An investigative study of adult consumer education and lifelong learning needs in the United Kingdom and Latvia

Consumer education in Latvia is in the early stages of development and should be seen in the context of the rapidly changing society in the post‐Soviet era and the increasing influence of the marketplace, and Latvia's position as a new accession country. The Latvia University of Agriculture is in the process of developing an adult consumer education programme. A comparative study between the UK and Latvia was designed to test the hypothesis that many adult consumers lack knowledge and understanding of their consumer rights and responsibilities. A sample of adults in both countries completed a consumer rights questionnaire investigating attitude, knowledge and critical thinking ability. The UK questionnaire was modified, taking into account the different consumer environment in the two countries, to compare the need for adult consumer education in Latvia and the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom results showed that the group overall were not confident that they knew enough about consumer rights and legislation or to resolve consumer problems and were unsure about their consumer responsibilities. Levels of knowledge were poor, leaving adults vulnerable to exploitation in the marketplace, uninformed about their responsibilities to voice dissatisfaction about goods and services, and unaware of how their consumer behaviour can affect the wider community. Adult participants in Latvia thought that they lacked education in consumer legal rights and responsibilities and did not have the necessary skills, knowledge and understanding to manage consumer problems effectively. Results in both countries indicate that adult consumer education is needed, supplemented by a comprehensive package of adult consumer education. Despite the cultural differences between the two countries, the analysis showed that similar adult consumer skills and attitudes were needed. This joint research has shown that this methodology could be used to determine adult consumer and life‐long consumer education needs in other European countries and internationally.     

THE CONSUMER FOOD AND NUTRITION KNOWLEDGE OF PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS

Over 4000 prospective secondary and elementary teachers were tested in a national study to determine their knowledge of fourteen consumer subject areas. In the area of consumer food and nutrition knowledge the prospective teachers achieved only 48%. This area of consumer food and nutrition was found to be a critical weakness of prospective teachers relative to their performance in the other consumer subject areas. Prospective home economics and agriculture teachers scored higher than other majors on the food and nutrition questions but still revealed a poor cognitive grasp of the subject. Because of their impact on children's attitudes toward food and their eating patterns, prospective teachers need to be knowledgeable about food concepts. This study has implications for educators and college curriculum committees concerning the need for college level courses which deal with food and nutrition concepts.     

A comparative analysis of patients’ rights: an international perspective

Consumer rights are used as a framework comparing the patients’ rights of selected countries. Patients’ right documents of geographically dispersed countries, regional coalitions and international organizations were selected for analysis and comparison reflecting health and consumer policy. The content of patients’ rights policies, including populations addressed, basic consumer rights, dignity and privacy or confidentiality were analysed. The inclusion of consumer responsibilities and enforcement of patients’ rights was evaluated. Countries used comprehensive laws and charters to address patients’ rights. The consumer rights most often noted in the patients’ rights analysed were the rights to information, choice and redress. Five countries lacked inclusion of consumer responsibilities and the responsibility for enforcement. Suggestions for action on the part of family and consumer educators and scientists were offered.     

Co-operation among groups in developing and delivering programmes to consumers

The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility of co-operation among consumer education providers, in developing and delivering education programmes for consumers. Four groups of consumer education providers were identified for this study: business representatives, consumer advocates, government agencies and secondary school educators. Members of each group were presented with a series of 42 objectives which had been grouped into eight categories. They were asked to identify the importance of each objective and providers were compared according to their responses. Similarities and differences among consumer education providers were identified and statistical tests applied. Three objectives identified as most important by participants were: (i) developing guidelines for wise use of credit; (ii) identifying the rights and responsibilities of the consumer in our society; and (iii) establishing the essential factors in the developing of a budget. The median test identified significant differences (P < 0.05) between consumer education suppliers in the importance they assigned to consumer education objectives in three categories. Spearman rank-difference correlation test identified objectives within seven categories of objectives for which consumer educators expressed similar importance. These findings indicate sufficient agreement among consumer educators' importance ranking of objectives to indicate support for co-operative educational programmes.     

Investigating the need for consumer education among Turkish secondary school students

This study has been planned to determine the need for consumer education by secondary school students. A total of 300 secondary school students (150 female, 150 male) living in central Ankara in different regions with respect to socio‐economic status participated in the study. Consumer education is defined as the management of economic resources, consumer behaviour concepts, relating to consumption, level of knowledge about consumer rights and responsibilities and environmental sensitivity. On the basis of this study, almost half the adolescents draw up a budget plan and carry out market research before shopping. Also, almost half of them put quality first when choosing goods and cost is of secondary importance. More than half of the students save money for unexpected outlay. Nonetheless, adolescents do not know about consumer rights and responsibilities, nor do they have sufficient information about consumer law and the concept of protecting the environment. More than half of the students stated that they need consumer education courses as part of their curriculum.     

Generation Y Attitudes Towards E-ethics and Internet-related Misbehaviours

Aberrant consumer behaviour costs firms millions of pounds a year, and the Internet has provided young techno-literate consumers with a new medium to exploit businesses. This paper addresses Internet related ethics and describes the ways in which young consumers misdemean on the Internet and their attitudes towards these. Using a sample of 219 generation Y consumers, the study identified 24 aberrant behaviours which grouped into five factors; illegal, questionable activities, hacking related, human Internet trade and downloading. Those perceived as least wrong were; "Downloading movie and music files from the Internet for free". The consequences of these behaviours have implications for educators, consumer policy and marketers.     

‘Faculty Members’ Attitudes Towards Ethics at Norwegian Business Schools: An Explorative Study’

A survey of recent research reveals that there is a growing interest in knowledge regarding the opinions and attitudes toward ethics amongst business school faculty members. Based on an empirical study conducted in Norway we address the following issue: “What do faculty members of the Norwegian Business Schools consider to be their responsibilities in preparing their students for leading positions in public and private organizations?” Moving on to interpreting the results from the survey, we discuss the empirical findings by comparing the data using four different theoretical perspectives; neo-classical economics, strategic management, corporate social responsibility and socio-economics. The implications are highlighted.     

Correlates of Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction With Clothing Performance

This study focuses on a specific product, women's clothing, to gain further insights regarding consumer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. A variety of consumer characteristics including demographics, activities, interests and opinions (AIO's), product knowledge and product experience were used to successfully predict and profile consumer satisfaction. General suggestions for industry, governmental agencies and educators are presented regarding the implications of the findings for the general study of consumer satisfaction.     

Telecommunications deregulation and rural consumers: the impact on decision-making

Deregulation of the U.S. telecommunications industry has made a major impact on the consumer decisions of both urban and rural telephone consumers. This article focuses on rural consumers and examines their relative satisfaction with local and long-distance service, attitudes toward and knowledge about deregulation, and use of information in specific local service and equipment decisions. Implications for consumer educators are identified.     

How Consumer Law Travels

This article synthesizes a number of the findings and themes emerging from the various case studies presented about the efficacy of the transplantation process of the EU consumer acquis in some of the EU accession and new Member States. Specifically, the article examines the process of incorporation through the lens of the domestication of the consumer rules either through the making of the local consumer laws or their subsequent enforcement in the case study jurisdictions. The overall conclusions from the case studies are that accession pressures are an important impetus for legal reform in consumer law, that there is limited tailoring of the rules in their transposition, and that there is slow take up by local actors in the resolution of consumer problems. The article suggests that getting it right in the law-making process in tailoring the rules to local needs or the extant local law may not be crucial for their subsequent efficacy, both because deliberations about the efficacy and fit of the rules may be irresolvable ex ante and because the relevant collocutors often do not exist at the time of original enactment of the consumer laws. Yet if the transplanted rules can be enlivened through local institutions as spaces for contestation of the rights and responsibilities that arise under consumer law, they can be domesticated or contextualized precisely through processes of ongoing contestation. From that perspective, it is institutional diversity in implementation in different jurisdictions, remedial hybridity and EU monitoring of the efficacy of local solutions that can help unblock suboptimal local outcomes.     

Perceived consumer competence of college students: a qualitative exploratory study

Considering the large sums of money young people spend on goods and services and the huge importance marketers grant to them, it is easy to agree on the very important role they play in today's consumer society. Autonomous role enactment involves the attainment of a certain level of performance which implies certain socially desirable behaviours. However, studies about consumer skills are rather sparse. Consequently, we do not know if young people present the necessary abilities to make educated choices, protecting their own interests and exerting their responsibilities as citizens in the community and by this, contributing to balancing the market forces. The data presented are an extract from the qualitative part of a larger study about the consumer skills of French Canadian college students. Thirteen students, aged from 18 to 22 years old, were recruited in three colleges of the Quebec City area through personal contacts with academic members. They participated in semistructured interviews during the months of November and December 2001. During the discussions, they expressed their perceptions of the skills necessary for being an educated consumer, their own level of competence in this area, the general level of competence of people of their age and that of older adults. They identified the most significant agents in their consumer socialisation and detailed the nature and content of these influences. This information implements research in consumer behaviour from a non‐commercial perspective and has helped to plan the quantitative stage of the study which is presently under way. The study is financed by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.     

Determinants of environmentally responsible behaviours for greenhouse gas reduction

Canadian household consumption and driving behaviours are responsible for a significant portion of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced across Canada. This paper examines and characterizes two sets of consumer behaviours, indoor GHG reduction behaviours and automobile GHG emissions, using data from a 2006 telephone survey of a representative random sample of 1002 Canadian households with cars. Two statistical models are used to analyse the impact of four groups of variables (environmental attitudes, policy opinions, automobile‐related indices and socio‐demographics) on GHG reduction at the household level. Results were obtained using ordered probit and Ordinary Least Squares regressions. Indoor GHG reduction behaviours were not correlated with automobile GHG emissions. Dominant factors increasing consumer GHG reduction behaviours both indoors and on the road were sense of personal responsibility and previous environmental activism. Canadians who least actively participate in GHG reduction activities were more likely to be living in the Prairie provinces and to be male.     

Employment Opportunities for Consumer Affairs Professionals

This analysis of consumer affairs professionals in business and government describes what functions they perform, where they are employed, what education and experience is required and what their salaries are. Professional educators in the consumer field have generally ignored the career field of consumer affairs professional. Colleges and universities train consumer majors to be educators, researchers, or extension workers, but little attention is paid to the education of consumer affairs professionals for business and government. This article not only attempts to give educators in the consumer field a greater awareness of this relatively new career so that they can develop educational programs more intelligently but also attempts to make business and government more aware of what is being done in this area so they may be able to utilize the talents of consumer affairs professionals.     

Consumer debt attitudes: The role of gender,debt knowledge and skills

The link between financial attitudes and consumer financial market behaviour is well documented. However, little is known about the role of financial knowledge and skills—the main components of the financial literacy construct—in shaping debt attitudes. This link is especially absent from the gender perspective. This study focuses on consumer debt literacy and debt attitudes. A representative sample of adult Poles (N = 1,004) was participated in a computer‐assisted telephone interview. Latent class analysis was employed to reveal their debt attitudes, and subsequently, links between debt literacy and debt attitudes were studied with multinomial regression models. The results show that respondents in Poland can be grouped into five classes exhibiting different attitude profiles. The structure of debt attitudes is complex and differs from a simple unidimensional pro‐debt/ anti‐debt construct. Although this study did not find significant gender differences either in the conceptualization of debt attitudes or in their drivers, the results showed that in all but one class, consumer attitudes are strongly linked to either debt knowledge or debt skills or to both. Debt skills were revealed to be a particularly strong predictor of consumer debt attitudes.     

Money talks – a program to improve financial literacy of teens

Many researchers have studied and documented the financial literacy of youth. Even more have developed educational programs or curricula to teach financial and consumer issues to youth; however, few have actually evaluated the effectiveness of their programs. The Money Talks: Should I be Listening? curriculum, developed by a University of California Cooperative Extension team, was created to appeal to teenagers as it increased their financial literacy. In order to develop a program that young people would readily use, and from which they would learn, teenagers were surveyed prior to program development to determine the topics that were relevant to them, the educational format that appealed to them, and when and where they preferred to receive the information (Varcoe, Peterson, Garrett, Martin, Rene, & Costello, 2001). This paper discusses the effectiveness of The Money Talks: Should I be Listening? curriculum on the financial knowledge and behaviour of participants using the series. The curriculum was designed for use as a part of school curriculum as well as for presentation in other venues. The findings indicate that using the curriculum did improve the financial literacy of high school students with significant positive changes in both knowledge and behaviour. They have a better understanding of the value of savings and have changed behaviours. It is interesting to note that the males demonstrated a significantly greater increase in knowledge from pre‐test to post‐test than females. Perhaps the females have more interest in or knowledge of financial issues prior to participation in this project? Overall the results of this study are consistent with the findings of others. Research based curricula in personal finance seem to yield results. This age group has specific requirements for method of delivery and location of the seminars suggesting that it is important to keep the materials interactive. To address this issue, a web‐site http:www.moneytalks.ucr.edu was added to the program. Included on the web‐site are interactive games and a video on the importance of saving. The teens are naturally more interested in learning about the consumer and financial issues they perceive as salient in their lives at that particular time. Educators should identify topics of interest to the teens and develop, or use existing, interactive methodology to present the information.     

Towards sustainable consumption: an examination of environmental knowledge among Malaysians

Environmental problems are mainly attributable to the impact of humans on natural systems. In the case of Malaysia, rapid urbanization and Malaysian consumer’ pursuit of consumption‐oriented lifestyles have intensified the solid‐waste management problem faced by the government. Increasing public environmental awareness is a potential way of addressing this. The objectives of the study described here were to assess the level of environmental knowledge among households in Selangor in Malaysia, examine the sources of their environmental knowledge, determine factors that lead to different levels of knowledge and analyse the relationship between knowledge and environmental attitude, behaviour and participation. The results of the study indicate that, in general, respondents’ basic or general environmental knowledge was high. However, when questioned on various scientific environmental terms, the majority of the respondents were not familiar with most of them. Respondents indicated that their main sources of environmental knowledge and information were newspapers, television and radio. Lower levels of education were reflected in the level of environmental knowledge. Participation in environmental activities had a positive influence on knowledge. The study also found that knowledge correlated positively with environmental attitudes, behaviours and participation.     

Dimensions of marketplace exclusion: representations,resistances and responses

ABSTRACT

This positioning paper explains and develops the concept of marketplace exclusion, which has received little attention to date in the field of marketing and consumer research. Essentially the concept refers to the mechanisms through which certain individuals and communities are barred from the resources and opportunities provided by the market. Participation in the market and the accompanying rights and responsibilities that allow individuals to act as legitimate consumers is essential for social cohesion and social relations. However, one consequence of consumer culture has been a shift away from values of community and citizenship towards those of materialism and competition. Marketplace exclusion encompasses big questions of poverty, sexism and racism to individual consequences such as isolation and alienation. The paper examines various causes and types of exclusion and discusses key research questions and methodological issues in studying this topic. Finally, it introduces the papers included in this special issue of CMC.     

A typology of Polish consumers and their behaviours in the market for sustainable textiles and clothing

The paper discusses Polish consumers' behaviours in the market for sustainable textiles and clothing. The analysis presented in this article was undertaken because of:

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