UNELife Director David Schmude shares his real-world experience to students in MM311 Consumer Behaviour in one of the final lectures for the trimester.

Mr David Schmude, Director of UNELife and Mr Ben Bible, Manager Communications & Student Experience, UNELife were surprise speakers to our MM311 Consumer Behaviour lecture last week in LT2.

Dr Sujana Adapa, unit co-ordinator, shared her impressions of this guest lecture experience:

“To start off, David and Ben presented information about the 16 businesses under the UNELife portfolio with the students. David and Ben also shared insights on customer acquisition and management for UNELife and to the individual businesses of UNELife. The discussion included specific marketing strategies that both develop for UNELife in their roles to match and predict the behavioural changes of existing and new customers. The alignment of marketing strategies with the changing consumer behaviour included the effective management of various external social factors and internal psychological factors. The resulting changes in the management of marketing mix elements – product, price, place and promotion are also highlighted.

Additionally David and Ben presented to the third year marketing students’ information related to paid job opportunities available at UNELife. Students are encouraged to apply the theoretical knowledge gained through Consumer Behaviour unit throughout the trimester to work/develop a market research project to identify community segments and evaluate the identified segments interests towards various products and/or services offered by UNELife.”

Further discussions with our MM311 students revealed just how much students appreciated the opportunity for real-world experience suggested by the team, and are eager to apply the theoretical knowledge gained through formal learning to the real industry.

Dr Adapa has developed assignments in the past (for MM316 Strategic Marketing unit) including UNELife and SportUNE in her units and worked collaboratively with David. She is excited for our students to see how they apply the knowledge gained to more realistic situations.