The consumer behavior of college students: An overview

Throughout the writing of this blog, I have observed many aspects of the consumer behavior of students living in the residence halls and of college students in general. Since this will be my last post, I would like to talk about an overview of what I have learned from all of these observations throughout the semester. My first major observation is that many college students feel entitled to the best of everything even though they are earning little to no money themselves. The current generation of college students have largely grown up in households in which their parents have spent time telling them that they are special and important instead of encouraging them to develop knowledge and a work ethic. This parenting strategy has led to a group of college students that think they deserve to be treated well, given straight As, and have all of their material wants and needs paid for with very little effort on their part; that is the way that they have grown up and they expect life to stay that way indefinitely.

This sense of entitlement has led college students to make many generally unintelligent consumer decisions on a routine basis, including but not limited to buying overly large TVs, spending a large amount of money on clothes, and spending more than they should at convenience stores just because they are located in the building in which the student is residing. Additionally, these college students make bad decisions on how to spend their time, constantly listening to music while working and "wasting time" playing silly games on their smart phones (which, ironically, were originally created to make people more efficient). Overall, I have not gotten a generally good picture of college students today from creating this blog. Most of the students that I have observed have a long way to go from their lazy, entitled selves if they want to someday become productive members of society. I'm sure that they will eventually improve, but it is depressing to see it take so long for the students of today to take responsibility for themselves and grow up.

Image credit: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/lazy-college-senior?before=1331380064 

Inefficient ways of listening to music

I feel like a total hypocrite writing this post, because I am currently doing exactly what I am about to talk about not making sense. It is a widely known fact that multitasking is a very inefficient way to work, but most college students multitask while doing homework by listening to music at the same time. Unless this music is classical or jazz with no lyrics, it is proven to make people less efficient because their attention is split between their work and the lyrics of the music. Despite all of this being widely known, it is difficult to find a student sitting alone and doing homework that is not listening to music. To prove this I've just done a little experiment, I looked around at the four students sitting near me in the library and every one of them is listening to music while working. I know this post is a little shorter than usual, but I just can't seem to concentrate, the playlist that I just made on Spotify is really good...

Image Credit: http://education-portal.com/articles/Music_and_the_Brain_Top_Tunes_for_Studying.html   

The popularity of smartphone games

While looking around our campus lately, something that has struck me has been the very large amount of people that are glued to their phones. There isn't anything abnormal about this in itself, college students have spent a large amount of time on their phones ever since the invention of texting, it is what they are doing on their phones that is new. Many students are now spending an inordinate amount of time playing silly, free games on their smart phones. Some of these games, such as Words With Friends (basically scrabble played on a smartphone), have a marginal intellectual value. Many others, however, such as Angry Birds, have little to no intellectual or educational value but are very popular nonetheless.

When asked about why they like these games or desire to play them, many students will answer with some variation of, "it's a good way to waste time." My response to this is: when did "wasting" time become desired or even acceptable? We live in a world full of excellent books, great TV shows, and countless interesting articles on the internet. With all of this material available that is enjoyable and also a very good way to better ourselves, why do students feel the need to waste their time playing countless hours of frivolous online games? Whether it is because their friends do it, they feel as if they need to do it in order to fit in, or any of the countless other reasons that they use to justify these hours of games, it is ridiculous to spend time playing them that could instead be spent in intellectual pursuits that are entertaining and self-improving.      

Image credit:  http://www.free-games.net/play/angry-birds-online 

Clothing and its effects on college students

In previous posts, I've talked frequently about products that college students feel as if they must have to be "cool." Another category of products that many college students think of as essential is fashionable clothes that help them to fit in with their group of friends. Although it is usually not as obvious, men, as well as women, think of clothing as an important part of who they are and how they fit in with their group of friends. If a male student hangs out with a group of people that all wear jeans and t-shirts every day, he will be likely to wear similar clothing. Men also tend to spend a large part of their budget for clothing on articles of clothing related to sports that they are involved in, such as ski jackets and hunting boots, as opposed to everyday clothes.

Thus, we can see that male students often care about their clothing just as much as female students, they just show it in very different ways. This focus on clothing is often a large part of the budget of college students, whether they are male or female. I have known several students that have gotten jobs or increased the number of hours that they work specifically in order to buy more clothes, even if they are aware that this increased amount of work will be likely to decrease their GPA. Focusing on having the "cool" clothing to this extreme extent does not seem to make sense, but it is perfectly logical to the college student that puts fitting in with their social group ahead of almost everything else in their lives.

Image credit:  http://www.thegospelcenter.org/?page_id=80

Media saturation: Where can a student find a reputable source these days?

The internet is a tool that college students are lucky to have. When our parents were in school, being assigned a research paper was a nightmare. The student had to go to the library and dig up books on the topic of their paper, and then painstakingly look through each book to acquire the necessary information. In contrast, students that are assigned a research paper today can find information by simply running a Google search on the topic of their paper. This may seem to be the prefect situation for the modern student, but there is a catch, and a large one at that.

Nearly all professors require the sources of information used to aid in writing a research paper to be "reputable," a difficult term to define. To be truly reputable a source must come from a book, magazine article (if the magazine itself is generally respected), or the website of a respected institution. Although these sources are possible to find, most the the websites that are offered as the results of a simple Google search will not meet the criteria required to be considered a "reputable" site. This causes students to be brought back to exactly what their parents did while in school:  sifting through a large amount of information to find the few bits and pieces that they can actually use to complete their paper. Although these students could choose to utilize complicated and highly effective search tools subscribed to at considerable cost by the library, most still choose to find information for research papers by digging through a large amount of Google search results. The library pays a large sum for the very effective search options that they provide for the students here at Montana State University, and these students would benefit greatly if they were utilized to a greater extent.  

Image credit:  http://www.bestonlinecolleges.com/blog/2010/10-classes-every-college-student-dreads/frustrated-student-working-on-a-computer/