Marketing and (Anti-)Consumerism / Games Marketers Play

Games Marketers Play, Winter 2011

Faculty: David Shaw,  international business, entrepreneurship, strategic management

Coordinator: David Shaw

Major areas of study include business, marketing, management, psychology, sociology and economics.

Class Standing: Sophomores to Seniors.

Fields of Study: Business and Management, Communications, Economics, Psychology

This quarter-long program will examine the art and science of marketing, as reflected in the theories, models and techniques employed in the marketing discipline today. While this program builds on concepts and perspectives explored in the fall program Marketing and (Anti-) Consumerism, it can safely be taken as an independent program, especially by more advanced or experienced students.

The focus of this program is on marketing as a contemporary, real-world practice, including the analytical tools and techniques used by professionals in the field. The primary theme will be segmentation, targeting and differentiation strategies for organizations, for-profit or non-profit, with an overview of topics related to product, distribution, communications and pricing issues.

Students will participate in a complex interactive team-based simulation, which will also serve as an experiential laboratory for students to apply their concepts and tactics to a simulated marketplace under competitive conditions. Students will also learn how to prepare and update their written marketing plans for the product or service they are marketing in the simulated environment.

Credits: 12 or 16 per quarter

Enrollment: 23

Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in business, marketing, management, psychology, economics and consumer studies.

Planning Units: Politics, Behavior and Change, Sustainability and Justice

A similar program is expected to be offered in summer 2011

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Marketing and (Anti-)Consumerism, Fall 2010

Original Program Description (from the Evergreen Catalog, 16 credit hour version)

This quarter-long program is designed as to provide an introduction to and overview of the intersection of three related fields – consumerism, anti-consumerism and marketing, including classical, critical and multidisciplinary perspectives on the field of marketing as it reflects consumer and business participation and behavior in economic exchanges in the marketplace.

In the economic perspective, firms engage in various behaviors and efforts (which could include artifice, persuasion or other means) to influence consumer choice. Firms and consumers are said to be engaging in economic exchanges in pursuit of their own benefit, however calculated or construed.

This quarter-long program begins a two-quarter program sequence examining (1) interdisciplinary approaches to the study of consumer behavior, firm marketing behavior and their consequences, as well as (2) an introduction to the art and science of marketing, as reflected in the theories, models and techniques employed in the marketing discipline today.

In fall quarter, we will review the literature from marketing and related disciplines (e.g., economics, psychology, sociology) including classic, critical, practical and recent books, essays and studies, with an eye toward identifying the theories, models and perspectives that help illuminate real-world behavior by firms and consumers. While the primary focus will be on the behavior of marketing firms and consumers in their interdependent courtship of each other in the marketplace, positive and negative spillover effects (i.e., consequences, intentional or not) of these exchanges in the marketplace will also be examined.