Digital technology in financial services is helping consumers gain wider access to investment funds, acquire these funds at lower costs, and customize their own investments. However, direct digital access also creates new challenges because consumers may make suboptimal investment decisions. We address the challenge that consumers often face complex investment decisions involving multiple funds. Normative optimal asset allocation theory prescribes that investors should simultaneously optimize risk–returns over their entire portfolio. We propose two behavioral effects (mental separation and correlation neglect) that prevent consumers from doing so and a new choice architecture of virtually integrating investment funds that can help overcome these effects. Results from three experiments, using general population samples, provide support for the predicted behavioral effects and the beneficial impact ofvirtual integration. We find that consumers’ behavioral biases are not overcome by financial literacy, which further underlines the marketing relevance of this research.

中文翻译：

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多基金消费者投资的数字化定制：虚拟整合改善风险回报决策

金融服务领域的数字技术正在帮助消费者获得更广泛的投资基金，以更低的成本获得这些基金，并定制自己的投资。然而，直接数字访问也带来了新的挑战，因为消费者可能会做出次优的投资决策。我们应对消费者经常面临涉及多个基金的复杂投资决策的挑战。规范最优资产配置理论规定，投资者应该同时优化整个投资组合的风险收益。我们提出了两种阻止消费者这样做的行为效应（心理分离和相关性忽视），以及一种可以帮助克服这些影响的虚拟整合投资基金的新选择架构。三个实验的结果，使用一般人群样本，为预测的行为效果和虚拟集成的有益影响提供支持。我们发现金融知识无法克服消费者的行为偏见，这进一步强调了本研究的营销相关性。