Conclusion & Limitation

This study examined the main views from the recent reports (MobTech, 2021), published in the end February and the beginning of March 2021, about the popular topic in the China fund investment market.  The main views from the reports stressed that posts related to fund investments are popular on social media platforms including RED, and lots of the influencers are actually not qualified to teach or to give instructions to the general public on these platforms. Since there are lots of investment beginners nowadays, the platforms are not reliable for beginners to take as references when they are considering making fund investment decisions because the reports shows a belief that beginners are very easy to blindly follow the instructions which is risky, as these investors are not able to distinguish the reliability of these influencers’ posts. 

In details, the study focused on RED, a famous community and e-commerce app in China that has been mentioned in the reports from MobTech. Apart from the major social media platforms in Chinese market, Weibo and WeChat, RED is the most used social media platform according to the study result.  Compared to other media platforms, the Cognitive Fit Theory was adapted, explaining that the posts on RED are much easier to attract investment beginners with appealing thumbnails and content that are more easily to comprehend. The information presented in a type that is cognitively fit to the users’ taste. As a result, it was true that most of the investors that have participated in this study are in an entry level in terms of fund investment.  Assuming that financial TV programs and the finance section of newspapers or magazines were less attractive to investment beginners according to the Cognitive Fit Theory, there was supposed to be a relationship between media platforms using and fund investment knowledge level. Actually, this assumption was not applicable. Even though the participants in this study were mostly investment beginners, it was not statistically proving that these people won’t take traditional news sources as reference while using other social media platforms especially RED. What’s important is that most professionals suggest that information provided by some mainstream media platforms are more effective and reliable than social media, as they present first-hand information that is directly provided by the companies/banks. 

Users who browse fund-related posts on RED (RED users) were not very experienced in fund investment and they can barely accept a high risk with a high return but there was no significant difference on the experience level between RED users and other social media platforms' users. In other words, it was not attested to conclude that investors with very limited knowledge on fund investment must be a RED user. Investors were attracted to some influencers who have a professional and certified profile introduction, as the Halo Effect could explain in a theoretical way. However, the result was that the RED users understand that social media is just a platform for influencers to share their ideas and these sharings are not suitable for them to imitate, which is different from what the reports from MobTech suggested.  Influencers shared their thoughts on fund investment were considered as not reliable in general but the investment beginners took the information on RED with critical and rational attitude rather than “copying the behavior of influencers” (MobTech, 2021). Again, posts related to fund investment on social media are not reliable for investors to take reference. Compared with mainstream media platforms, social media information of investment is lapsed.   However, the result tested by this study shows that investment beginners are actually aware of the reliability of the influencers’ posts. It is crucial to set regulations on social media to restrict or inform the risk and avoid misleading the users.  In this situation, it is crucial to rethink the behaviors of  investment beginners and conduct further behavioral studies based on the new findings from this study. 

To develop the relative research in the future, the findings in this study provides a basic behavioral assumption of investment beginners who are less experienced and stick to social media information.  Other interesting topics about this target group such as the relationships between actual investment return of beginners and their information source media channel, the media effects on the expanding of the investment beginners group and so on. Based on the findings of this study, it is able to lower the research difficulties in some way for further research. 

The study was conducted with mainly two limitations including the sample size and the study period. The news of Zhang Kun which was mentioned in the beginning occurred in February 2021, following the reports from MobTech at the end of February and the beginning of March 2021. The study aimed to be finished by the end of April and there is a very short time period for conducting the research including literature review, data collection and further analysis on the collected data. The sample size aimed to reach more than 300 at the beginning of the research while it turned out to be only half of the expected sample size. Some systematic error could happen during the data analysis section due to the limited sample size. Therefore, it is going to be an ideal result for this study topic if there could be collected more data from specifically RED users. So far, the study result was still a bit far from being a perfect plenary study for future researchers’ reference. During the questionnaire distribution period, some participants reflected that they didn’t know that RED is also a platform for fund investors to share and learn the information. This limitation is due to the fact that the discussion of fund investment topic on social media now is still in an early stage. Within this semester, the project was finished under a very limited situation.