Marketing

Marketing reinvented

To respond to the challenges facing society today, marketing must reinvent itself. That’s why Audencia Business School’s Marketing Department conducts research on alternative consumption patterns, new forms of consumer engagement, new relationships between consumers and markets, reappropriation of market logic and new business models – as well as the resulting questions about social responsibility.

Our EducAlim research-action project – initiated in 2010 and financed with public and funds through the Ministry of Agriculture and Fleury-Michon via the Audencia Foundation – is just one example of our research on food consumption practices.

Finally, for 20 years, the team of the In Situ Research Center, which has recently become "In Situ Lab", has been carrying out experimental work in the field of distribution within two dedicated laboratories, one physical and one virtual, on three major themes: effects of marketing and retail levers, (price, promotion-price, assortment, store brand, merchandising, ...) on the perceptions and behaviors of consumers in stores; background and customer consequences of the image of prices, responsible brands, and the proximity of sales outlets and signs; valorization of in-store "responsible" offers (fair trade products, local and regional products, "without" products, deformed fruits and vegetables) and their impact on the well-being of consumers. The team is also planning to transfer its expertise to the health sector (patient care path).

EXPERTISES

We create and apply knowledge on how consumers, individuals and groups interact with companies, brands, technologies, and other public and private organizations. To do so, we consider the role of emotions, cultural values, social interactions, and social norms on their consumption behaviors. We publish impactful research in top-tier journals and teach state-of-the-art knowledge on how to understand consumer behavior that goes beyond the utilitarian view and embraces a humanistic perspective of marketing.

Acknowledging that societal changes drive how marketing actions are designed, that marketing impacts society both positively and negatively, we aim to capture this complexity through our teaching and research. We aim to understand the long-term and systemic changes triggered by current marketing practices and foster the habit of questioning the prevailing paradigm before using these tools. In order to drive change, we question prevailing paradigms and study, with our students and in our research, how marketing (and notably its tools and processes) can help develop and promote consumption and productions patterns in line with social and ecological trends. We develop this critical thinking with an innovative teaching approach in our dedicated school of ecological and social transition, Gaïa by Audencia (include the link here), and also in all other Audencia programs. 

We use advanced methodologies and analytics to generate insights into customer and company behavior, especially in digital settings, to improve marketing decision effectiveness. Our expertise includes online user experience, digital advertising, social media marketing, technology adoption, mobile marketing, predictive customer analytics through machine learning and AI, as well as user and data privacy and the usages and abuses that result from it. Our research and practice-based knowledge are disseminated through programs at Bachelor, Masters, and Executive level, including the BBA Big Data and Management and the MS Digital Strategy & Data Marketing.

We develop a learning-by-doing pedagogy and research at the forefront of the latest innovations in the retail field.  We explore more sustainable practices that we test in our innovative and up-to-date immersive experimental stores (including the physical and virtual environments of the IN SITU LAB). Our teaching and research include rethinking retailing strategies at the point of sale (including visual merchandising) and online with e-commerce, thus focusing on omnichannel customer journeys.  

Team

Céline Del Bucchia

Head of department

Linda Lemarié

Head of research affairs