The student food shopper: Segmentation on the basis of attitudes to store features and shopping behaviour

Although students have several characteristics in common with the 18‐24 year old youth group, they have many distinguishing features and merit consideration as a separate segment. Yet very little academic research has looked at the student market although over recent years commercial marketers have begun to take more interest in this group. The paper reports the results of a study of student food shopping behaviour. It is concerned especially with establishing the dimensions underlying the importance that students attach to supermarket store attributes, exploring the existence of student segments and subsequently, to profile the segments in terms of shopping behaviour and attitudes to store features. The empirical results indicate that there are four dimensions that underlie the importance of store features. These are defined respectively as economy, finance, products, personnel and access. Subsequently, two clusters are identified. The cluster profiles indicate that the clusters are distinguished by their financial situation.