MARK 1008: Consumer behaviour
1. What you need to know
This page will assist you to find scholarly information and other resources to support your assessments.
Please see your Course Outline and learnonline site for the full assessment details.
2. Plan your search
Identify the keywords in the question
Once you have identified your keywords, you can consider alternative keywords.
Example:
| Alternative keywords for 'purchaser' | Alternative keywords for 'buyer behaviour' |
| customer | purchasing behaviour |
| consumer | consumer experience |
| shopper | customer habit |
Connect your keywords together
Once you have identified your keywords and found alternative keywords, you need to connect these to put your search together.
Use the following operators (also known as Booleans or connectors) to indicate how you want to search for your keywords:
- OR: connect similar keywords, e.g.: customer OR consumer
- AND: connect different keywords, e.g.: consumer AND brand
- "Quotation marks": Keeping phrases together, e.g.: "buyer behaviour"
- (Brackets): Group keywords and their alternatives together, e.g.: (customer OR consumer OR purchaser)
For example, a search in the Library Collection for: ("consumer experience") AND ("sensory marketing" OR multisensory)
In your results page, use refine my results on the right-hand side of the page to filter your results by date, peer reviewed, etc.
For more tips on how to plan your search, please review these links:
- How to plan your search (PDF, 276 KB)This resource explains how to combine and connect search terms using OR, AND, NOT.
- Plan your search (video, 2 min 26 sec)This video explains how to plan your search.
3. Recommended databases
An essential database, Business Source Ultimate includes information covering all areas of business including marketing, industry reports, market research reports, company profiles, and much more.
Below is an example search in the database for: ("consumer behaviour" OR "purchasing habits") AND ("sensory marketing" OR multisensory)
Note: You must be logged in to access resources in Business Source Ultimate.
Passport is a global market research database which provides detailed data and insight into consumer and industrial markets and analysis on future trends.
On the search page, you can search for industry, category and geographical data. Remember when searching for a particular product to think about what industry it may be classified into.
Below is an example search of a country report in Passport:
- IBISWorldContains detailed reports analysing selected Australian industry sectors.
- WARCWARC is an online service offering the best marketing and advertising practice, evidence and insights from the world's leading brands.
- StatistaStatista provides information on market data, market research, and market studies. it also includes company and brand reports and industry reports.
- D&B HooversIncludes access to industry and market research reports, both Australian and Global. Also includes SWOT Analysis reports for the top 5,000 global companies.
- Emerald InsightEmerald Insight currently provides online access to 300 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products such as case studies and more.
Explore the Find Information tab in the Marketing Guide for more suggestions of databases and key resources.
4. Scholarly sources
For your assignment you are expected to use scholarly sources, sometimes referred to as peer reviewed.
Peer review is one accepted measure of quality. So, if you are unsure about the quality of an article, checking whether the journal it was published in is peer reviewed is a good place to start. If the journal is peer reviewed, you can be confident that the article is scholarly.
Watch the video below to learn about scholarly sources (2 min 22 sec)
- Find scholarly sources (PDF, 272 KB)This document will show you how to identify and find scholarly and peer reviewed articles.
5. Report writing
Once you have all your information it is time to put everything together. This video on report writing (2 min 53 sec) will give you some tips:
- Study help: Writing reportsStudy Help is an online hub packed with study resources, including instructions for writing reports and report examples.
6. Executive summary
An executive summary is often one of the most read parts of a report.
- It is a brief summary of the overall report.
- It appears at the start of the report; however, it should be written last, once the report has been finished.
- It needs to be concise, providing a commentary on the main points of the report.
Watch LinkedIn Learning videos for tips on writing an executive summary.
Note: You will need to login using your UniSA credentials to view videos on LinkedIn.
7. Referencing
- Referencing websiteResources on different referencing styles. Find examples of in-text citations and references for diverse formats including articles, books and book chapters, websites and more.
Note: Always check your Course Outline or LearnOnline site for the referencing style required for your course.
Managing your references
What do you do with all those references you have found? You can use a bibliographic management software to store, organise, and cite your references.
There are many free systems available. The Library supports the bibliographic management tool EndNote. EndNote automates citing your references and allows you to create and organise a library of references. For more information and to download the software, check out the EndNote Guide: