“Financial products are consumer products”

“People in finance often think of financial products like stocks and bonds as being entirely unique, different from products like roses, watches, and cars. This is just ridiculous. People buy financial products for the same reasons they buy consumer products: because they benefit from it on a utilitarian, expressive, or emotional level. For people who are socially responsible, for example, having tobacco stocks in their portfolio is like for an orthodox jew to eat pork, it just doesn’t work. Marketing and finance are inextricably connected. To really understand investor behavior, people in finance should acknowledge this”, according to Meir Statman.

References

This video interview with Statman was recorded at Tilburg University in March 2010, and is based on Statman’s book What investors really want.

This article may be reproduced according to our terms of use with attribution (and link, if online) to www.tias.edu. To be cited as: “Financial products are consumer products”, Meir Statman, www.tias.edu, August 30, 2011.

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Low-res video (mp4)
Audio transcript (mp3)

Author(s)

Meir Statman
Glenn Klimek Professor of Finance, Santa Clara University