The entrepreneurial motivations, cognitive factors, and barriers to become a fashion entrepreneur: A direction to curriculum development for fashion entrepreneurship education

Abstract

Research in the field of entrepreneurship education has been studied extensively, but fashion domain-based entrepreneurship has been neglected and does not have nearly the same amount of extant literature. This study focused on the role of individual characteristics in the process of pursuing fashion entrepreneurship. A qualitative research method was employed to collect data through the use of an online open-ended questionnaire. A total of 133 fashion majors who are interested in being fashion entrepreneurs after graduation were recruited from a large university in the United States. The analysis using Nvivo 11 identifies entrepreneurial motivations, cognitive factors, and barriers to start and operate fashion businesses, and necessary training and assistance college fashion students prefer to receive. This paper contributes to the current literature by providing empirical evidence to the entrepreneurial motivation theory in a more specific fashion entrepreneurship context, and the direction for the development of fashion entrepreneurship curriculum based on the point view of college students from fashion majors.