Week 1. Introduction
Lecture 1.
Segmention:
- Geographical
- Demographic: gende000
- r, income, age. Identifying what the audience is and what is important to them
- Behavioral: tracking what people do on website, where they’re clicking on.
Bonuskaart is an example of tracking with kind of groceries people buy
- Psychometric
Interaction between economy, people and good/services
Consumer psychology: products <--> people
Focus for example on:
Product adoption:
- competition
- assisting consumers
- advertisement
- attention, memory
- application
Impact on people: the influence products has on people, products says something about
who you are.
Product use: more effective use (face-mask; how do you wear them in a good way), or
more sustainable use (throwing the face-mask away or re-use it)
Economic psychology: economy <--> people
Focus for example on:
Decision making
- (ir)rational
- value/utility
- risk/uncertaint
How makes economy makes people feel
- well-being
How this effects the economy
,Week 2. Prosocially consumers
Reading 1. Prosocial consumer behavior
Prosocial consumer behavior: refers to purchase behavior involving self-sacrifice for the
goods of others of society.
Consumer behavior is typically considered to be a self-interested pursuit. But sometimes
consumers purchase with the goal of benefitting others rather than just the self.
Altruism = the behavior without motives for self, you only show behavior to help others.
Self-interest and altruism are viewed as incompatible.
Prosocial behavior = the behavior that you will help others, with underlying self-interested
motives. For example; individuals consumers often donate publicly, post about their
donations on social media, and wear clothing and accessories that signal their generosity to
others.
Empathy = the ability to feel what other people feel, and to respond in an appropriate way
on those feelings.
Sympathy = the feeling towards someone, you want the other to feel happy and you
respond without empathy.
Consumers also sometimes give more when donating is difficult, or even physically painful,
due to the extra meaning and self-sacrifice that can be inferred from arduous donations.
Social norms serve as one influential signal of appropriate giving levels; when consumers
believe others give more, they give more as well. It can also works the other way; when
consumers learn that others have less than they anticipated, they adjust giving levels lower
to match the social norm.
An additional factor appears to be a donor’s sense that they have made a tangible impact.
For example; donors give significantly more when they receive details about what their
donations will accomplish, when their contribution helps a larger proportion of the problem it
will be more.
The identifiable victim effect is one result of people’s sensitivity to sympathy. Consumers
feel a stronger emotional conncection to a single, identified victim than they do to groups or
abstract statistics. Marketers fall prey to the ‘more is better’ heuristic and portray many
victims instead of one. The best pitch is usually one presenting a single, identifiable victim.
Charity partnerships can be a risky move for brands. If customers become skeptical that the
brand causes the partnership for their own benefit, there is great potential for reactance. A
,‘norm of self-interest’ which renders individuals suspicious of ulterior motives; this norm is
even stronger when judging companies, rather than individuals.
Reading 2. Prosocial behavior and reputation
One reason people engage in prosocial behavior is to reap the reputational benefits
associated with being seen as generous. But sometimes do-gooders are often met with
suspicion and are sometimes cast as unfair (distingenuous), or holier-than-thou hypocrites.
There isn’t a direct connection between doing a good deed and receiving credit for it,
observers care deeply about a prosocial actor’s underlying motives: did the actor really care
about helping others, or were they motivated by a desire to help themself.
The more actors are seen sacrificing when helping, the more favorably they are evaluated.
Also the longer someone is giving to charity, the more likely they are to spontaneously come
up with reasons that they are secretly self-interested. This motive cynicism is often
triggered when observers detect selfish incentives in an actor’s environment that could
account for their choice to do good, for example; when they receive a free gift after donating.
The easier it is to imagine an actor doing good in the absence of an incentive, the more
credit they receive.
Observer wiggle room: in the circumstances or cognitions around an actor’s good deeds to
allow bad-faith observers to levy reputational blows.
People have argued that all the emotional reasons for giving are self-gratifying, and
therefore ought to be met with suspicion. However laypeople hold a more positive view of
the role of emotions in prosocial behavior. The more a prosocial actor shows positive
emotions alongside doing good deeds (facial expressions, communicating emotions with
others) the more altruistic that actor is perceived to be. This is because emotions are seen
as a direct signal of an actor’s underlying feelings about their desire to help.
Self-promotion can increase or decrease perceptions of generosity. The less information
that observers have about a prosocial actor, or the more they have assumed that an actor is
tend to be selfish, the more self-promotion can help, because it causes the observer to
update their beliefs.
The more normative it is to brag about one’s good deeds, the more others might feel social
pressure to act in kind. What seems to matter most is whether an actor chose to do good at
all.
, Culture of giving: individuals who are talking about their good deeds might to encourage
others to join.
Giving pledge: a campaign that encourages billionaires to publicly pledge most of their
wealth to charity. In turn, those responding to such a challenge are given an excuse for
communicating their good deeds publicy.
Costly signaling theory: it is more praised when an average person is giving a little then
when a billionaire is donating 10.00,-.
Impact-insensitivity = observers give more cedit to those who donate goods, or volunteer
time rather than those who give money, as these seen to signal greater emotional
investment and communal intention.
Relation-specific obligations:
Prosocial actors are offered less credit when they donate to causes that benefit close others,
doing so is seen as relatively selfish compared to helping strangers. At the same time,
helping a stranger instead of helping a close other is seen as a violation of one’s
commitments and obligations, which can also damage one’s reputation.
Prosocial behavior is often considered supererogatory (good to do, but optional) rather than
obligatory. Strengthening norms around giving would enhance more social pressure to give
and so that do-gooders feel some sens of competition
Reading 3. Legitimization of education as a basis for social stratification
Westerns societies are more organised around the principle of meritocracy (a society where
the social-economic state of an individual is based on his/hers presentations.). It emphasizes
the centrality of education in this meritocratic ideal and how educational qualifications serve
as the basis for the distribution of status and symbolic power in society.
Subjective aspects of social status: individual’s personal perceptions of their social
standing, without objective social status such as work or income.
Social identity theory: individuals categorize themselves in different social groups to build
their own social identity.
Education is positively associated with subjective social status. The higher their educational
level. the higher people deem their social status to be. This correlation seems to be
uncontroversial; higher and lower educated people do not dffer strongly in their mostly
positive attitudes towards education as a basis for social inequality.
