Building Marketing Knowledge with LEGO® Serious Play®:: An Exploratory Classroom Study of Student Perceptions and Pedagogical Uses

LEGO® Serious Play® (LSP) has increasingly been used in higher education as an experiential learning approach, yet its application in introductory marketing teaching remains underexplored. This paper examines the implementation of LSP in a first-year university marketing course and analyzes students’ perceptions of the activity. The study was conducted in two 130-minute face-to-face sessions with 52 students enrolled in Commercial Management in the Degree in Business and Technology. Working in small groups, students used LEGO® bricks to develop 15 proposals addressing the meaning of marketing, the place of the consumer in their representations, and the ways in which marketing influences consumer behavior. After the activity, students completed an anonymous questionnaire assessing their experience of the construction and sharing phases. The results show a highly positive overall evaluation of the activity, with particularly high ratings for enjoyment, motivation, engagement, willingness to repeat the activity, and perceived connection with course content. Exploratory analyses further indicate that involvement and motivation were more strongly associated with students’ overall evaluation than cognitive clarification, group conversation, or connection with theoretical content. These findings suggest that LSP may be a useful pedagogical resource for promoting participation and engagement in introductory marketing contexts.