Consumption Values and the Choice of Marketing Electives: Treating Students Like Customers

Abstract

In all of academe, educators in marketing should be best suited to a customer orientation. Customer-oriented marketing education might include an effort to better understand the values students derive from the services they receive, in order to aid in the diagnosis of choice behavior. The Theory of Consumption Values is presented as a conceptual framework to aid in understanding the values considered by students when evaluating course choices. A demonstration of the use of this theory to diagnose such choices is then provided. Results indicate that, among five specific consumption values (Conditional, Emotional, Epistemic, Functional, and Social), the choice of a course in customer behavior is predominantly driven by the desire for variety (the Epistemic value) and scheduling imperatives (the Conditional value).