 1961, Charles Koch joined his father s Wichita-based company, then valued at $21 million. Six years later, he was named chairman of the board and CEO of Koch Industries, Inc. Today, Koch Industries estimated worth is $100 billion -- making it one of the largest private companies in the world. Koch exceeds the S&P 500 s five-decade growth by 27-fold and plans to double its value on average every six years. What exactly does this company do and why is it so remarkably profitable? Koch s name may not be on your stain-resistant carpet, stretch denim jeans, the connectors in your smart phone, or your baby s ultra-absorbent diapers but it makes them all. And Koch s Market-Based Management(r) system is what drives these innovations and many more. Based on five decades of interdisciplinary studies, experimental discovery, and practical implementation across Koch businesses worldwide, the core objective of MBM is to generate "good" profit. Good profit results from products and services that customers vote for freely with their dollars, products that improve people s lives. It results from a culture where employees are empowered to act entrepreneurially to discover customers preferences and the best ways to satisfy them. Good profit is what follows when "long-term value is created for customers, employees, shareholders, and society. " Here, drawing on revealing, honest, and previously untold stories from his nearly six decades in business, Koch walks the reader through the five dimensions of MBM to show how to apply its framework to generate more good profit in any business, industry, or organization of any size. Readers will learn how to: . Craft a vision for how to thrive in spite of increasingly rapid disruption . Select and retain a workforce possessing both virtue and talent . Create an environment of knowledge sharing that prizes respectful challenges from everyone at every level . Award employees with ownership and decision rights based on their proven contributions, not job title . Motivate all employees to maximize their contributions by structuring incentives so compensation is limited only by the value they create A must-read for any leader, entrepreneur, or student, as well as anyone who wants a more civil, fair, and prosperous society, "Good Profit" is destined to rank as one of the greatest management books of all time."
The B Corp Handbook, Second Edition by 
The Overworked Consumer by 
From Main Street to Mall by
The geography of American retail has changed dramatically since the first luxurious department stores sprang up in nineteenth-century cities. Introducing light, color, and music to dry-goods emporia, these "palaces of consumption" transformed mere trade into occasions for pleasure and spectacle. Through the early twentieth century, department stores remained centers of social activity in local communities. But after World War II, suburban growth and the ubiquity of automobiles shifted the seat of economic prosperity to malls and shopping centers. The subsequent rise of discount big-box stores and electronic shopping accelerated the pace at which local department stores were shuttered or absorbed by national chains. But as the outpouring of nostalgia for lost downtown stores and historic shopping districts would indicate, these vibrant social institutions were intimately connected to American political, cultural, and economic identities. The first national study of the department store industry, From Main Street to Mall traces the changing economic and political contexts that transformed the American shopping experience in the twentieth century. With careful attention to small-town stores as well as glamorous landmarks such as Marshall Field's in Chicago and Wanamaker's in Philadelphia, historian Vicki Howard offers a comprehensive account of the uneven trajectory that brought about the loss of locally identified department store firms and the rise of national chains like Macy's and J. C. Penney. She draws on a wealth of primary source evidence to demonstrate how the decisions of consumers, government policy makers, and department store industry leaders culminated in today's Wal-Mart world. Richly illustrated with archival photographs of the nation's beloved downtown business centers, From Main Street to Mall shows that department stores were more than just places to shop.
