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This study aims to examine the interplay between focal and background goals in consumer financial decision-making and identify conditions that lead individuals to trade-off financial returns for background goals.

The current research reviews the relevant literature on consumer financial decision-making and goal systems theory to develop a set of hypotheses that is tested using three experiments.

The experiments show that individuals who have been subtly primed with self-expressive background goals, or experienced progress toward the focal goal of financial returns, accept lower financial returns for the opportunity to invest in stocks that allow for increased self-expression. Further, while subtly primed background goals exert a non-normative influence on investment decisions, explicit cues about an investment’s background goal-instrumentality create a backlash effect, and decrease individuals’ willingness to trade-off financial returns.

Future research could confirm the robustness of the findings of the present research by using different priming tasks and alternative ways of making the background goal explicit to individuals.

To achieve greater attraction among individual investors, it helps to frame a financial product or stock in communications materials in a way that sends subtle signals with which investors can identify. Such signals could include stressing the product/company’s home country (addressing individuals’ patriotism) or a particular product domain (addressing individual investors’ desire for interesting/exciting current/future products).

While previous research suggests that investment choices may be influenced by self-expressive motivations, to date, it remains unclear whether and when individual investors are actually willing to trade-off the focal goal of maximizing financial returns for the opportunity to satisfy alternative background goals.

The paper aims to identify which factors determine (German) retail banking customers' intention to adopt a new remuneration system for financial advice. The new system is a pay‐per‐use advisory model that supersedes existing commission‐based advisory approaches.

The paper develops and tests a comprehensive conceptual framework that includes perceived innovation characteristics, relationship quality, and socio‐demographic and psychographic variables to explain adoption intentions of the new remuneration system. The data come from a survey among clients of a large German retail bank.

Perceived innovation characteristics (i.e. relative advantage) largely determine the intention to adopt the fee‐based advisory model. Consumer and relationship quality variables do not directly impact adoption intentions, but have an indirect effect through influencing perceived innovation characteristics and moderating their relative importance. Relationship quality indicators, such as satisfaction with the current service and trust in the bank or its employees, do not impact customers' intentions to switch to the new remuneration system.

The paper describes a (case) study using data from a large German retail bank. Future research may investigate the findings' (international) generalizability using different datasets and also assess additional drivers of customers' intentions to adopt a fee‐based advisory model.

The results suggest that banks should always explain the relative advantage of financial service innovations to their clients, as existing satisfaction and trust levels are not sufficient to ensure adoption.

This is the first paper examining the adoption of a new remuneration system for financial advice in the retail banking industry. By assessing a variety of variables the authors increase understanding of why customers adopt or reject such complex and difficult to evaluate service innovations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential spill-over effects from negative (and positive) experiences with trading a company’s stock on shareowner-customers’ emotions and subsequent customer attitudes and behavior.

A conceptual framework that links selling a stock for a loss (or gain), emotions, and customer attitudes and behaviors is developed. The framework is tested with data from a sample of Dutch investors that is analyzed with structural equation modeling through the partial least squares method in SmartPLS.

Selling a stock for a loss vs selling a stock for a gain have different effects on shareowner-customers’ attitudes and behavior toward the company. Losses induce negative emotions which in turn result in lower satisfaction and behavioral loyalty as well as in increased propensity to complain about the company. Investment gains, however, result in more positive emotions which then lead to increased preference of the company whose stocks were traded over its competitors and increased engagement in positive word-of-mouth (WOM).

The study is focussed on shareowner-customers’ experiences with stocks of companies active in the consumer industry. Future research could address whether the results generalize to other industries.

The findings emphasize the importance of a close collaboration between the marketing and investor relation departments. Complaints of shareowner-customers should be taken seriously and incentives to stimulate repurchases as well as those that encourage positive WOM engagement are recommended.

This is the first study to examine possible negative spill-over effects from experiences obtained during stock trading on shareowner-customers’ attitudes and behaviors toward the stock’s company.

The purpose of this paper is to show the role of educational diversity in improving investor relations (IR) quality and examine how this impacts the number of shareholder activism incidents a firm encounters.

The paper reviews literature on marketing, finance, and corporate communications to develop a conceptual framework which is tested using a combination of secondary data and primary data collected through a survey amongst IR professionals working at companies in the Euronext 100 stock index.

The empirical results support the conceptual framework, showing higher IR quality levels and lower shareholder activism intensity for companies with educationally diverse IR teams. In particular, the presence of marketing and communication experts in IR teams contributes to higher IR quality and lower shareholder activism.

Future research may investigate the robustness of the results with larger and internationally diversified samples and examine how, besides educational diversity, other organizational arrangements through which finance professionals work together with marketing and communication professionals impact IR quality.

The results suggest that to improve their IR quality and minimize shareholder activism, companies should check and when necessary increase the educational diversity of their IR teams.

This is the first paper investigating the role of educational diversity on IR quality and the impact on shareholder activism, developing and testing an innovative conceptual framework that integrates marketing, finance, and corporate communication theory.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a conceptual as well as an empirical link between retail banks’ activities to protect their customers from third‐party fraud, the quality of customer relationships, and customer loyalty.

A conceptual framework is developed linking customer familiarity with and knowledge about fraud prevention measures, relationship quality, and customer loyalty. To empirically test the conceptual framework, data were collected in collaboration with a large German retail bank.

A positive association was found between customer familiarity with and knowledge about fraud prevention measures and the quality of customer relationships as measured by satisfaction, trust, and commitment. The quality of customer relationships, in turn, is positively associated with customer loyalty as measured by intentions to continue their relationship with and cross‐buy other products from their bank.

The paper focuses on the German retail banking market and uses data from only one bank. Future research may investigate the generalizability of the findings across other banks, as well as other countries. Moreover, future research could address how specific anti‐fraud instruments and their communication differentially affect customer satisfaction, trust, and commitment.

The results stress the importance of fraud prevention for retail banks and show that besides the financial objective of reducing operating costs, fraud prevention and its effective communication is a meaningful way to improve customer relationship quality and, ultimately, customer loyalty.

This is the first academic study to empirically examine the relationship between a retail bank's (communication about) fraud prevention mechanisms and the quality of their customer relationships.

The purpose of the paper is to examine how psychological characteristics predict membership of and transitions between states of higher vs lower financial vulnerability – and vice versa – over time.

This research uses a dynamic latent class model (latent transition analysis) to explore the dynamics of consumers’ financial vulnerability over time using longitudinal data obtained by repeatedly administering a measure of financial vulnerability.

This research finds that consumers in a state of lower vulnerability are “fragile” in having a relatively high likelihood of moving to a state of higher vulnerability, whereas those in a state of higher vulnerability are “entrenched” in having a relatively low likelihood of moving to a state of lower vulnerability. This pattern of results is called the “financial vulnerability trap.” While financial self-efficacy explains state membership, the consideration of future consequences drives state transitions.

Future research could follow consumers over a longer period and consider the role of alternative psychological characteristics besides those examined.

This research provides practitioners with actionable insights regarding the drivers of changes in consumers’ financial vulnerability across time, showing the value of financial self-efficacy and the consideration of future consequences when developing strategies to prevent consumers from sliding from a state of lower to higher financial vulnerability over time.

There is scant research on financial vulnerability. Further, prior research has not examined whether and how consumers’ psychological characteristics help explain their membership of and transitions between states of different levels of financial vulnerability over time.

Prior work expresses concern about young people's rising debt and lack of financial preparedness. This study focuses on how financial socialization and psychological characteristics affect the personal financial management behavior (PFMB) of young professionals in India. The authors examine both the direct effect of these factors and the indirect effects through financial literacy and aforementioned psychological characteristics as mediators.

The authors develop a conceptual framework based on the extant literature and empirically test its hypotheses employing partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

Attitude towards money, financial self-efficacy, financial risk tolerance, financial socialization through parental direct teaching and peers, and media are all positively associated with young professionals' PFMB, whereas external locus of control and procrastination are negatively associated with their PFMB. Almost all psychological characteristics partially mediate the association between financial socialization and PFMB. Finally, financial literacy plays a partially mediating role in the association between procrastination and PFMB as well as between financial socialization and PFMB.

This study helps regulators and policymakers understand PFMB among young professionals. Interventions should build on the positive role of financial socialization, cultivating a good attitude towards money and financial self-efficacy, and reducing reliance on an external locus of control and procrastination. This study also helps policymakers and financial educators develop societally beneficial personal finance programs.

This research investigates social, psychological and cognitive characteristics in a comprehensive framework to further the authors’ understanding of the topic of PFMB.

This study aims to identify key factors driving consumers' adoption of Open Banking. It extends the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) by integrating perceived risk, initial trust and financial literacy into an overarching conceptual model.

Measurement items of the theoretical constructs included in the conceptual model were adapted from related literature and a set of hypotheses was developed. The hypotheses of the conceptual model were subsequently assessed with partial least squares structural equation modeling using a dataset of 456 Australian survey respondents.

The model has strong explanatory power with an R² of 69.5%. Performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and perceived risk are direct antecedents of consumers' usage intention of Open Banking. Social influence has a strong mediating effect on usage intention through performance expectancy. The effect of perceived risk is alleviated by effort expectancy and initial trust, while initial trust positively affects the effects of performance expectancy and effort expectancy on consumers' usage intention of Open Banking. Finally, financial literacy lowers initial trust towards Open Banking, possibly inducing consumer skepticism.

The results suggest that practitioners should focus on performance expectancy as a primary driver of Open Banking adoption, while understanding the role of other drivers, such as social influence and perceived risk in developing marketing strategies. Policy makers are recommended to adopt a governance approach to build initial trust amongst consumers.

This research contributes by providing an integrated and comprehensive model for explaining consumers' FinTech adoptions by extending the existing technology adoption model UTAUT to the Open Banking domain and integrating perceived risk, initial trust and financial literacy, thereby advancing and enriching the conceptual horizon of the extant literature.