Where do students shop for groceries? What factors affect their food and drink spend and other purchasing decisions?

Do students have as distinctive a set of leisure trends as popular thinking would have us believe? What opinions do students have about satellite television companies, Internet service providers and other home comforts?

Do today's students actually fit the popular stereotype? Is debt as much of a worry to the student as is often discussed? How do they tend to pay their way at college?

This is the second Mintel Special Report to focus exclusively on students. The first report was in 1999, shortly after major changes to student financing were implemented, including the abolition of LEA maintenance grants for students and their replacement by self-financing through loans, and the introduction of the system whereby students make a contribution to their tuition fees - for which there is some means-tested assistance available. At the time the 1999 report was prepared, only first year students were affected by these changes; by 2002 they applied to the vast majority of students.

This report concentrates on students in the 18-24 age group, who account for the majority of those currently in higher education, and is based largely on specially commissioned qualitative research in the form of four focus groups among male and female students in this age band. The groups took place during term-time, in January 2002, with students at universities in the South and Midlands. The composition of the groups was as follows:

1. 1st year students, Midlands

2. 2nd/3rd year students, Midlands

3. 1st year students, South

4. 2nd/3rd year students, South

Other recent reports in the Lifestyle series include:

- Special Report, Marketing to Tomorrows Consumer, 2002

- Special Report, Marketing to 11-14s, 2002

- Special Report, British Lifestyles, 2002

- Special Report, Marketing to Children Between 7-10, 2002

- Special Report, Marketing to Rural Areas, 2001

- Special Report, Marketing to Londoners, 2001

- Special Report, Innovators/Early Adaptors/Followers, 2001

- Special report, Marketing to ABs, 2001

- Special Report, Gay Lifestyles, 2001

- Special Report, Healthy Lifestyles, 2001

- Special Report, Marketing to Singles, 2001

- Special Report, British Lifestyles, 2001

- Special Report, 2020 Vision: Tomorrow's Consumer 2000

- Special Report, Third Age - A Time to Travel, 2000

- Special Report, Family Lifestyles & The Effects of Work, 2000

- Special Report, Scottish Lifestyles, 2000

- Special Report, Two-earner Couple Households, 2000.