Talking fashion in female friendship groups: negotiating the necessary marketplace skills and knowledge

This study revisits contexts of consumer socialization by focusing on fashion consumption among female teenagers. Focus groups and interviews have been utilized to collect data from 12- to 16-year-old female adolescents. The findings indicate that the adolescents cultivate both rational and symbolic skills within their friendship groups through friendship talk. The paper contributes to consumer socialization studies by examining the role of social relationships in and the accounts of the actual uses of fashion products. By doing so, it extends scholars', policy makers', schools', and families' understanding of the dynamics involved in the building of young people's consumer identities and what type of issues they face as young consumers. Thus, the study provides policy makers with information regarding how consumer skills and knowledge are cultivated and the role of the friendship group in cultivating them, which can be used in formulating future policy aimed at consumer education, literacy programmes and social marketing aimed at adolescents. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York