Changing Consumer Behaviour Challenge—- write a well-developed, blog-post (maximum of 750 words)

Throughout your challenge journey, you will analyse the consumer behaviour concepts we are discussing in class as they are revealed through your experiences. You will critically reflect on your successes and struggles to learn more about yourself, others, and consumer behaviour concepts. This in-depth reflection is the cornerstone of the project.

Step 1: Pick Your Challenge. Identify an aspect of your consumer behaviour that you would like to change or something new you would like to try for a sustained timeframe. Set specific goals. Determine the timeframe (duration) of your challenge. If needed, specify any exceptions that allow you to modify your challenge for special circumstances.

Please ensure that you pick a challenge that 1] is consumer-relevant and involves consumption of some type of offering (e.g. a product, service, idea, experience, etc. see Week 1); either as the goal itself or to support the goal. For example, if you choose an exercise or fitness challenge you should consider how this goal could be supported by acts of consumption (e.g. joining the gym, watching exercise videos on You Tube; using a fitness app etc.); 2] pick a challenge that you actually care about and that is personally relevant and meaningful to you and your life and 3] DO NOT pick a challenge that is related to your group project. E.g. if you are in Group 1 (Young Adulthood Obesity), don’t choose a dieting or exercise challenge. The challenge you choose must be different to the problem assigned for your group assignment. 4] set a clear timeframe for your challenge e.g. “I will pursue the goal for 7 days commencing the 12th September through to the 19th September”, the timeframe MUST take place during Semester and you should only commence your challenge after you have submitted it via Step 2 below 5] and finally, be sure that the consumer behaviour change you select for yourself is safe, challenging, authentic and motivational for you. If you need some extra inspiration, check out this link: https://highexistence.com/30-challenges-for-30-day… to an external site.

IMPORTANT: You should NOT be completing your group assignment topic as a CCBC challenge. For example, if you are in the ‘rising obesity’ group, you should not be examining rising obesity as your challenge and you should not be completing a dieting/exercise goal if you are in that group.

If you are NOT in the rising young adulthood obesity group, you CAN choose to base your goal on one of the group topics that you are NOT in. For example, if you are NOT in the ‘rising obesity’ group, you CAN ofcourse still choose a goal of reducing YOUR OWN sugar intake over a set timeframe because you would like to lose weight and lead a healthier lifestyle. That is OK, because it is a personal goal you have set for yourself. But what you shouldn’t do is write a general essay about how people in Australian society should reduce their sugar intake due to rising obesity as that is not a personal goal. In other words, you should not be writing an essay about the problem of obesity in Australia in general or how people should try to lose weight etc; instead, you need to blog about your OWN experience trying to reduce your OWN sugar intake to live a healthier lifestyle or because you are worried about your OWN PERSONAL risk of obesity. The goal challenge you choose much be PERSONALLY relevant to you, as you are the one who will be enacting the goal and trying to complete it over the set timeframe.

Remember, the goal of this assessment is NOT to write a general essay about the phenomenon of rising young adulthood obesity (or any of the other group assignment topics e.g. DO NOT WRITE a general essay about the supermarket shoplifting, or plastics pollution or gender inequality etc.) for this assessment. Instead the aim of CCBC assessment it is to SET A PERSONAL GOAL for yourself (e.g. “I want to cut back on my social media usage” or “I want to save more money”, or “I want to donate more to charity”, or “I want to lose 5kg…”), and to blog about YOUR OWN personal experience enacting this challenge goal over a set period of time (e.g. “I will give myself 4 weeks to complete this challenge, starting on the Xth of October and finishing on the Xth of November”) using the CB knowledge you have attained.

Step 2: Submit Your Challenge Topic in Advance. You must submit your chosen challenge topic to your instructor in advance (i.e. BEFORE you start your challenge). Please click hereLinks to an external site. (the link will open in Week 5 on the 29th August 2023) to submit your challenge topic by the 11th September, 2023 by 5pm. IMPORTANT: please take a DATED SCREENSHOT of your submitted challenge as; 1] it will not be possible to access this information after you have submitted your challenge and 2] you must include the DATED SCREENSHOT in the APPENDIX of your final submission. You can CHANGE your challenge topic up until this date, by simply resubmitting another topic via the link. The last time-stamped submission will be counted as your challenge topic. You should not change topics AFTER this date. If there is a serious problem or concern about your submitted topic AFTER the topic submission date, please contact the UOS Co-Ordinator.

Step 3: Document Your Challenge Along the Way. Throughout your challenge, keep a daily journal or log. Include reflections about your experiences; detailed observations about your behaviour, influences, growth, and learning. Include both personal reflections and course concept reflections in your notes. Be sure to note each time you recognize that consumer behaviour concepts are playing a role in your challenge experience. Document your reflections on how your challenge has increased your understanding of these course concepts and how it has affected you. Include a copy of your daily journal/log in your final CCBC submission. The daily journal/log will NOT be included in the word limit. You are welcome to include a screenshot or photo of the KEY point(s) from your daily journal/log as part of your blog post (see below), if you think it will be informative in highlighting or explaining your journey experience.

Step 4: Blog Your Challenge. Select an appropriate blog site to which you could (but are not required to) post your blog. In other words, you do not need to actually publish your blog post on a real blog site, you only need to create a mock-up of what the blog post would actually look like if it were to be posted on the identified blog site. Using your daily journal or log as inspiration, write a well-developed, blog-post (maximum of 750 words) targeted for the specific audience of the blog site you selected in which you critically analyse your challenge using relevant and well-linked consumer behaviour concepts. Be sure to include specific CB course concepts and critically and thoughtfully demonstrate how they relate to your challenge experience. For example: Which internal influences on consumer behaviour (e.g., perception, motivation, personality, social influences etc.) have had the biggest effect on your challenge experience? What role have those concepts played? Give specific examples. Select one experience from your challenge that went well and another that did not go well. What did you learn about yourself from each? If you were to give someone two pieces of life advice based on what you have learned from your challenge, what would you say? Please note that you can design and create the layout for your blog post using any design program you like, but you must convert your mocked-up blog post to a .pdf file for submission.

It is also important to note that the ‘result’ of your challenge and whether you accomplish the final set goal or not, does not matter. So if you choose a healthy eating challenge with a goal to lose 5kg and you lose 3kg, this will not reduce your marks. Similarly if you plan to lose 5kg but end up losing 7kg this will not increase your marks. What we are looking for is an honest reflection of your challenge journey (including the the ‘ups’ and ‘downs’ such as obstacles and hurdles you faced) and the connection to relevant CB theory and concepts as per the guidelines above. Be raw, truthful and open in documenting your challenge highs and lows. Design a blog post that is informative, creative and INSPIRING! If someone facing the same challenge were to read your blog post, would they be motivated and inspired by your journey?

Submission Information

There are NO font or style specifications. Ensure you include a reference list for cited sources at the bottom of your blog as per the Business School (APA 7th Edition) referencing guidelines. You can include text, images, photos, drawings, statistics, graphs, etc. in your blog post to help bring your blog to life and to demonstrate the links to CB theory and concepts. Please note that the daily journal/log and figures/tables/images/graphs/drawings and Reference List and Cover Page and APPENDIX and Reference List, do NOT count towards the 750 word count. Ensure you include a DATED SCREENSHOT of the challenge you submitted in your CCBC document (NOT included in word limit either). You can design and create the layout for your blog post using ANY program you like, but you must convert the “mocked-up” blog post to a .pdf file for submission.

DON’T FORGET TO REFERENCE: In terms of referencing, you should include a citation and reference when you are directly referring to someone’s ideas or theories, or when you are summarizing another person/source’s words or ideas without changing the meaning or providing an interpretation in your own words. Therefore, you would reference if the phrase, concept, image or idea is attributable to someone else’s ideas (not your own), so that we know where the idea came from. A reference list for cited sources can be included at the end of your CCBC document as per the Business School (APA 7th Edition) referencing guidelines. Here is a handy guide to the library’s APA 7th Edition referencing guide: https://libguides.library.usyd.edu.au/c.php?g=5082…

**IMPORTANT**: Your CCBC submission should be formatted in the following order; 1] include a Cover Page Download Cover Pageas a SEPERATE file 2] a DATED SCREENSHOT of the challenge you submitted (not included in word limit), 3] mock-up of your “blog post” (max. 750 words for main body of the text, not including any figures/tables/images/graphs/drawings inserted into the main body of the text) 4] include copy of your daily journal or log (not included in word limit), 5] Appendix (not included in word limit), 6] Reference List (not included in word limit). Please note points 2] through to 6] can be included in the same file. So all together, you should upload 2 separate files; one for the coversheet, and one for all the other parts.