Learning Why We Buy

Abstract

Marketing educators have long recognized the value of engendering students’ deep learning of course content via experiential pedagogies. In this article, the authors describe a semester-long, team-based retail audit project that is structured to elicit active student engagement with consumer behavior course material via concrete, hands-on, real-world experience. For the project, students form teams to organize and conduct an observational audit of a live retail setting. In the process of completing the project, students engage with course content on their own, with their team members, and importantly, within a focal store environment, thus experiencing for themselves the effects of that content on their own shopping behavior, as well as that of others. Compelled by the project’s active pedagogy to engage in discovery, students learn not only the “what” and “why” of marketing concepts, strategies, and techniques but also “how to” implement them. Anchored in conceptual perspectives relevant to the project, the article explains the components and structure of the project and explicates its key benefits with an emphasis on the students’ perspectives. The article includes results of qualitative and quantitative analyses that support the effectiveness of the project and suggests future directions for extending pedagogical research in this area.