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How Investors Became Consumers

Advertising for investment products has changed over the past 50 years. Ads initially targeted investors as defined in standard finance: that is, as fact-seeking utility maximizers. Ad portrayals gradually changed to target consumers, defined as people pursuing diverse life projects. Verbal and factual appeals were supplanted by rhetorical, figurative, pictorial, and narrative appeals. Standard finance views such advertising as problematic, because it may be deceitful and misleading. Perspectives drawn from strategic marketing, in conjunction with behavioral finance, and also Consumer Culture Theory, help to explain why mutual fund ads violate expectations from finance. A macromarketing perspective goes further, explaining investment advertising as a historically situated human action subject to social forces. Finally, a societal marketing perspective uncovers moralistic underpinnings in the critique of mutual fund ads.