Calibrating the Self: Building Self-Awareness and Encouraging Self-Reflection in Understanding Consumer Behavior

One of the key challenges marketers face today is to build awareness against the tendency of overconfidence that can hamper gaining and leveraging customer insights. This article presents a pedagogical innovation that allows students to become more aware and reflective of themselves as consumers while exposing them to diversity of consumer behavior. The activity reveals sociocultural, psychological and behavioral influences on one’s consumer behavior. Students are encouraged to reflect upon how their consumer selves may influence their judgments as future marketers.