eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

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OBJECTIVES: The main objective of the study is to illustrate how consumers manage and balance their alcohol consumption in the short and long run and what kind of strategies they employ to do so. The context of this research is particularly university students' alcohol consumption. The aim is to portray how consumers (students) perceive their drinking also in the long run and how drinking is structured: what are the forces fueling but then again obstructing drinking. This research also explores how drinking contributes to students' identity. The study falls into the consumer culture theory (CCT) research.

METHODOLOGY: The research is interpretative and qualitative in nature. Six Finnish university students or recently graduated were interviewed and the interview transcriptions formed the empirical data of the study. Interviews, analysis and interpretation followed the existential-phenomenological research approach and method.

KEY FINDINGS: The key findings of the study include discovering and describing the strategies consumers employ to manage their drinking and keep control during a specific drinking occasion and also how these individual events contribute to the management of drinking in the long run. Drinking is also noted to be a highly social phenomenon whose effects also extend beyond the frames of just a certain occasion.