| Consumers actively seek professional advice in many contexts, including personal finance, legal, medical care, and home repair. The purchase of professional advisory services, although quite common in many domains of consumer behavior, has not received a rigorous, systematic examination in the marketing literature. Despite Hollander's (1971) assertion that consumer purchase models should be expanded to "include the decision to seek professional guidance" (p. 240), marketing academics have ignored this phenomenon. This research addresses the gap in the marketing literature by conceptualizing and testing a structural equation model of individual investors' advice-seeking behavior in the financial planning context.; Specifically, we argue that there are two main antecedents of advice-seeking disposition: perceived risk in depending on oneself and the desire for control. It is hypothesized (a) that perceived risk in depending on oneself is influenced by subjective expertise, time pressure, access to information, perceived environmental uncertainty, and perceived importance of goal attainment, and (b) that the desire for control is determined by intrinsic motivation and trust.; Using data collected through a mail survey among a sample of individual investors, we develop and test a structural equation model using LISREL 8.20 (Joreskog and Sorbom 1998b). To account for the multivariate nonnormality in the data, we use the asymptotic distribution-free (ADF) estimation method recommended by Browne (1982, 1984).; The results of the analysis show that the model is acceptable. In particular, the findings demonstrate that individual investors seek professional advice because of the perceived risk in depending on oneself (PRDO) and desire for control (DC). Furthermore, we find strong evidence for the effects of subjective expertise, time pressure, and perceived environmental uncertainty on PRDO, and the negative effect of trust on desire for control.; Finally, we discuss the implications of our research findings to the marketing of advice in the personal financial services industry. We also highlight some potential areas for future research. |
