Lifestyle of the tight and frugal: Theory and measurement

Who has not known a tightwad? Yet this pervasive consumer trait-being fruga l-has been ignored in the scholarly consumer behavior literature. This rese arch articulates the nature of this overlooked consumer trait and then deve lops, evaluates, and empirically applies a multi-item scale of frugality. T he results from a six-study program of empirical research are reported. The se studies describe (1) the psychometric properties of a frugality measure, (2) demonstrations of how frugality assists the empirical study of consume r usage and acquisition behaviors, and (3) frugality scale norms from a pro bability sample of the general adult population.