The purpose of this paper is to study the individual investors’ preferences towards stock selection in social media environments. The study is conducted to understand the implications and conceptual directions for the corporates and financial advisors to understand the choices of individual investors applied in financial markets. Further, this study aims to examine the selection of the most preferred social media platform and behavioral intentions of investors towards selection of investment portfolios in Indian stock markets.,A questionnaire was designed based on the technique of conjoint analysis and was responded by 428 respondents belonging to the Northern region of India. The estimation of preference functions in Conjoint Analysis was designed by using orthogonal arrays and was calculated using the ordinary least square regression technique.,This study reveals that while making selection of desired investment portfolios, the investors give highest preference to social media platforms in terms of highest utility value and range followed by their preference for behavioral intentions to invest. Among different social media platforms, the investors preferred Twitter the most, followed by Facebook and the primary interest of investors was observed towards Intra-day trading purposes and balanced portfolio investments in financial markets. The major reason behind opting the social media platforms was selection of speculative stocks.,The actual individual investment behavior cannot be observed through the survey, which limits the external validity of the study.,The paper presents a very important practical tool that can help financial advisors, opinion leaders and corporates in defining their target audience more sharply for investment-related advice. The findings revealed by the study will put them in a better position to understand how investors differ behaviorally and they will get acquainted with their choices and preferences while making investment decisions in the backdrop of social media environments. The preferences of the investors based on social media usage discovered by the study will not only enable the individual investors understand their own preferences, but those of the other investors as well in terms of planned investment decisions and choices.,The paper is a first of its kind to empirically identify the individual investors and their preferences and choices by applying conjoint analysis in the new social media environment. The study thus integrates the gap between marketing theories and emerging theories of behavioral finance to understand the investor behavior in a better way.

中文翻译：

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寻找股票或进行蓝筹投资？

本文的目的是研究社交媒体环境中个人投资者对股票选择的偏好。进行这项研究是为了了解公司和财务顾问了解金融市场中个人投资者选择的含义和概念指导。此外，本研究旨在检查最优选的社交媒体平台的选择和投资者对印度股票市场投资组合选择的行为意图。基于联合分析技术设计了问卷，并由428名受访者回答到印度北部地区。联合分析中偏好函数的估计是通过使用正交数组设计的，并使用普通的最小二乘回归技术进行计算。这项研究表明，在选择所需的投资组合时，就最高效用价值和范围而言，投资者对社交媒体平台的偏好最高，其次为对行为意图的投资偏好。在不同的社交媒体平台中，投资者最喜欢Twitter，其次是Facebook，观察到投资者对日内交易目的和金融市场均衡投资的主要兴趣。选择社交媒体平台的主要原因是投机性股票的选择。通过调查无法观察到实际的个人投资行为，这限制了研究的外部有效性。本文提出了一种非常重要的实用工具，可以帮助金融业顾问，意见领袖和公司，以便更明确地确定目标受众，以获取与投资有关的建议。该研究揭示的发现将使他们处于更好的位置，以了解投资者在行为上有何不同，并且他们将在社交媒体环境下做出投资决策时熟悉其选择和偏好。通过研究发现，基于社交媒体使用情况的投资者偏好不仅可以使个人投资者了解自己的偏好，而且还可以使其他投资者在计划的投资决策和选择方面有所了解。通过在新的社交媒体环境中进行联合分析，以实证方式识别个人投资者及其偏好和选择的一种方法。