MGMT2200 PROJECT PROPOSAL
Students undertaking tertiary education in this day and age are often seen exhaustingly conducting the futile exercise of dividing and budgeting their scarce funds across a variety of spending platforms in order to support and satisfy their university needs and wants. In this project, we attempt to analyse specific spending behaviours of the young university student demographic and define the reasoning behind specific consumption patterns, supported by the findings of primary and secondary research.
The primary research conducted by our group will primarily focus on behavioural factors that influence different aspects of students’ consumption, and will predominately be in the form of questionnaires and surveys from a large sample. The primary research steps our group undertakes to will be two-fold: 1. Identify what the target audience is purchasing and the proportion of income spent on particular categories. Clear defined categories will be provided, with examples given Eg. Food, recreation, entertainment, going out, other etc. 2. Examine reasons why money is proportioned in this way, explanations as to what leads students to spend on particular categories, rather than others. Eg. Those who spend more on food have less to eat at home, those spending a lot on clothes/music/magazines/etc. why? Do students have a tendency to save? For what reason?
In surveys, open-ended questions may be asked eg. “Your money is proportioned so that 60% is spent on food, and 10% is spent on going out, is there any reason why it is proportioned in this way?”
Expected answers may include things like “I’m always out with friends and they’re always out eating, so I tend to spend a large proportion on food’.
A brief analysis will be provided outlining the source of student funds; an aspect we consider important to our topic. While some university students have the luxury of working a well-paid part time job concurrently with their studies, most make do with the slim fortnightly Centrelink payments, allowances or casual jobs to finance their spending needs. The differences in income therefore will indisputably affect their level of consumption. Realising this level of consumption will allow the group to have an insight on the epistemological factors of consumption.
Thus far, we have determined valid reasons in which we will direct our research towards, including the non-essential outflows that must be met to support demanding lifestyles, image and social prominence, conspicuous consumption of the university students, transformation in how students spend and save, incentives provided by the government and advertising. It is for these reasons that it becomes appropriate and relevant to analyse current factors driving consumption in university students and focus our research around the central question of ‘what drives the university student consumers to spend?’.
In our focus on the drivers of consumption patterns, we adopt the foremost argument that there is an element of conformity propelling the spending of students. This assumption however, applies chiefly to the consumption of individual wants rather than spending on basic survival needs in which is universally accepted to be parallel across all demographics. Using Asch’s conformity experiment as the foundation for our findings, we can establish the degree to which students respond to external influences in making spending decisions and observe certain categories of goods that occupy the greatest or least proportion of student incomes. Alongside the references made to Asch’s conformity study, it is also important to examine the conventional definition of a ‘need’ because in today’s society, people are often mistaken by the needs of survival and the wants of desire, an apparent fact that holds significant influence on student spending behaviours.
While the issue of social media is not the underlying basis of our study, it is important to recognise that social networking forms such as Facebook and Instagram have fostered immense effects on the consumption patterns of not just university students, but the general population. These socially driven mediums offer a variety of functions that enable users to update their recent purchases as well as share photos of food and products of interest to them. While these actions may not be the main purpose of such medias, it is inevitable that all consumers alike will be affected, or even enticed by these updates. Some may then make the choice of purchasing such products, due to its popularity or high demand. This alludes to increasing image and social prominence being a major factor affecting spending habits, made possible in a society undeniably drenched by social media influences. Furthermore, it raises the question of whether such products satisfy their individual consumption desires and if so, may then trigger a student’s irrational impulse to also consume. This process can be directly interlinked with Asch’s Conformity Experiment, a study that highlights the idea that individuals may tend to consume depending on the consumption patterns of those around them or in line with current trends.
The development and construction of this project will involve a two-step process. Firstly, we will identify the targeted audience and the specific categories of goods in which their incomes are being spent on. Gathering primary information through interviews and surveys aimed at a select sample size of the population will directly shine light on their consumption patterns and the motives behind their purchase decisions. Results will be recorded and analysed, allowing the commencement of step two. Referring to assorted sources of information including journal articles, newspaper articles and other academic findings, we can establish a relationship between actual consumption patterns and how they are moulded by certain behaviours, including societal conformity and the desire to fulfil gender-related essentialist needs.
In regards to the medium of presentation for this project, we have decided to construct a news article. We have chosen this particular form as we believe it will best present our findings, where our arguments are clear and concise; containing satisfactory depth and strength of research that will support our claims. The news article will include diagrams and graphs summarising the results from our research, portraying various consumer behaviours and how they shape the spending habits of university students.