Knowledge about behavior of consumers and organizational buyers is fundamental for the development of marketing strategies. Companies achieve competitive advantages provided they can satisfy the needs of their consumers better than their competitors, or are able to have an impact on buyer behavior along with their goals. Furthermore, the behavioral foundations of consumer behavior are important aspects for understanding marketing problems more thoroughly and developing practical skills and applications in order to solve those problems. Additionally, these foundations are important for being able to understand scientific publications within the field. The course also covers important aspects of marketing communication strongly related to consumer behavior as both topics are based on the same foundations in behavioral science. Furthermore, marketing communication provides fundamental knowledge for a variety of careers in the communication and advertising industry that attract quite a lot of students specializing in marketing. Providing a broad theoretical overview is the most important learning target of the course. Of course, the practicalrelevance to marketing problems complements this overview throughout the whole course.

• Individual determinants of buying processes (knowledge,information processing, learning, goals, emotions, attitudes, involvement, personal characteristics)
• Development of needs
• Typologies of buying decisions
• Buying processes and after purchase behavior
• Economic determinants, consumer policy, social determinants
• Impact of culture, international marketing
• Organizational buying behavior (business types, buying center, business relationships)
• Postmodern consumer research
• Buyer behavior on the internet
• Communication process models (e.g., elaboration likelihood model)
• Behavioral foundations of communication strategies