In her graduate-level marketing class on Consumer Behavior, Dr. Stacy L. Wood had been teaching her students that most of our daily consumer decisions are made in less than a minute, based on information that we process quickly.
After watching with dismay the devastation that Hurricane Katrina rained on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, Wood changed her lesson plan last week. The result? Her 34 students learned how marketing “cues” really work, and in little less than an hour, the students raised more than $1,600 for hurricane relief.
“It was wonderful to show students that education really works, and not only does it work, but it can be used for good,” said Wood, an associate professor of marketing.
When the class members arrived, Wood broke them into nine teams of four, and equipped each team with a piece of poster board, a marker, and a collection bucket. Her instruction was simply that they had a class period (1 hour and 15 minutes) to raise money for the Red Cross hurricane relief effort by applying the theories they had learned to enhance potential donors’ “impulse to give.”
The teams crafted their strategies and fanned out across campus and downtown Columbia. The team that ended up collecting the most money designed an effective sign that had two crucial elements: it featured a large photograph of the flooded streets with the word “devastation” prominently displayed, and it used the Red Cross logo to prompt thoughts of charity and relief.
These signals, said Wood, “cued donors both that the situation was unusually dire and that relief was possible.”
Katherine Blough’s team, which ended up collecting the most money, came up with the idea of cutting their poster board in half and splitting into two groups, thereby “covering twice the territory.” Her team garnered both large donations and small. “It was really heartwarming the way people gave,” said Blough, a second-year IMBA (International Master of Business Administration) student. “Janitors gave money, everyone wanted to give. Some people said, ‘I would like to help, but I don’t have much.’ I said, ‘Well, have you got a quarter? There, you helped.’”
Her team members were Thibaud Boucharlat, Liu Bing, and Dave Roberts.
Woods expected each team to raise perhaps a maximum of $50. Instead, they came back with $1,647 in cash and a bit more in pledges. Woods said she was “floored” with the amount they raised.
“The students learned to apply their theoretical knowledge to a practical situation, and in a way that helped people in need,” said Wood. “But the best lesson they learned is about the generosity of the USC and Columbia community.”
In recognition of the students’ academic and outreach efforts, Dean Joel A. Smith III contributed an additional $500 to the funds they raised for the Red Cross.