Authors

• Nokkonen, Outi

Keywords

community identification, consumer societies, consumers, identity, shopping, social behaviour, social status, wealth

Abstract

The study charted the consumer choices and behaviour of students at the University of Tampere, Finland. Three areas of consumption were paid special attention to, namely, clothing, hobbies, and food.

First, the respondents' life situations were surveyed as well as their attitudes towards consumption, for example, how much they thought about their consumer choices and what kind of consumers they thought they were. Readiness to engage in different forms of civic participation was investigated.

Relating to clothing, the respondents were asked, for instance, how often they bought new or used clothes, what they wanted other people to think about them based on their appearance, whether they saw themselves as belonging to a certain group on the basis of the clothes they wore, and whether they thought that there were different groups at the university that were distinguishable by people's apperances.

With regard to hobbies, the questions focused on the money spent on a hobby that was considered important by the respondents, whether they felt a sense of belonging with other people who had the same hobby, and what they wanted others to think about them based on the hobby.

Spending and consumer choices relating to food were investigated by asking the respondents how much money they spent on household food purchases per week, what kind of reasons and principles affected their food purchases, whether they were able to follow these principles in their financial situations, and what they wanted others to think about them based on the choices they made regarding food purchases.

The background variables included, among others, the respondent's gender, year of birth, department of study, living arrangements, financial situation, political party identification, membership in organizations, and the year when R started studies.