Advertising and mutual fund asset flows

Purpose – The paper aims to examine the effect of advertising on mutual fund cash flows in the Finnish fund market. Design/methodology/approach – The paper's unique data set allows the observation of the effects of monetary advertising spending and the choice of advertising media. Findings – The paper finds that neither past year's performance nor advertising alone is sufficient to produce increased cash flows. However, advertising together with past performance is found to significantly affect cash flows. The positive effect of advertising is limited to the use of non-perishable advertising media. Additionally, it is found that fund families spending proportionately more on advertising receive higher asset flows. Originality/value – The data are unique in that they can identify fund families that advertise, and also how much they spent on advertising in a given year and the dollar amount spent on five different media types. Obviously, having also fund level data available would enable more thorough analysis.