Unit Synopsis
Consumption is a universal phenomenon of human society, and understanding consumer behaviour is fundamentally critical to marketers and policymakers. This unit explores the science of consumer behaviour, an interdisciplinary field that integrates knowledge and discovery from marketing, psychology, anthropology, sociology, demography, and economics. In this unit you will examine models and frameworks of consumer decision making, as well as the impacts of internal and external factors on thoughts, feelings, and actions of consumers. Furthermore, you will learn to implement consumer behaviour principles to facilitate the development of successful marketing campaigns.
Details
| Level | Postgraduate |
|---|---|
| Unit Level | 9 |
| Credit Points | 6 |
| Student Contribution Band | SCA Band 4 |
| Fraction of Full-Time Student Load | 0.125 |
| Pre-requisites or Co-requisites |
Prerequisite: MRKT20052. Important note: Students enrolled in a subsequent unit who failed their pre-requisite unit, should drop the subsequent unit before the census date or within 10 working days of Fail grade notification. Students who do not drop the unit in this timeframe cannot later drop the unit without academic and financial liability. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework). |
| Class Timetable | View Unit Timetable |
| Residential School | No Residential School |
Unit Availabilities from Term 1 - 2026
Term 1 - 2026 Profile
Attendance Requirements
All on-campus students are expected to attend scheduled classes - in some units, these classes are identified as a mandatory (pass/fail) component and attendance is compulsory. International students, on a student visa, must maintain a full time study load and meet both attendance and academic progress requirements in each study period (satisfactory attendance for International students is defined as maintaining at least an 80% attendance record).
Recommended Student Time Commitment
Each 6-credit Postgraduate unit at CQUniversity requires an overall time commitment of an average of 12.5 hours of study per week, making a total of 150 hours for the unit.
Assessment Tasks
| Assessment Task | Weighting |
|---|---|
| 1. Presentation | 40% |
| 2. Written Assessment | 60% |
This is a graded unit: your overall grade will be calculated from the marks or grades for each assessment task, based on the relative weightings shown in the table above. You must obtain an overall mark for the unit of at least 50%, or an overall grade of ‘pass’ in order to pass the unit. If any ‘pass/fail’ tasks are shown in the table above they must also be completed successfully (‘pass’ grade). You must also meet any minimum mark requirements specified for a particular assessment task, as detailed in the ‘assessment task’ section (note that in some instances, the minimum mark for a task may be greater than 50%).
Past Exams
All University policies are available on the Policy web site, however you may wish to directly view the following policies below.
This list is not an exhaustive list of all University policies. The full list of policies are available on the Policy web site .
Term 1 - 2025 : The overall satisfaction for students in the last offering of this course was 75.00% (`Agree` and `Strongly Agree` responses), based on a 13.33% response rate.
Feedback, Recommendations and Responses
Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.
Source: Student feedback.
Students would desire to engage in activities where they can be guided to apply and analyse the concepts and theories.
The teaching staff in the future offerings of this unit will continue to provide students with the opportunities to participate in interesting and practical activities that would benefit their learning and understanding of consumer behaviour relevant concepts and theories.
This recommendation has been implemented.
Source: Staff self-reflection.
Consumer behaviour in the digital contexts has emerged as a valuable area that would benefit students' growth and development, and enhance their future employability.
The teaching staff in the future offerings of this unit will embed to the learning and teaching materials for this unit useful examples, cases, or other resources related to consumer behaviour in the digital contexts.
This recommendation has been implemented.
Source: Student feedback.
Positive student evaluation/comment about clear unit requirements, useful learning materials, and staff's good practice in encouraging students to interact.
The teaching staff in the future offerings of this unit will be encouraged to keep providing students clear unit requirements, keep utilising high-quality learning resources that benefit students in their consolidation of consumer behaviour relevant concepts or theories, and keep encouraging students to interact among themselves and with teaching staff during the learning and teaching related activities.
In Progress
Source: Student feedback and staff self-reflection.
There is a need to make improvement on this unit, particularly in terms of providing useful assessment feedback so that students can learn from their assessments and gain beneficial knowledge/skills from the feedback.
The teaching staff in the future offerings of this unit will be encouraged to pay attention to the quality of assessment feedback during the assessment marking/moderation process, and ensure the assessment feedback is educational as well as can enhance students' knowledge/skills.
In Progress
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- Evaluate the concepts and models pertinent to phenomena associated with consumer behaviour or consumer decision making
- Analyse the influences of internal or external factors on consumer behaviour or consumer decision making
- Use consumer behaviour principles to solve marketing problems and provide pragmatic solutions
- Derive contemporary trends in consumer behaviour theories and applications.
| Assessment Tasks | Learning Outcomes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
| 1 - Presentation | • | • | • | • |
| 2 - Written Assessment | • | • | • | • |
| Graduate Attributes | Learning Outcomes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
| 1 - Knowledge | • | • | ||
| 2 - Communication | • | • | • | • |
| 3 - Cognitive, technical and creative skills | • | • | • | |
| 4 - Research | • | • | • | |
| Assessment Tasks | Graduate Attributes | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 8 | |