1. Investment Decision Making

2. Investment In the past personal stock brokers were a persons main source of information on when to buy and sell stock. With advances in the internet all that information has become available 24/7 to all consumers making personal brokers irrelevant. We are going to assess three different ad campaigns and look at their approaches to getting your business. These businesses are E*TRADE, Charles Schwab and Scottrade.

3. Scottrade is the best priced firm among these discount brokers - flat- rate $7 commission on stock and ETF trades. They are tied or rank ahead of E*trade and Charles Schwabs in: Investment products, trading tools, customer service and research according to Brokerage review. “launched a new integrated advertising campaign showcasing enhancements to its Scottrader® Streaming Quotes online trading tool, which offers self directed investors charts, quotes and live market news for monitoring their investments in real-time”.

4. E*trade have somewhat more expensive, $9.99 per trade rate. “Rather than pushing traditional uninspired ads out to consumers, E*TRADE has created an advertising campaign that’s so funny, people take the initiative to seek them out on their YouTube channel where over 4 million people have viewed their latest video”on their YouTube channeltheir latest video Over the past year the net profit margin has decreases 1.17%

5. Charles Schwab lowered its commissions and comes in second with flat $8.95 per trade The talk to Chuck campaign has been running since 2005. The recent introduction of “Investors Rule” to the campaign serves as a call to arms for investors to demand better from investment firms. This ad campaign has won numerous awards such as the Oglivy award. “Schwab was cited as "the best of the best" for successfully utilizing research to produce an ad campaign that achieves exceptional business results”. Recorded a net profit margin of 10.69% in the last 12 month

6. How it relates to class The more complex or risky the decision, the more evaluation is needed Prediction market: groups of people with knowledge about an industry are jointly better predictors of the future than are any individuals Capitalize on relative advantage: convince consumers that particular product attributes are important in brand choice Experiential perspective: consumers buy based on totality of products appeal Information search: process by which consumer surveys the environment for appropriate data make reasonable decisions Semiotics (object): The object is the product that is the focus of the message

7. Relation to class continued In collective decisions, one may play any (or all) of the following roles: Initiator: bring up idea or identifies need Gatekeeper: conducts information search Influencer: sways outcome of decision Buyer: actually makes the purchase User: winds up using product

8. Questions Which company do you think is most effective at getting its message out to consumers? Do you think the comedy appeal is the best or a more conventional approach like Scottrade and Charles Schwab uses?

9. References http://www.brokerage-review.com/stock-broker-reviews/etrade- review.aspx http://www.brokerage-review.com/stock-broker-reviews/etrade- review.aspx http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/stock-price?symbol=SCHW http://about.scottrade.com/news/releases/2011/Scottrade-Launches- Integrated-Ad-Campaign-to-Showcase-New-Online-Trading-Tools.html Youtube http://www.ehow.com/facts_5844159_online-investing-vs_-personal- broker.html