Revealed and Stated Investment Decisions Concerning Structured Products

We analyze the investment behavior of private clients concerning structured products. To ascertain their stated and revealed preferences, we use a questionnaire and a field experiment, respectively. The real product issued in the field experiment is comparable to one product in the questionnaire – both regarding payoff and communication. The main findings from the questionnaire are that a product described by the investment motives in simple words heavily motivates people to invest in structured products for the first time and eliminates gender differences. The last result also appears under truemarket conditions for the issued product. This product however has attracted considerably less first time buyers than expected from the questionnaire. But still those fraction was larger than one observes on average for structured products which are described in the traditional, technical style. Finally, the sizes and distribution of the investment amounts turns out to be different in the two set-ups: While the questionnaire participants focus on their annual income situation, wealth is the focal point in the field experiment.