When I was in high school, I’d see Red Bull salespeople hand out free samples to students. When they offered me one, I found it weird. 1-2 years later I watched the iconic “It gives you wings” ad and then, almost everyone I knew was having it.
“It’s so good.”
“I drink it for the energy.”
“I need a Red Bull.”
I’d see the blue and red everywhere. People were sold and so was Red Bull. Everyone needed energy, a boost, a buzz, whatever it was offering. This wasn’t accidental—it was the result of understanding what consumers truly want.
Like Red Bull, every business aims to make a person’s life easier or better. Right from developing a product to selling it, is based on human beings and their minds. This is why consumer behavior—understanding demographics, buying behaviors, needs, motivators, social factors, and more, should have a place in your marketing strategy.
But a consumer’s mind is complex. To understand it, you need to know about psychology and research. Lucky for you, we’ve got the eight best courses on consumer behavior that teach both.
The Best Consumer Behavior Courses
Handpicked Guides
What is Consumer Behavior?
Consumer behavior refers to the study of how customers (individuals and organizations) satisfy their needs and wants by choosing, purchasing, using, and disposing of goods, ideas, and services.
Consumer behavior in marketing involves identifying patterns and creating campaigns that align with them. For instance, a gym introduces a membership offer in January, because they notice that gym subscriptions increase in January (because “new year, new me”).
Or a restaurant in a commercial area starts a happy hour from 5 pm to 7 pm on weekdays (to attract office employees).
Analyzing and interpreting your target audience’s needs is a core skill in marketing. It helps in creating brand awareness, converting customers, and sustaining their loyalty after purchase.
But, it’s not easy. Intuit refers to it as an art and science, and I agree. Figuring out humans is tough, and understanding them requires behavioral knowledge, data, and an open mind.
And if you don’t have these skills, you need these courses.
But why should you trust my recommendations?
Why Trust Us and Why These Courses?
At Class Central, we have a database of 250,000 courses from platforms such as Coursera, Udemy, edX, and more. Let’s say you want to find a course on SEO, you’ll find hundreds on our website, with one search.
Our aim is to make learning seamless and so, we’ve got you a one-stop destination for learning.
Now, how did I choose these courses?
I’ve picked these eight courses based on:
- The purpose of learning: Some courses are to understand the principles of consumer psychology, and some focus on conducting direct research to understand the target audience’s psyche
- Beginner-friendly content: Marketers or aspiring researchers have little knowledge about the human mind, so I’ve chosen courses that explain it simply
- Diverse learning: I’ve picked courses that cover different aspects of consumer behavior—decision-making, research, neuromarketing, and more
- Learner experience: Instead of the quantity of ratings, I’ve focused on the quality of the reviews
Let’s get started!
The Basics of Supply and Demand and Consumer Behavior by the University of Rochester (Coursera)
- Level: Beginner
- Rating: 4.6 (263 ratings)
- Duration: 7 hours
- Cost: Free to audit
Consumer psychology is about how and why people buy, so it’s also linked to economics. This course covers concepts such as supply and demand, giving you an idea of how the market works.
Then, it moves on to understanding how consumers behave in this market. With sections on microeconomics, price elasticity, budget constraints, and consumer preferences, this course is a well-rounded start to learning about consumer behavior.
Also, it’s rich in case studies and examples!
What sets it apart?
- It offers a holistic view of the market and the consumers’ reactions to it
- It breaks down case studies (ObamaCare, school choice, etc) to analyze components of consumer behavior
- The quizzes and discussion forums make revision and doubt resolution easy
- The instructor is Mark Zupan, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Rochester
What you might not like
It doesn’t focus on diverse psychological factors that instigate buying behaviors. It only covers budget constraints, changes in consumption, and other fundamental components.
Who is it for?
- (Aspiring) Marketers who want to understand consumer behavior for marketing
- Individuals who want to understand consumer behavior, and haven’t studied it in detail
Marketing 302: Consumer Behavior (Study.com)
- Level: Beginner
- Rating: 4.6 (2860 ratings)
- Duration: 13 hours
- Cost: Membership (one-month free trial)
If you’re looking for a comprehensive curriculum that explores the consumer’s mind, get this course. It covers theories and models that explain the thought processes, biases, and buying patterns of a consumer.
With some sections on economic concepts, the course largely explains what consumers need to have a great buying experience. Also, it doesn’t just focus on why people buy, it also teaches you how to measure their satisfaction for future reference.
Please note: To get the course for free, you can sign up for the one-month free trial
What sets it apart?
- It only focuses on the consumer from different facets—the culture, the price pains, satisfaction, and more
- The syllabus is comprehensive and detail-oriented, with a quiz and chapter tests
- It’s accredited for 3 semester hours by ACE and 4 semester hours for NNCRS
- The learners love how attentive and responsive the instructor is!
Who is it for?
- Aspiring and current marketers who want to create customer-centric campaigns
- New entrepreneurs or small business owners who want to learn about consumers
CurtinX: Buyer Behavior and Analysis (edX)
- Level: Intermediate
- Rating: 4.4
- Duration: 96 hours-120 hours
- Cost: Free to audit
This course blends economics, anthropology, and psychology to teach you how consumers navigate buying and spending money.
It pushes you to create a customer persona by analyzing their society, personality, lifestyle, etc. to understand what drives them to spend. You’ll learn to assess their motivators and build marketing strategies that align with them.
The syllabus is rich (and very interesting), and you’ll find sections on cognition, perception, consumer ethics, and more. If you want to imbibe a customer-centric approach toward marketing or your role involves understanding the consumer, this course will help.
Please Note: This course requires some marketing knowledge and isn’t for beginners in the field.
What sets it apart?
- It digs deeper than decision-making, focusing on the culture, attention, attitude formation, gender identity of the consumer
- It has a section on e-commerce behavior (online behavior is different from the offline one)
- Although the number of ratings is lower, edX is known for its high-quality courses
- The instructor, Isaac Cheah, is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Marketing, at Curtin University
What you may not like:
It’s not a self-paced course, it’s an instructor-led course that follows a schedule
Who is it for?
- Marketers who want to create customer persona to create impactful marketing strategies
- Aspiring marketers who want to learn about consumer behavior and its role in marketing
Marketing Psychology and Consumer Behavior (Udemy)
- Level: Beginner
- Rating: 4.6 (1239 ratings)
- Duration: 3 hours
- Cost: Paid
This is a fun one! If you’d like to learn about psychology principles that affect human behavior, that too, through experiments and quizzes, go for this course.
If you glance at it, you’ll see that it’s an actionable course that doesn’t cover consumer behavior in detail. But it covers marketing and advertising concepts that revolve around it.
It also teaches visual aspects—creating great advertisements, applying color psychology, emotional advertising, and more. The course helps you understand what attracts humans and what triggers emotions within them.
What sets it apart?
- The instructor has included experiments that help us analyze the learner’s behaviors (it makes the course interesting and interactive)
- It has sections on advertising, not just marketing
- The learners like how concepts are explained and how examples are portrayed
- The course is by Proficient Courses which has designed seven Udemy courses and has a rating of 4.5
Who is it for?
- Marketers who don’t have a background in psychology but want to create customer-focused campaigns
- Advertising professionals who want to learn the impact of visuals on consumers
Diploma in Consumer Psychology (Alison)
- Level: Advanced
- Duration: 10-15 hours
- Cost: Free to audit
Consumer behavior isn’t just about spending, it’s about perception, beliefs, emotions, even biases. This certificate course teaches models of decision-making that explain how customers compare products, evaluate them, and choose one.
It also covers topics such as attention, memory, and conditioning that lead to decision-making. Plus, it discusses how personality, too, comes into play while spending money.
Overall, this course, with models and theories, shows you how the consumer’s mind works, and helps you strategize to serve it.
What sets it apart?
- It tackles consumer psychology in detail and from several angles (and again, it’s free, but you need to pay if you want a certificate)
- It’s CPD (Continuing Professional Development) accredited, which means it fulfills the quality standards of a professional course
- It will help in designing marketing strategies that cater to the human mind
- It has course assessments to help you memorize concepts
What you might not like
It’s a theoretical course and lacks interactive aspects (experiments, frequent quizzes, etc)
Who is it for?
Marketers who want to build a customer persona and build campaigns for them
Marketing Psychology & Neuromarketing with Dekker (Udemy)
- Level: Beginner
- Rating: 4.4 (712 ratings)
- Duration: 4 hours
- Cost: Paid
This course will teach how you can build a marketing strategy around the human mind. It also has concepts from neuroscience, the study of the nervous system and brain.
It maps the customer’s buying journey and teaches you marketing tweaks that can influence consumers and persuade them to buy from you. This course too, is an interplay of marketing psychology and consumer behavior.
An added bonus is that it has a module on influencing teams within the organization too!
What sets it apart?
- It is marketing strategy-oriented
- It also has a section on common mistakes that marketers make
- As mentioned, it teaches you how to influence customers and your own team
- The instructor, Dekker Fraser, has worked as a marketing professional at Sony PlayStation and a Google-accelerated startup
What you might not like
Some learners think that the course lacks relevant examples
Who is it for?
- Marketers who want a quick solution to creating consumer-centric campaigns
- Entrepreneurs who want to influence their customers and their teams
Market Research and Consumer Behavior by IE Business School (Coursera)
- Level: Beginner
- Rating: 4.4 (4798 ratings)
- Duration: 6 hours 14 minutes
- Cost: Free to audit
Psychology models and theories can help you understand a general consumer. But if you want to specify your target audience’s pain points, spending tendencies, and needs, you need to be out there and ask them yourselves. Plus, to identify patterns, you also need data, which this course helps you get.
You’ll learn how to create surveys, use basic statistics to interpret the data, and create reports to share insights with your team.
The course runs in two halves, one focuses on research and the other on understanding consumer behavior.
What sets it apart?
- Along with consumer behavior, it also teaches you how to measure and understand it through experiments and research
- Apart from the videos, the course has extensive (and interesting) reading material
- It can help in solving marketing problems
- Shameek Sinha is a professor at IE Business School and he’s a researcher on consumer decision making
What you might not like
It doesn’t cover varied aspects of consumer behavior, it only teaches decision-making
Who is it for?
- Entrepreneurs who want to test their products/services
- Marketers who want to get direct insights from consumer
- Individuals who want to get into market research
Market Research: Marketing Psychology & Consumer Behavior (Udemy)
- Level: Beginner
- Rating: 4.4 (223 ratings)
- Duration: 3.5 hours
- Cost: Paid
Another one on market research!
You have a business idea—a new skincare product that fights acne. But before you spend tons of money on research, hiring, and office and lab spaces, you want to know if people would want your product. How do you understand your chances of making it? Market research.
This course helps you get consumer behavior data directly from the horses’ mouths. In the above example, you would find out how people deal with acne, what kind of products they use, how much money they invest in skincare, etc.
With this course, you can develop research skills—-active listening, an open mind, statistical analysis, etc. It offers you diverse ways of collecting data and teaches you how to set KPIs and use Google Analytics to monitor digital behaviors.
What sets it apart?
- It’s a blend of psychology and research
- It teaches you how to do original research and get insights to understand consumer behavior
- It can help in selecting and understanding your target market
- The instructor, Alex Genadinik, is an author who also helps founders reach 7-8-figure businesses
What you might not like:
Since it’s research-based, it doesn’t cover psychology principles in detail
Who is it for?
- Entrepreneurs who want to understand their target market
- Aspiring market research employees
- Digital marketers who want to understand digital behaviors with Google Analytics
As I said, consumer behavior is a complex subject to learn because humans are complicated. To master it, you need an open mind and research powers. I hope these courses help you market “for” consumers and not “to” consumers.
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