Assignment 1: Whos picking up the puffed rice? For this assignment, visit your local grocery store to observe and record behaviors in the various aisles. Your visit should be long enough to observe several behaviors and situations. Read the assignment thoroughly before your observational visit in order to watch for specific behaviors. Write a five (5) page paper in which you: 1. Identify the store and the day and time you made your observation. 2. Analyze the behaviors you observed to determine how consumers progressed through the consumer behavior process while in different aisles.  3. Assess how consumers determine value for their various purchases. This can be addressed with at least two (2) specific consumer examples or by combining all the consumers you observed. 4. Pick two specific consumers that seemed to be very different from each other. Contrast how these two (2) consumers progressed through the consumer perception process.  5. Analyze how different manufacturers motivated consumers to pick their specific brands. Articulate thoroughly the behaviors displayed and tactics used by the store or manufacturer to motivate the purchase. 6. Record all your observations in a table placed in an Appendix. Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements: · Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA. · Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length. For several months now you’ve been analyzing primary sources for your weekly discussion posts and your papers. I’ve described them for you as the building blocks of the historian’s craft. All of our arguments have to be based upon evidence left to us from the people at the time.  But while they are vitally important to our understanding of the past, primary sources can often be desperately flawed. Every primary source document comes filled with all sorts of bias. Authors of diaries, for example, usually tell us events only as they saw them or, worse, as they want us to see them. Diarists usually write with an audience in mind, telling the story as they want to tell it. Likewise, the authors of newspaper articles, private letters, and court depositions all bring the prejudices of their own lives to their documents. Finally, for many periods, places, and people in human history we have remarkably few sources to rely upon. And those sources we do have are skewed to being from the people with the most power and education in the society.  It is the job of the historian take all those issues into consideration and to produce an analysis of the primary source evidence that helps us use it to better understand the past. A book or journal article by a historian, therefore, isn’t a simple statement of facts. It is that his.

1. Assignment 1: Whos picking up the puffed rice?
For this assignment, visit your local grocery store to observe
and record behaviors in the various aisles. Your visit should be
long enough to observe several behaviors and situations. Read
the assignment thoroughly before your observational visit in
order to watch for specific behaviors.
Write a five (5) page paper in which you:
1. Identify the store and the day and time you made your
observation.
2. Analyze the behaviors you observed to determine how
consumers progressed through the consumer behavior process
while in different aisles.
3. Assess how consumers determine value for their various
purchases. This can be addressed with at least two (2) specific
consumer examples or by combining all the consumers you
observed.
4. Pick two specific consumers that seemed to be very different
from each other. Contrast how these two (2) consumers
progressed through the consumer perception process.
5. Analyze how different manufacturers motivated consumers to
pick their specific brands. Articulate thoroughly the behaviors
displayed and tactics used by the store or manufacturer to
motivate the purchase.
6. Record all your observations in a table placed in an
Appendix.
Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:
· Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size
12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references
must follow APA.
· Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the
student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the
date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in

2. the required assignment page length.
For several months now you’ve been analyzing primary sources
for your weekly discussion posts and your papers. I’ve
described them for you as the building blocks of the historian’s
craft. All of our arguments have to be based upon evidence left
to us from the people at the time.
But while they are vitally important to our understanding of the
past, primary sources can often be desperately flawed. Every
primary source document comes filled with all sorts of bias.
Authors of diaries, for example, usually tell us events only as
they saw them or, worse, as they want us to see them. Diarists
usually write with an audience in mind, telling the story as they
want to tell it. Likewise, the authors of newspaper articles,
private letters, and court depositions all bring the prejudices of
their own lives to their documents. Finally, for many periods,
places, and people in human history we have remarkably few
sources to rely upon. And those sources we do have are skewed
to being from the people with the most power and education in
the society.
It is the job of the historian take all those issues into
consideration and to produce an analysis of the primary source
evidence that helps us use it to better understand the past. A
book or journal article by a historian, therefore, isn’t a simple
statement of facts. It is that historian’s interpretation of the
past. Only through a never-ending argument about historical
interpretations do we arrive at a story that you might put in a
textbook and call it American history.
My question for you in this discussion forum is, given the
historical process I just described, is there such a thing as a real
history of the United States? If we develop historical knowledge
through a process of interpretation, how are we to think about
the results? Does history even exist? Do any of these issues
change what you thought of history when I asked what history
was in our first class?
Responses should run between 200 and 400 words.

3. For full credit, be sure to provide a substantive response of at
least 100 words to someone else's post after you have posted
your response. In these responses you want to fully explain why
you agree or disagree with what the person has said.
A grading rubric for these discussions is available in the content
section of this Blackboard site.
For several months now you’ve been analyzing primary sources
for your weekly discussion posts and your papers. I’ve
described them for you as the building blocks of the historian’s
craft. All of our arguments have to be based upon evidence left
to us from the people at the time.
But while they are vitally important to our understanding of the
past, primary sources can often be desperately flawed. Every
primary source document comes filled with all sorts of bias.
Authors of diaries, for example, usually tell us events only as
they saw them or, worse, as they want us to see them. Diarists
usually write with an audience in mind, telling the story as they
want to tell it. Likewise, the authors of newspaper articles,
private letters, and court depositions all bring the prejudices of
their own lives to their documents. Finally, for many periods,
places, and people in human history we have remarkably few
sources to rely upon. And those sources we do have are skewed
to being from the people with the most power and education in
the society.
It is the job of the historian take all those issues into
consideration and to produce an analysis of the primary source
evidence that helps us use it to better understand the past. A
book or journal article by a historian, therefore, isn’t a simple
statement of facts. It is that historian’s interpretation of the
past. Only through a never-ending argument about historical
interpretations do we arrive at a story that you might put in a
textbook and call it American history.
My question for you in this discussion forum is, given the
historical process I just described, is there such a thing as a real

4. history of the United States? If we develop historical knowledge
through a process of interpretation, how are we to think about
the results? Does history even exist? Do any of these issues
change what you thought of history when I asked what history
was in our first class?
Responses should run between 200 and 400 words.
For full credit, be sure to provide a substantive response of at
least 100 words to someone else's post after you have posted
your response. In these responses you want to fully explain why
you agree or disagree with what the person has said.
A grading rubric for these discussions is available in the content
section of this Blackboard site.