Pensions and retirement savings: cluster analysis of consumer behaviour and attitudes

Purpose – The aim of this article is to obtain a better understanding of people's motivation and behaviour with respect to provision for their retirement. Design/methodology/approach – This study examines variation in behaviour and attitudes towards pensions and retirement saving among consumers of financial service products, using data from a questionnaire survey. Findings – A cluster analysis indicates that consumers can be divided into six clusters, with distinctive demographic, economic, behavioural and attitudinal traits for each cluster. Of particular interest is the finding that members of two of the clusters reported a general tendency to be in debt in the short term, whilst at the same time putting money away for retirement through either a company pension or voluntary regular saving. Research limitations/implications – The data set is composed of people who enquired about products offered by the financial services industry. This makes the findings by definition relevant to marketing pensions and retirement savings products to this set of people. It is not clear to what extent they apply to the population as a whole; this would be a useful further study. Originality/value – The key contribution of this study is that the identification of target groups could ultimately lead to enhanced abilities for pension providers to develop customised pension and saving products for those groups.