Ways of Encouraging Youth Participation in the Projects on Campus - Research Paper Example

Content page Content page 1.Introduction 2 2.Methodology 3 3.Discussion 3 3.1Main finding of Questionnaires and interviews 3 3 1 Personal character and attitude explore 3 3.1.2 Motivate factor 4 3.2The factors students consider 4 3.3Project management 6 Conclusions and recommendation 6 References 7 Appendix 1 Questionnaire 7 APPENDIX 2 Q1 10 APPENDIX 3 Q2 11 APPENDIX 4 Q3 11 APPENDIX 5 Q4 12 APPENDIX 6 Q5 12 APPENDIX 7 Q6 13 APPENDIX 8 Q7 13 APPENDIX 9 Q8 14 APPENDIX 10 Q9 14 APPENDIX 11 Q10 15 APPENDIX 12 Q11 16 APPENDIX 13 Q12 17 Appendix 14, the relationship between subject and own business attitude 17 Appendix 15 Students preference 17 Appendix 16 Gender related. 17 Appendix 17 personal interview 18 1. Introduction As the scale of Hull University of Scarborough campus is rather small, and there are limited facilities and resources provided to encourage student communication, as well as the internationalization degree being very high, it has been noted that international students have increased into a huge population. The communication between students is poor due to the culture and language differences. However, the business disciplines related in this campus also account for a large amount, such as international business and business management. For a business study student, the problem that exists is considered to be universal, one in which students who have rich business theories have no practical experience. For these two points, a small market that can be established where both the seller and buyer are played by students might be a good idea. This would allow students to operate their own businesses in this small market, making it a benefit for culture communication in international students and improve students practical experiences of businesses. For the small market, the university will need to create a condition to attract students to participate. This paper explores if such a small market would be applicable to Scarborough campus and if it could be accepted and attract students to participate actively. It also investigates the students’ attitudes toward the project as retail customers and assumption customers. Customers’ attitudes are strongly influenced by cultural, social, personal, demographic aspects (Armstrong and Kolter, 2000), therefore prompting students with various cultural backgrounds, different professional and demographic backgrounds to have a distinct attitude towards this project. One of the objectives is analyzing their characters with various demographic characteristics, relevant experiences and personal interest. Secondary, the risk could be classified in four categories in marketing literature: financial risk, psychological risk, physical risk and social style (Jacoby and Kaplan, 2000). This paper mainly explores the financial risk and psychological risk of the students, as well as their risk perceptive and what factors they most consider. Finally, according to the students’ attitudes and psychology, the ways in which the university should lead the way and make a suitable decision to ensure the feasibility of the project will be discussed. 2. Methodology Questionnaire and interviews, this parts have checked by my tutor, it’s OK. 3. Discussion 3.1 Main finding of Questionnaires and interviews 3.1.1 Personal character and attitude explore Since the questionnaire is designed to focus on three target groups, which are local, European and overseas students, this paper must first analyze the main findings from these students about their attitudes towards the project if they are interested in it. Firstly, there are three groups from local, European and overseas locations, as different cultural backgrounds determine different attitudes in regard the project. All of the students involved were asked about their gender, major and any related experiences. From the results of survey, the proportion is 11.54% of local, 38.46% is European and 50% is overseas students (Appendix 3, Q2). The majority of them concentrate on two majors, business management and international business; they occupied large percentages of 35.14% and 21.62%, respectively. Only 16.22% consists of digital media students and 8.11% are tourism students (Appendix4, Q3). About 75% of the students have an interest in different cultures, while 25% do not show an interest in different cultures (Appendix 5, Q4). Having an interest in various cultures is the first step towards project success. The attitude of starting one’s own business is a positive trend (Appendix 7). 16 students agree with this idea, and 5 students strongly agree, while 11 students have no idea and are considered to be in the middle of the opinions. There was only 1 student that had an extreme negative suggestion and 5 students disagreed with it. It should be noted that students’ attitudes, if they want to try owning a business, is closely related with their subject. As the bar chart displays (Appendix 14), which describes this concept, in regard to the subject that the business is related to (business management, international business, business and IT), the individual needs to have an obvious positive attitude to try and start one’s own business. Out of the total percentage of affirmative answers, “Yes” was over 50% more than the negative answer. Compared with business related subjects, the advantage of the positive attitude is not very evident, such as tourism management and sports management. As the analysis above shows, the amount of people related to business has occupied above 72% and most of them uphold a positive view to the project, meaning that the project can have a wide customer base. 3.1.2 Motivate factor To explain the reason of figure (Appendix 14), business-related majors were interviewed, being asked why they support this project. The most common answer was to improve and practice their abilities, win the pot of gold to increase self-confidence, and simply to have fun and pass the time. As the figure shows above, the majority of the students were interested in the various cultures（Appendix 5, Q4), but their communication in daily life was poor, for the interview question of “why do you not communicate with students of different culture background initiatives”, brought back the answers being focused on no common topic because of culture differences and the language problem. Almost all of the answers agreed with the idea that the small market could provide a chance to better understand other international students and their cultures. Therefore, the project is highly motivated and is meaningful for students to enrich their study lives and improve their abilities that cannot be gained from simply theories. 3.2 The factors students consider When students try to enter the small market as sellers, it means that they will bear several types of risks, such as financial and psychology risk, and should therefore consider if their business is profitable and how much their input could reduce costs to maintain no loss. In the questionnaire results, males and females pay a different amount of attention to the perceptive risks. As the diagram (Appendix 16) shows, females consider the risks with more detail than males and directly cause their uncertain and negative attitudes to effect the project. The most significant point is that about 57% of females have an uncertain attitude while only 18% of males choose this option. According to statistics, on the shop category, most students chose secondhand shops and DIY craft shops; 46.67% choose the secondhand shops, while handcraft shops accounted for 30.67%, and only 21.33% supported food shops. Students’ preferences for stores is closely linked to their considered factors. As the bar chart shows(Appendix 15), all the consideration factors of students that selected snack bars are higher than those in DIY and secondhand shops, particularly in resource, culture factors, cost and culture; all of these elements are over 2 times than the other two types. Secondhand shops also considered customer resources and profit, and DIY crafts mainly considered culture elements, customer resources and profit. For the three types of shops, the profit is always the first element that students take into account (Appendix 15), in order to maximize profits, reduce costs, such as rent, all of which is deemed as acceptable in attracting students to participate. The results of the data (Appendix 10, 11) shows that 50% of students choose the cheapest option and ₤10-₤20 was accepted by 21.15% of students. It said that the rent of ₤10-20 is okay for students. As students, their time is limited and they would make finding time an important consideration. In Appendix 13 (Q12), the time groups are balanced and accepted, with the group asking for 25-48 hours is supported by 37.25% and 12-24 hours is similarly accepted at 35.29%. 25.49% of the students also allowed 48-72 hours per week. This means that the project could maintain quite a long time per week, and flexible timetables supported by students for students are available, all appropriate for different years and majors. 3.3 Project management The above students psychological, following the four services is necessary, financial management, site maintenance, advice center and facility management (Appendix 12, Q11). The entire advice center, grounds maintenance and facilities management has occupied 29.73%, especially the advice center, as the Appendix 6 (Q5) described. 75% of students do not understand various culture backgrounds and an advice center could give students suggestions of different cultures to avoid the culture conflict and to make sure that the students’ products could be accepted by customers. Through the statistics of students’ preferences, the facility management department could arrange relevant facilities for the business operate to reduce students’ cost input to encourage them to be involved. For example, for the snack bar, it should offer fridges to maintain the food fresh. Conclusions and recommendation The above figure and interview results showed that the project is feasible and should be popular in the future. Many of the students have a positive attitude and are willing to spend time to support the small market; it is a platform culture exchange and improves the communication between international students, especially for business-related majors, which is a meaningful practice. Otherwise, multiple risk factors will be taken into account. Students prefer to operate secondhand shops due to its smaller cost input and other factors as compared to the snack bar, in which the bigger worries are about the taste of the food not being satisfactory with all of the customers with different eating habits. Food is an important part for culture communication, however, and the university should offer an attractive promotion strategy for the students who want to operate food businesses, for example, free rent and various facilities. The study is related to two research methodologies, survey and interview. For the survey, there have been some disadvantages that are not very reasonable. The sample structure is not balanced, as its main focus was on the international students and ignored the exploration of the local students’ attitudes, which may lead to the result of less accuracy. For the future research programme, I will make a logistical plan to leave enough time to collect data that is not only limited to an online survey, but also a face-to-face questionnaire to gain a good response. References Robson.C. 2002, “Questionnaire design”, Real World Research (2nd edit), Oxford, Blackwell P73 Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2003, “collecting primary data using questionnaires”, Research Methods for Business Students, Prentice Hall, England, PP281 Jacoby, J. and Kaplan, L. B. (2000), “The Components of Perceived Risk", Proceedings 3rd Annual Conference Association for Consumer Research, ed PP 93 Appendix 1 Questionnaire 1) whats your gender? male   female     2) whats your situation? local student   European student   overseas student     3) what your subject? Business and Management   International Business   business management and IT   Digital media   Sport and leisure management   tourism managment   Other (Please Specify):       4) Are you interested in various cultures from different countries? Yes   No     5) Are you clear understand of various culture bakgrounds Yes   No     6) Do you have any experience about starting your own business? Yes   No     7)  You want to start a small business strongly agree   agree   no idea yet   disagree   strongly disagree     8) which shop do you want to try? handicraft/gift shop   snack bar   second hand   Other (Please Specify):       9) whats the major concerns when you operate your own business? product resource   customer resource   total cost   profit   culture element   Other (Please Specify):       10) The campus will provide sufficient facilities and service to support business, how much you would like to charge for rent? ₤10 perweek   ₤20 perweek   ₤30 perweek   Other (Please Specify):       11) which servies should be provided very necessary if you willing start your business? financial mangement   advice center   grounds maintance   facility management   Other (Please Specify):       12) As a student, your time is valuable, so how much timem you could spend in the activities? 12-24hours   25-48hours   48-72hours   Other (Please Specify): APPENDIX 2 Q1 APPENDIX 3 Q2 APPENDIX 4 Q3 APPENDIX 5 Q4 APPENDIX 6 Q5 APPENDIX 7 Q6 APPENDIX 8 Q7 APPENDIX 9 Q8 APPENDIX 10 Q9 APPENDIX 11 Q10 APPENDIX 12 Q11 APPENDIX 13 Q12 Appendix 14, the relationship between subject and own business attitude Note: Yes is conclude the positive attitude “strongly agree”, “agree”, and No is present as “no idea”, “disagree” strongly disagree” in appendix 8(Q7) to make the comparison result more clear. Appendix 15 Students preference Appendix 16 Gender related. Appendix 17 personal interview This interview has choose five students in Scarborough campus with different national and different major 1. Do you interested in communication with different national students? Why you not communicate with them in your study life? —Yes, Have no common topic; Don’t understand of them —So-so , language barrier —Yes, less time to meet expect the class time —Yes difficult to communication —Yes have nothing to talk about 2. Why you support or not support this project? —interesting and have no such experience before —curious and want to try —improve my practical ability —as a part-time job —pass time 3. How do you think about the food business in the small market? —inconvenience, too much to consider —no confident to my snack could accepted by everyone —too trouble —the food is easy to go bad if it not sold well —no idea 4. How do you think the price strategy in the survey? What’s your suggestion? Acceptable Inflexible, better to do some special promotion It’s ok It’s irrational, everyone will choose the cheapest one OK 5. Have you any other suggestion to the whole development of this market? The price should be flexible, may be charge of 5% in the profit It could encourage the group to operate the business No suggestion Establish a website in university site to spread information No, thanks Read More