Timely Research on Personal Savings published in Journal of Marketing

Nicole Mead Associate Professor of Marketing
Nicole Mead

Schulich Associate Professor of Marketing Nicole Mead recently had a paper chosen over 300 other submissions for publication in the Journal of Marketing’s special issue on Better Marketing for a Better World.

“This research has the potential to improve people’s lives in these challenging times. My co-authors and I have developed a simple, inexpensive, and easy-to-implement intervention that can help people to save more money,” said Professor Mead.

Popping the Positive Illusion of Financial Responsibility Can Increase Personal Savings: Applications in Emerging and Western Markets argues that people hold unrealistically positive beliefs about their financial status because this enables them to feel good about themselves. However, these overly positive self-views prevent people from saving. Therefore researchers need to develop interventions which pop this positive illusion to encourage saving.

The paper includes studies conducted in Canada, the US, as well as Uganda, as co-author Daniel Gregg does a lot of field research there. The people of Uganda and the context were perfect because Ugandans in particular wanted to save more but experienced many daily barriers to doing so.

The research the paper conducted could be even more impactful during COVID-19.

“Before the pandemic hit, many countries were reporting record low saving rates and record high debt loads. The pandemic made it very clear to both households and the government the importance of having an emergency savings fund. Hopefully expediting saving will continue to be a prominent conversation in the lives of people around the world,” Mead said.