Create a consumer diary by chronicling three purchases from three different retailers (e.g. a take-away coffee from a local café, or a downloaded video from iTunes).
• For each purchase, note your perception of the retailer and of the service and/or product offered (use theory on perception to frame your discussion).
• What influenced your decision-making process? (Consider your needs, motivation, and personality coupled with the theoretical model on decision-making.)
• Did family, social pressure, culture, stimuli (advertising, etc.), customer service, word-of-mouth and country-of-origin play a role in your decision-making?
• Considering each purchase, make recommendations that you believe would increase consumer quality perceptions, satisfaction, trust, and consumer retention. (Hint: consumer loyalty.) Base your recommendations on your analysis and on the consumer behaviour literature.
• Base all of your answers on consumer behaviour theoretical frameworks and ensure that your recommendations are ethical.
Requirements
The required word length for this report is 3000 words (plus/minus 10% tolerance).
In terms of structure, presentation and style you are normally required to use:
• AIB standard report format. For this assessment, an executive summary and conclusion section are not required.
• AIB-preferred Microsoft Word settings.
• author-date style referencing (which includes in-text citations and a reference list). These requirements are listed in the AIB style guide.
• Reference lists for AIB assessments normally contain the following number of relevant references from different sources: 6–12 (for MBA assessments).
• All references must be from credible sources such as books, industry-related journals, magazines, company documents and recent academic articles.
• Your grade will be adversely affected if your assessment contains no/poor citations and/or reference list and if your assessment word length is beyond the allowed tolerance level (see the Assessment Policy available on the AIB website).
