Individual investors and internet financial communication

This research aims at understanding how individual investors use internet and all traditional media to identify information and build their investment decisions.

Before this study we developed several researches concerning financial information disclosure on the internet (Pozniak, 2010; Pozniak & Croquet, 2011; Pozniak; 2013). We also met managers of listed small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) to understand their point of view about internet financial communication (Pozniak & Guillemette, 2013).

In this study we want to confront our first findings with the other side of financial communication. Our goal is to pinpoint the communication’s target : individual investors.

To reach our research goals and understand the point of view of individual investors, we decided to use a qualitative approach. The epistemological positioning of qualitative researches is that we can only have access to what a person feels and what sense he gives to an event by listening to what he says. In qualitative research, the researcher tries to get data about people’s perception from the inside (Miles & Huberman, 2003). The analysis of our 15 interviews of 1, 5 hours each allows us to identify some interesting results:
- The family habits and the influence of parents on the interest for stock exchange investments;
- The influence of finance skills or the lack of finance skills on the method chosen at investments level (alone or with an intermediate);
- In the same spirit, the professional background seems important;
- The difference between man and woman in matter of investments criteria;
- The influence of age;
- The event at the origin of first investment.
Finally we also developed some investor’s profiles regarding the above characteristics.

JEL: M15, G10, C50, O32.