Thursday 2nd January 2014 - Students as naïve consumers

Although this is my first blog post of 2014 (Happy New Year to all readers) it is actually a reflection on something I observed while out for a walk on Boxing Day.  In common with many others (I know that because I met other university colleagues whilst out) we had a family outing, meeting up with close friends for a walk in the Botanical Gardens and along Ecclesall Road to a café: we were 9 adults and 4 small children in total.

Looking in the windows of lettings agencies on Ecclesall Road we were struck by the offers being made to attract students to take up tenancies on advertised properties.  The most notable offer was '£500 of pizza for all tenants who sign up via us.'  We noted that it referred to 'tenants' and not 'tenancies' - suggesting that in a shared house of, say, six there might be £3000 worth of pizzas to be claimed.  The offer didn't specify a period for delivery, but most tenancies are for a year.  So that's an awful lot of pizza.

Within our party on Boxing Day it so happened that there were two GPs and a Whitehall civil servant who works on the 'public responsibility' agenda in public health.  It will be of no surprise that there was therefore quite a bit of discussion about this when we reached a café.  There was general agreement that the pizza offer was an irresponsible one, but was also a very clever marketing ploy aimed at students moving from their first to their second years for whom the thought of meals without preparation time would be extremely attractive.

But I was also reminded of the fact that the BBC News web site on Christmas Eve had carried a story about the supply of dangerous cheap counterfeit vodka, focusing in on Sheffield and quoting directly from two of our Student Union officers who have been campaigning to get a tighter clamp down on supply.  Again, though, the 'offer' made to students, possibly 'under the counter', can seem an attractive one.

There is much talk about students as consumers.  That generally focuses on course choices and the decision on which universities to apply to.  But the idea of students as consumers extends to other aspects of their lives.  In all these areas it seems to me that we should regard students as being 'naïve' consumers.  Late teenagers are expected to make life-changing decisions (and in some cases, as with counterfeit vodka or an excess of obseity-inducing fast food, life-threatening decisions) and they need more help and assistance to do so.  But where to draw the line on intervention is a difficult issue.  Someone on Boxing Day said to me 'Can't the University do something about that pizza offer?'  The question for me is what our response should be.