| The low personal saving rate of Americans has personal and national economic ramifications for citizens. Thus, we need to understand what affects it and how. Although marketing does affect the personal saving rate, how it specifically influences the rate is not known.; Economists have studied saving behavior mostly at the aggregate level, and the models of household behavior give little attention to the processes or variables at the micro level, which could increase the predictive value of the models. Psychological models have not addressed saving behavior specifically. An integrative, predictive model of consumer saving behavior is presented in an effort to explain the economic anomalies of: (1) rational and optimizing consumers and (2) the fungibility of wealth, found in the Life Cycle Hypothesis of Saving (Modigliani and Brumberg, 1954) and the Permanent Income Hypothesis (Friedman, 1957).; The model includes both economic and psychological aspects. It is an augmentation of the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1985) and includes the Perceived Behavioral Control (PBC), Attitude, Perceived Subjective Norms (PSN), Mental Accounting, Intentions, and Saving Behavior constructs. A number of hypotheses are derived which are related to the relationship of the various model constructs, and which have direct implications for financial marketing strategy.; The results indicate that the collection of constructs form a model that can be used to predict if someone will save. A surprising finding was the discovery of two saving behavior factors instead of one. It seems that saving behavior may be dimensionalized by consumers. It was also shown that mental accounting does occur and does mediate intentions. Findings concerning the relationship between PBC, Attitude, PSN, and Mental Accounting; and implications for future research are discussed. |
