Segmentation of financial clients by attitudes and behavior: A comparison between Switzerland and Vietnam

The purpose of this paper is to investigate segmentations by finance-related attitudes and behavior of financial consumers in Switzerland and Vietnam.

The authors replicated the questionnaire measuring attitudes toward financial affairs as used in the study of Fünfgeld and Wang (2009). In order to extract factors and identify profiles of financial customers, the authors applied the same techniques including factor analysis and a two-step cluster analysis (Ward and K-means) to both samples. Linear regressions were used to examine the impact of socio-demographic variables.

Factor analysis reveals surprisingly similar underlying dimensions of financial attitudes and behavior for participants in both countries. The five clusters based on these dimensions exhibit strikingly similar characteristics. The authors also find that socio-demographic variables such as gender, age and education significantly vary across groups.

There are small differences in the composition of the revealed dimensions between the two countries, mainly a mixture of intuitive decisions and free-spending aspects. Future research may investigate more countries with comparable samples to further test the reliabilities and validities of the scales.

The findings suggest that the instruments as developed by Fünfgeld and Wang (2009) can be used not only in highly developed Western markets but also in non-Western and emerging markets. Such instruments can be very useful for offering financial advice based on market segmentation in a global market.

The study provides empirical evidence on universal segmentation variables that reflect financial consumers’ psychological traits and attitudes toward saving and spending. Furthermore, the study stresses the need for a broad use of those variables when studying consumer decision-making in international financial markets.