New associate professor conducts research into price images
In September, Stephan Zielke was employed as an associate professor at the Department of Business Administration, where he will take a closer look at the thoughts and emotions of consumers in connection with supermarket prices.
2012.02.09 |
Stephan Zielke is an associate professor at the Department of Business Administration, Business and Social Sciences. Photo: Anne Shirin Ørberg
Is it possible to feel ashamed of buying cheap milk at a discount shop? Or feel angry due to high coffee prices? These are some of the questions that Stephan Zielke focuses his efforts on at his new office on Haslegårdsvej, where he conducts research into how consumers shape their perceptions of prices – so-called “price images”.
When prices evoke associations
- I’m very interested in the emotions that customers associate with prices in supermarkets, whether it is happiness, anger, shame or guilt. In addition, the causes they ascribe to high or low prices may also affect their shopping behaviour, says Stephan Zielke.
This area of research is especially relevant to discount shops, where the prices actually can be so low that it scares away the customers. This may be the case if the customers believe that the price indicates that the quality of the product is poor, or that the supplier has been subjected to exploitation, for instance if coffee farmers or dairy cows have been treated badly.
- It turns out that it is much more likely that people will buy their groceries in a discount shop if they attribute the low prices to efficient business models, such as a limited product range and minimal investment in shopfitting.
Therefore, Stephan Zielke believes that it would benefit the discount shops if they were to place more focus on conveying their efficient business models to the customers.
Appreciates the diversity of the department
The members of the Department of Business Administration come from different educational backgrounds, and Stephan Zielke believes that this can benefit the research:
- There are people with different backgrounds, such as psychology, statistics and economics, and with different nationalities. This not only creates a special composition of the department, but also a very international environment. Most of my research is about food issues, and there are a number of staff members at the department who work with topics related to food, and who will be able to provide me with various academic inputs, he says, referring to MAPP, Centre for Research on Customer Relations in the Food Sector, to which he was affiliated in January 2012.
From Germany to Denmark
The new associate professor comes from Germany, and it did not require thorough consideration to pull up sticks and move across the border:
- As a child, I spent many summer holidays in Denmark, so it wasn’t completely new to me. I think the standard of work and living is high and I like the country.
His wife and two children have also moved to Aarhus, where the eldest child has started at a Danish nursery. It was also a determining factor that Denmark, as he puts it, is “a child-friendly country”.
