While accounting for interaction satisfaction and demographics, C. Lourenço, B. Dellaert, and B. Donkers find that consumers’ perceptions of trust in and expertise of a firm providing online pension investment advice are important drivers of advice acceptance, and that these two constructs are clearly influenced by two key firm characteristics, profit orientation (for-profit vs. not-for-profit) and role in the sales channel (product provider vs. advisor-only).
Interestingly, and according to the data from large-scale survey-experiments, a ‘for-profit’ orientation can be seen as a double jeopardy for advisors because it negatively impacts consumer perceptions of both expertise and trustworthiness.
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