Family life cycle and the life course paradigm: A four-country comparative study of consumer expenditures

Marketers and academics have long been trying to develop effective segmentation models such as several versions of the family life cycle (FLC), which predicts behavior based on stages people are expected to sequentially experience during their lives. However, stage-based factors have been found poor predictors of consumer behavior, and assumptions held by the FLC model fall short of reality. Despite limitations inherent in family life cycle models and recent developments in other disciplines that have resulted in the replacement of the term “life cycle” with the more continuous concept of the “life course,” marketers are yet to capitalize on such recent developments for improving FLC models. This study shows how the traditional FLC model can be improved by incorporating variables from the life course paradigm (LCP). Although the databases employed do not permit the development of refined FLC stages for testing various assumptions derived from the LCP, the paper provides a “sensitizing” framework for thinking how to improve efforts to study consumers at different FLC stages.