Glued to CNBC watching Cramer? Pouring through The Wall Street Journal? Wondering why you can see what people think of the dishwasher you’re planning to buy at sears.com, but not what others think about the mutual fund where you‟re going to park half of your child‟s college savings? If only you could get some candid advice, or, better yet, could examine the moves of an investing maven.

Now you can. (more…)

A complete stranger whom I’ve never met told me the other day that my retirement plan was not appropriate for my investment objectives. I met this “stranger” on wesabe.com, a site that describes itself as:

“An online community of real people just like you, with real financial goals and concerns.”

Advice from other people like me? That sounds comforting. People like me don’t have an agenda when it comes to making the right investment decisions. Are they saying the same things as my financial advisor, whom I pay for help with my real financial goals and concerns? (more…)

Marketers are always looking for the best way to position their product or brand so it will be chosen over the competition. But what actually drives a consumer to choose one brand over another? In market research we are always trying to discover the nature of consumer choice. And while we continually refine how we measure consumer choice, most methods employed to date typically fall short of answering all the “whys?”
Faced with more product choices than ever before, and a staggering amount of information from multiple media, how do consumers process all this information and make decisions? We believe consumers are relying more and more heavily on gut instinct and their emotions to make their decisions. (more…)

Take it. Leave it. Roll it. These are the options employees have regarding their employer-sponsored retirement plan (ESRP) assets when they leave one company for another. Each option has consequences, and making the wrong choice could have significant impact on retirement savings goals.

ESRP assets typically account for the greatest percentage of one’s retirement savings. On average, affluent Americans have $260,000 invested in a former ESRP, according to the 2007 Investor Brandscape study of 4,000 affluent Americans by Cogent Research, Cambridge, Mass.

This represents 28% of their total investable assets, according to the study. (more…)