The Development and Implementation of the Concept of Consumer Education

Abstract

With the recent upsurge of emphasis in consumer education at the State and Federal government levels, consumer educators need to review the historical roots of the current movement to develop a broader perspective for planning future directions in consumer education. It is also necessary to understand the two orientations (buymanship and life goals) towards consumer education course content. Finally, a review of previous research into factors that influence the level of consumer economic competency is required.

Adolescent consumer decision-making styles: The consumer socialization perspective

“…Consumer education at school is designed to foster critical thinking, self-confidence, and consumer competencies (e.g., Knapp, 1991). However, some studies reported only negligible effects from in-school consumer education (e.g., Langrehr & Mason, 1977;Moschis, 1978b).…”

Determinants of Adolescents' Brand Sensitivity to Clothing

“…Although there is no accepted definition of consumer competence in the literature, Young (1993) suggested that a competent consumer is an individual who consumes according to his or her needs and resources and shows preventive and defensive consumer behavior such as being critical toward advertising and searching for information before buying something. In research, consumer competence is often measured by knowledge, attitudes, and/or behaviors that are generally designated in the literature as reflecting rational motives for consumption and/or utilitarian consumption, such as looking for a good quality-toprice ratio, comparing product characteristics, keeping receipts, budgeting, knowing about credit and personal finances (Économie Canada, 2002;Gronhoj, 2004;Lachance, 2004;Langrehr & Mason, 1977;Sigmen, 1992). To our knowledge, no research has been exclusively devoted to assessing the relationship between consumer competence and brand sensitivity.…”

Framing consumer education conceptual innovations as consumer activism

“…For clarification, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development () recently affirmed that expost evaluation of the effectiveness of consumer education programs is a rare and difficult proposition because they are usually long‐term in nature, making it difficult to quantify the benefits. For earlier examples of expost evaluations see Bloom and Ford (), Hawkins (), Langrehr (), Langrehr and Mason (), and Monsma and Bannister ().…”

“…For clarification, the Organization for Economic Cooperation andDevelopment (2009, 2010) recently affirmed that expost evaluation of the effectiveness of consumer education programs is a rare and difficult proposition because they are usually long-term in nature, making it difficult to quantify the benefits. For earlier examples of expost evaluations see Bloom and Ford (1979), Hawkins (1977), Langrehr (1979), Langrehr and Mason (1977), and Monsma and Bannister (1980). On another front, the author could have asked whether the architects of the various conceptual innovations (in their role as activist) had managed to convince others to take up their approach for (re)conceptualizing consumer education?…”