The “Lifelong Learning” concept as a factor of competitiveness and sustainable social and economic development

Abstract

The purpose is to identify homogeneous groups of consumers towards the purchase of Lifelong Learning services in the context of their purchasing behaviour.The theory of system analysis, economic‐statistical and empirical methods were used. The respondents were consumers of services provided in the centres of additional education of the largest Russian universities. The data for the study was collected by means of an online survey via Google Forms service.Six groups of educational services consumers were identified: 1st – “LLL” consumers who identify their learning experience as ineffective (corresponding to the response “get nothing out of learning”); 2nd – men and women not more than 35 years old, targeting mainly not in the family, but in building a career, quite often participating in various educational activities; 3rd – women who choose the format of training in the form of retraining programs; 4th – women working as freelancers or self‐employed, some of them on maternity leave; 5th – women up to about 35 years old, working as line workers, without children and without higher education; 6th – men under the age of 40, with a good financial situation, who independently choose a certain training programme in order to obtain specific knowledge.The concept of “Lifelong Learning” involves the continuous development and improvement of skills, competences and knowledge throughout life, which helps to enhance competitiveness and sustainability of social and economic development.