Consumer Behaviour

This page is designed by Olivier Charbonneau, Senior Librarian for the Marketing department of JMSB, to support learning and classroom activities of students enrolled in MARK 305 Consumer Behaviour.

See also: Business communication, for a half hour video on searching for business information.

Quick access: remember to access the Library’s (1) Business Research Portal for the recommended business sources; use the (2) Ask-A-Librarian help desk; and the (3) citing business sources in APA format. In addition, you can access the Library’s guide on how to create an annotated bibliography.

PassPort by Euromonitor https://www.concordia.ca/library/guides/business/market-analysis.html

Vivintel https://www.concordia.ca/library/guides/business/market-analysis.html

More on consumer trends

Many people have a lot to say about consumer trends. What should you believe? What is true? Many students have difficulty differentiating conjecture, opinion, beliefs and facts. Some of these are rooted in our own biases, experiences or expectations. One thing is certain: you are called upon to think critically about the claims you are making. Thinking critically, in this case, means providing credible evidence about the claims you are making.

Credibility can be expressed in a variety of factors. Who is behind the claim? How have they arrived to their conclusion? What data or evidence did they analyse to make the claim? Do they describe their method, the limits of their analysis? Was it reviewed by experts? Do they stand to benefit from you believing their claim? Do you really want to base your project on some shoddy source gleaned from an underwhelming search on Google? Or from some AI generated text?

“If you are only using Google or Generative AI for this project, you will fail in achieving its learning objectives. “

To succeed in this project, you must eliminate opinions from facts and provide evidence from credible sources to support your claims about consumers.

Here is an example of a credible report with primary data from the Canadian Government: The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is a federal agency that regulates to our country’s media outlets, like TV or radio stations. They monitor market conditions of this sector to determine whether the policies that they enforce are useful. Because they are a government agency, they post this market research on the Internet for free.

CRTC’s Communications Market Reports https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/publications/reports/PolicyMonitoring/

In addition to government reports, to succeed in this project, you are expected to access and read market and industry research reports from the Library’s collection of databases BEFORE identifying the consumer trend for your project. Concordia University Library provides complementary (free!) access to reports used by professionals in your field. Librarians at Concordia evaluate these databases and select the one providing the best evidence.

Here are some recent books on the topic of consumer trends:

Powers, D. (2019). On trend : the business of forecasting the future. University of Illinois Press. Retrieved 2023, from https://concordiauniversity.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1121628104

Niosi, A. (2021). Introduction to Consumer Behaviour. BC Campus. Retrieved 2023, from https://opentextbc.ca/introconsumerbehaviour/

Tip: dig deeper with articles from trade news and scholarly sources

If you think you can do this in Google or Generative AI tools, you are wrong. You will need to cite at least half-a-dozen trade news or scholarly articles in your paper to write a decent paper. Good papers have much more than the minimal threshold. Yes, this means using library databases to locate articles, read and discuss them in your group and select the most salient elements for your report. If you do not engage with this task, you shouldn’t complain about your grade. Forget Google for this step, use ProQuest instead.

Search for articles in ProQuest Business Databases: https://www.concordia.ca/library/guides/business/business-articles.html

Search for companies (name of major players, brands, etc.), industry name or consumer trend concept. For example:

Consum* behavio* AND (canad* or Quebec*) AND <company/brand/topic>

Filter Source type for:

1. Trade journals: for industry news
2. Scholarly journals: for credible research

Select & export citations in .RIS format to Zotero or create bibliography. You can also use Eureka (local newspapers in French) or Factiva (worldwide trade journals).

Parting thoughts

You may have to loop through the tips provided above a few times if you discover new evidence. Creatively combine data and insight from multiple sources to support your claims. Use only the most credible and authentic sources. Go to the bottom of things: be weary of superficial & fallacious sources.

Remember, a successful project will have you answer clearly and concicely the following questions:

• Describe in your own words the consumer trend(s) you will discuss in your project: Canadian consumers are…
• What is(are) the source(s) of this(these) trend(s)? According to X, Canadian consumers are…
• What evidence do you bring forward to support your claim(s)?