The Interplay of Life Events, Religion, and Consumption in Islamic Banking

Since marketers first entered the financial services arena they have sought to explain consumer purchasing behavior. To this end, a wide range of approaches have been utilized over the years, with mixed results. Many have attempted to profile consumers through the use of sociodemographic, psychographic, and other means [see for example, Branca (2008)]. The results, however, often had limited use for practitioners wanting to know not only who will buy and why, but also more importantly, when. The family life cycle (FLC) model went some way to resolve this, but, family patterns have changed and attempts to modernize the FLC have not always improved predictive ability (Wagner and Hanna 1983). Life events, which can provide an indication of FLC and identify a point in time when an event triggers changes in behavior, appear to provide a potential solution, and indeed are widely used by financial services practitioners. However, the life event concept has also been challenged, in particular, whether it is the life event itself that triggers a change in behavior or whether it is changes associated with the life event (such as an increase/decrease in disposable income) that result in the changed behavior.