259 www.palgrave-journals.com/fsm © 2008 Palgrave Macmillan 1363-0539 Vol. 13, 3 259–267 Journal of Financial Services Marketing INTRODUCTION The earth’ s population is maturing and literature in marketing has long been recognised the importance of the growing market segment for the mature consumers. It has been estimated that there were nearly 35 million people 65 years of age or older in 2000 in the US and the age group would double in size by the year of 2030 and constitute 33 per cent of the US population. 1 The market for mature consumers has long Correspondence: Georgia State University, 35 Broad Street, Suite 1300, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA. Tel: +404 413 7670; Fax: +404 413 7699; e-mail: mktgpm@langate.gsu.edu been considered to be very attractive because of the segment’ s wealth and discretionary spending power. Understanding the market segment is then definitely important to marketers of both profit and nonprofit organisations. With reference to age, consumers are not homogeneous. The differences in attitudes and behaviours between the older and the young consumers have been well documented in literature with respect to various factors. John J. Burnett (1991) listed many such factors including media habits, 2 socialisation, 3 adoption of technologies, 4 complaint behaviour, 5 shopping behaviour, 6 general expenditure patterns, 7 and information processing. 8 The differences in Affluent mature consumers: Preference and patronisation for financial services Received (in revised form): 20th August, 2008 George P. Moschis is Professor of Marketing and an Alfred Bernhardt Research Professor at the J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, as well as serving as the Director of the Center for Mature Consumer Studies. His area of interest is consumer behaviour of different generations. He has published extensively in leading journals in marketing and is the author of seven books. He has been a marketing consultant for many Fortune 500 companies, and has been pioneer in developing educational materials on marketing to older adults. Hung Vu Nguyen is a PhD student in marketing at the Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University. He graduated from Foreign Trade University in Vietnam before coming to the US. He holds an MBA degree from University of North Alabama. He worked for several companies in Vietnam, including Vietnam Datacommunication Corporation, Acorn Marketing and Research Consultants Ltd, and Hyundai Pentatel Ltd. His main areas of interest include mature consumer behavior and international marketing. Abstract Mature consumers have long been recognised as an important segment of market that no marketers of financial-service providers could ignore. The segment itself, however, is not homogeneous. Our study further segments the market basing on income and contrasts the differences between upscale mature consumers and lower scale ones in terms of their preference and patronisation for financial services. The study based on two large-scale studies designed to generate information that would fill gaps in our existing knowledge about upscale older consumers. Implications are discussed for marketers of financial services to fine-tune their differentiation strategies. Journal of Financial Services Marketing (2008) 13, 259–267. doi:10.1057/fsm.2008.20 Keywords Financial services, marketing, mature consumers, affluent mature consumers, strategy