Lebanon Valley College recently added Consumer and User Behavior, or CUBE, as a minor course of study.
The minor is designed to equip students with the skillset to analyze the factors that influence consumers’ decisions, providing essential insights into markets, products, and user experiences.
The college’s psychology, digital communications and accounting, business and economics departments worked together to create the multi-disciplinary program.
Jeff Ritchie, chair of LVC’s department of design, media, & technology, said although the minor itself is brand new, department chairs and professors have talked about it for some time.
“Historically we’ve long talked about teaching qualitative research to students. We’ve also had a number of communications students who’ve seen value in taking classes in marketing and psychology,” he explained. “I got together with the psychology, marketing and business departments to talk about how we could look at offering focusing on consumer and user behavior. What we came up with is a blend of how different departments look at users and consumers.”
Students interested in the CUBE minor must take seven classes to complete it.
“Each of these courses is already in our course catalog, so we didn’t have to create anything new course-wise,” Ritchie said.
The courses include two psychology classes — Readings in Psychology and Research Methods in Psychology; two marketing classes — Principles in Marketing and Consumer and Organizational Buying Behavior (or Behavioral Economics); two digital communications classes — Usability Design and Testing, and Advanced Usability, and one of three quantitative courses — Introduction to Business Analytics, Statistics and Data Analysis or Elementary Statistics.
For students, the CUBE minor is a value-added opportunity, said Ritchie.
“When we considered adding this minor, we asked ourselves how we could give our students the skills to better navigate the job market. Since this minor provides students with an opportunity to acquire specialized skills in consumer and user research, and it expands their career opportunities; they can pursue research-focused and consumer behavior jobs,” he explained.
A September 2022 article posted on job search website Indeed.com, indicates that “understanding what influences the behavior of target consumers can help you improve a perception of a company and its offering. … Areas of interest include what consumers buy, the reasons for their purchases, and the location of their purchases. By studying these aspects of buyer behavior, researchers can also observe consumers’ emotional and psychological responses. This study also applies the theories of disciplines like psychology, economics, and biology.”
Last semester, Ritchie said, college Provost Susan Tammaro and then the curriculum committee approved the CUBE minor. It was then presented to faculty college-wide for a vote on offering it. Information about the minor is currently available on LVC’s website, but Ritchie said it will officially be added to the course catalog for the 2024-25 academic year.
“We do have a few students taking some of the courses right now in anticipation of declaring it as their minor. Some students are very excited; they see it as a way of honing their professional skills. We’ve had students tell us they want to learn about the different types of research,” he said.
“If we can help one student a year with this new minor, I’m happy.”
Editor’s note: This article was updated after publication to clarify a reference to qualitative research.
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