Fashion choices and shopping practices of undergraduate students : an exploratory study

Abstract

Home Economics (HE) offers its students a wide range of skills to help them in their everyday lives and future careers, including skills required to be sustainable consumers with the necessary resource management, budgeting and saving skills. The general aim of this research study was to uncover the shopping attitudes and practices of University of Malta student-teachers in relation to fashion, also looking at factors which influence these students’ choices. Furthermore, the researcher was interested in finding out if a HE background (knowledge and skills) affects the shopping attitudes and practices of student-teachers and whether HE education leads to ‘smarter’ fashion choices and shopping practices. Two focus group interviews were conducted with Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) students specialising in Nutrition, Family and Consumer Studies (NFCS), and a separate focus group interview was conducted with B.Ed. students specialising in any other subject. Minimal dissimilarity resulted in the shopping attitudes and practices for clothing items between the participating student-teachers, who mainly have a materialistic nature and a hedonic approach to shopping for clothing items. Even though HE student-teachers have more knowledge on sustainable practices, environment protection, value for money and making informed choices, the knowledge related to consumer and financial education from HE and NFCS seems not to be effective enough in enabling these students to overcome other influences on habits. Factors such as the person’s character, life circumstances and age, have emerged to be stronger determinants. Finally, the researcher proposed areas for further research and action in the field of education in order to promote smart consumption.