Live for today. Live for tomorrow. Which one are you?

On the surface it may seem pretty easy to describe a customer segment using these labels. After all, you could use account balance data (savings, checking, retirement, investments, debt, etc) and basic demographic data (age, marital status, household income, etc) to paint a behavioral picture. You could even conduct surveys, interviews and focus groups to determine rational, emotional and social motivations to overlay attitudinal detail. You would have a pretty good portrait of these groups based on all of this, but consider the following. 

On any given day, I know I can make a purchase decision and spend a little more based on a live for today attitude. At the very next purchase decision, however, I tend to spend less based on a live for tomorrow motivation. Did guilt over the previous purchase influences the next purchase? Absolutely. But the guilt merry-go-round doesn't end there, because on the next purchase decision I'll tend to spend a little more. Feeling the guilt over acting cheaply. Guilt is a complex emotion. The point here is that emotional motivations tend to have more influence over our purchase decisions than we tend to admit (especially in a research setting where we want to appear smart).

So where does this leave us? I think the conclusion here is that these attitudinal labels -- "live for today & live for tomorrow"  -- are not set in stone. Instead, they represent two ends of a continuum. One where people are likely striving for a balance in their behavior. So it's likely that you are both living for today and living for tomorrow.

For financial service marketers rich with behavioral data, beware the emotional and social motivations of your customers. It may not always appear to be what it seems.