ارزش برند بورس اوراق بهادار به عنوان یک واسطه گر در تصمیمات مالی Brand equity of stock exchange as a mediator in financial decisions

Introduction Investment decisions differ from other decision types by the level of risk associated (Dorn and Huberman 2010). They usually involve higher levels of risk than other kinds of purchase decisions (Noussair et al. 2014). This risk factor in financial decisions makes return and loss an issue for investors more than for other consumer types. The factors which have important implications on financial decisions at a microlevel include heuristics, which are the cognitional or emotion-based biases or simplifying decision rules for investment decisions (Hauser 2014; Mousavi and Gigerenzer 2014). Empirical studies indicate that about 50% of people intuitively rely on heuristics (Huberman and Wei 2006). Examples of these heuristics include availability bias, overconfidence, endowment bias, cognitive dissonance and framing bias (Pompian 2006). At a macrolevel, on the other hand, corporate brands and such brand-related variables as brand equity, reputation, performance and trust govern financial decisions as brands gain increasingly more importance not only for customers but also for stakeholders including investors (Aspara 2013; Fischer and Himme 2016). Besides these corporate brands, stock markets, or stock exchanges as a manifestation of the financial market, are considered to have significant impacts on investor decisions by means of the overall brand equity that they resonate for their actual and potential investors. Thus, it is suggested that brand equity of a stock exchange might add to or detract from investors’ risk perception on the way to influence their investment intention. To the best of our knowledge, there has been little research on this perspective, i.e., the brand equity of stock exchange for individual investors as an important influencer in the relationship between risk and investment intention, and thus is worth investigating. The first section opens with the theoretical background. It later develops into the method used in the study. The last section includes the discussion of the results obtained, conclusion and practical implications and ends with the limitations and further research.