Abstract:

This paper presents an in-class exercise with postgraduate students in Psychology ---currently in their master’s degree in Work, Organizational, and Personnel Psychology (WOP-P), an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Program at University of Valéncia (Spain)--. Within the subject Marketing (elective and outside their regular curricula as psychologists), a workshop is done with a guest speaker on the topic of Life Streaming Shopping (LSS). LSS is a new touchpoint between retailers and consumers, posted online, with a celebrity or animator, with the chance of active feedback with other consumers in real time. This new disruptive channel is a very good fieldwork to unveil psychological underpinnings of consumption experiences.
The workshop took place in 4 stages. First, the 8 students (co-authoring this paper) formed 4 groups and read 2 key academic papers on Perceived Value each. Second, the instructor and a guest speaker delivered a lecture on the latest developments on Perceived Value measurements and on Live Streaming Shopping (with examples or actual experiences). Third, students did homework in groups (in 2 groups of 4), sharing their readings, and each group wrote a report to determine the best model for measuring the Perceived Value of a Live Streaming Shopping experience. Forth, results were shared and discussed orally, and a synthesis was written on the whiteboard.
As students are also consumers, the workshop aimed at making students understand complex consumer behavior practices, by bridging the two disciplines (Marketing and Psychology). More precisely, with the in-class exercise on LSS, we were able to generate inductive knowledge by exploring areas of hybrid understanding, from a cross-disciplinary approach. Through their existing expertise on psychometrics and the knowledge provided by instructors on a key topic in the field of consumer behavior (Perceived Value), students discuss and elaborate on the best way to measure Perceived Value of a LSS Behavior.

The learning outcome of this exercise is twofold. First, conceptually, students have been able to apply their knowledge as psychologists on the factors affecting consumer behavior (internal such as personality and lifestyle and external such as culture and reference groups) with basic notions in Marketing (Consumer Value as multidimensional with functional, emotional, and social dimensions). Second, methodologically, they have applied their knowledge on psychometrics (measuring attitudinal-behavioral models) on a contemporary marketing marketplace (LSS), providing ideas for moderators in the LSS model (Technology Intelligence, Social Media Presence, Social Connectivity or Immediate Gratification).

Some feedback from students was collected in the written reflective statement they had to submit. The following aspects were reported (both positive and negative):
- The reading of methodological papers on measuring Perceived Value was interesting to discover how rigorous is Marketing as a discipline (in opposite to their previous opinion)
- Being just 8 students, they could easily organize themselves in groups and jointly benefit from the other group results orally in class, while the instructor and the guest speaker were “building” the model on the whiteboard.
- Inductively, the introspective look at their own behavior was difficult, as the LSS was a completely new practice for them.

Keywords:

Life Streaming Shopping, Workshop, Consumer Value Measurement, Psychology, Marketing.