Course Goal:  Enable students to apply techniques and thinking from the social sciences in order to become more creative, distinctive, and competitive marketers.

Course Perspective and Content: Marketers have increasingly mined social sciences such as anthropology, psychology, and sociology to enhance their customer understanding. This course takes an in-depth look at applying social science to generate insights about consumers for marketing strategies in a qualitative marketing research context.  We will look at how anthropological ideas about ritual, meaning making, social relationships, beliefs, cultural codes, gift giving, and tribes can inspire marketing strategies and advertising; the value of ethnography, an observational method invented by anthropologists, for consumer understanding and UX; ways that focus groups and deep probing one-on-one interviews borrow from psychology, anthropology and sociology to inform marketing initiatives; and draw on phenomenology and semiotics.

Robert Morais

Lecturer in Business

Robert J. Morais is a business anthropologist with experience in advertising and market research, and a Lecturer at Columbia Business School. He began his career at Grey Advertising and spent 25 years with advertising agencies, rising to Chief Strategic Officer, and then served for 11 years as a Principal at market research firm Weinman Schnee Morais. He has worked with Procter & Gamble, GlaxoSmithKline...

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