Entrepreneurial Intention: An Exploratory Study of Fashion Students

Abstract

Consumers’ new shopping patterns and emerging technologies have created various opportunities, as well as challenges for fashion entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship education plays a vital role in cultivating entrepreneurship and innovation, and can help to shape a person’s entrepreneurial disposition, skills, and competence (Kuratko, 2005), all of which are essential for realization of entrepreneurship in enterprises (Unger et al., 2011). Due to limited research on entrepreneurial intentions of fashion students, it is crucial to discover what factors are relatively more important for cultivating entrepreneurial intentions among fashion students. This study used in-depth interviews with open-ended questions from September 2016 to December 2016 to uncover valuable themes regarding this topic. Findings of this study indicate that both internal and external factors contribute to fashion students’ entrepreneurial intentions. The findings provide valuable insights for policy makers and fashion educators to promote entrepreneurship education and provide better support for fashion students to pursue entrepreneurial success.