Correspondence: Debra Grace, Department of Marketing, Griffith Business School, Griffith University, PMB 50, Gold Coast Mail Centre, Queensland 9726, Australia. Tel: +617 55528027; Fax: +617 55528085; e-mail: D.grace@griffith.edu.au

¹is a senior lecturer in Marketing at Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia. She holds a Bachelor of Business with Honours in Marketing and Management and a PhD in Marketing. Her research and teaching interests lie within the services marketing, branding and consumer behaviour areas. As such, she has a number of publications within journals that have their focus in these areas such as Journal of Services Marketing, European Journal of Marketing and Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services.

²is a senior lecturer in the Department of Marketing, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia. His research interests include franchising and small business management and his research has been published in international journals including the European Journal of Marketing, Academy of Marketing Science Review, Journal of Business Ethics and International Small Business Journal.

³is a CPA-qualified accountant with a Bachelor of Business with Honours from Griffith University. Sharlene's research interests include superannuation, governance and strategic management accounting. Sharlene has published conference papers at CAUTHE in 2004 and AAFANZ in 2004 and 2005.

Received 27 September 2007; Revised 27 September 2007.

Abstract

This study examines consumer involvement in the context of superannuation in order to gain an understanding of this important consumer behaviour construct in a forced consumption situation, that is, compulsory superannuation. In doing so, associations between involvement and consumer knowledge, consideration of future consequences (CFC), age and education are proposed and tested. Data were gathered via self-report survey from 329 respondents from four regions in south-east Queensland representing a diverse socio-economic spread. The results of regression analysis clearly indicate that subjective knowledge, age and CFC are positively associated with involvement in relation to superannuation. Findings in relation to objective knowledge and education were not significant. The findings indicate that, in practical terms, marketing efforts should be concentrated, not only on the provision of information in relation to superannuation, but, more importantly, also on attitude change with the objective of stimulating need recognition in younger superannuation consumers.