How Investors’ Financial Well-being Influences Enterprises and Individual’s Psychological Fitness? Moderating Role of Experience under Uncertainty

Abstract

The study aims to investigate the role of financial well-being of the investor on psychological fitness of clients and organizations in the emerging financial markets of India. A survey was conducted during the pandemic in Indian financial markets wherein most of people’s financial situation was extremely poor and uncertain. During the COVID-19 pandemic, retail investors who availed themselves of financial products and services from leading brokerage houses of India were investigated. The study was conducted on 290 retail investors of Delhi, National Capital Region (NCR) and the financial hub of Mumbai. The participants were approached using the purposive sampling method. The study further examined moderating effects of pleasant and unpleasant experience of investors during difficult times. The study applied partial least square multi-group analysis (PLS–MGA) for measuring invariance for pleasant and unpleasant scenarios of investors in the Indian context. The findings suggested that consumers’ well-being enhances individual satisfaction at higher enterprise levels, it also motivates individuals to manage their finances to deal with uncertain times. Additionally, the control variables of age and gender were used to measure pleasant and unpleasant experiences of investors from the base of their satisfaction level. The results suggest that during difficult times in financial markets, females exhibited higher unpleasant experiences than male investors. Further, consumers’ well-being was primarily driven by older investors with pleasant experiences during the pandemic. The present study offers an interdisciplinary approach towards measuring consumers’ psychology in the domain of behavioral finance.

Highlights

• Financial well-being can be investigated in retail individual investors as consumers of financial services companies;
• Uncertainty in the financial markets due to the pandemic is determined in light of individual experiences;
• The typology has predictive relevance to offer inclusive insights into the domain of financial well-being;
• Consumers’ psychology and behavioral finance theories can determine investor behavior in actual practice.

1. Introduction

Well-being refers to the mental health of an individual, whereas philosophical use and scope is broad in actual practice [1,2,3]. In the 19th century, the concept of well-being was studied in the field of business and was applied to measure the well-being of workers [4]. Progressively, the aspect of well-being was examined in several dimensions in the industry, such as consumer well-being [5], financial well-being [2], social well-being [6] and other related areas of psychology. Charak, an Indian philosopher, has discussed well-being as an individuals’ psychological state of life satisfaction [7]. The argument proposed by Charaka Samhita explained that pleasure and displeasure are the major outcomes of a certain chemical imbalance in the mind of an individual [8]. The whole life satisfaction theory of happiness proposed that human beings are happy when they find that they are more informed and able to make rational decisions about their actual life in congruence with their best life-plan. In this regard, Sigmund Freud also explained life satisfaction with the help of a theory of pleasure [9]. Further, Thorndike’s theory of learning highlighted the concept of satisfiers and non-satisfiers for individuals, which was duly recognized by psychologists [10].

Consumer well-being is a significant characteristic of relationship marketing that influences consumer’s life satisfaction [11]. Consumer well-being is primarily evaluated based on their pleasure derived from achievement, ownership, consumption, disposition, and maintenance of consumer products [12]; further examined, consumer well-being establishes a relationship among the constructs of consumer well-being and other forms of well-being, such as joy, happiness, fun, and life satisfaction. Well-being has further been established with consumer aspiration theory to suggest that consumer well-being occurs primarily at the individual level [13]. In another study by Olsen et al. (2022), individual well-being was examined with impulsive and compulsive buying behavior and found to be harmful for the well-being of consumers. According to a recent investigation by Chéron et al. (2022) in Japan, it was observed that sustainable purchasing choices by consumers have a positive impact on life satisfaction. In order to recognize various dimensions of consumer well-being, many scholars developed the multi-dimensional theoretical framework [12], shopping gratification model [14], and perceived value and need satisfaction framework [15]. Furthermore, many measurement scales were developed by researchers to determine the aspect of consumer well-being [15,16,17,18,19]. Peterson and Malhotra (2000) developed seven dimensions of consumer well-being, which contributes to understanding people’s quality of life. Presently, studies related to consumer well-being have addressed socio-political and attribution theories under a COVID-19 pandemic scenario to state that consumers’ globalization attitude immunizes international institutions amid global crises [5,20,21]. These diverse research studies on consumer well-being gave different perspectives of consumer well-being in the academic world and provided scope for further studies on consumer well-being.

In the academic literature of well-being leading to overall life satisfaction, existing research indicates that financial well-being is considered as a specific component of life satisfaction [22,23]. In this regard, scanty research is available to report that to achieve life satisfaction, consumer well-being should be driven by financial resilience of individuals [24]. The examination by Tahir et al. (2022) further stated that financial well-being represents complete mediation between financial resilience and life satisfaction. Therefore, financial satisfaction is a key predictor for individuals’ well-being. Additionally, financially sound people have more freedom in life spending and scope for further exploration of joy and entertainment [22]. Financial management and enjoying financial freedom are essential for every individual. Hence, to leverage such investigations there are several studies available that are focused on financial inclusion, financial literacy, and financial capacity; such studies are mostly focused on developing nations, while the financial well-being studies are mostly focused on developed countries. Hence, this is another major gap in the existing literature. The financial well-being of individuals of developed economies significantly differs from under-developed or developing countries. Therefore, to assert this phenomenon, there is a need to study financial well-being from the perspective of developing nations.

In line with these findings, the present study found that retail investors as consumers of financial services in financial markets were less investigated to represent the aspect of their financial well-being. Further, the impact of financial well-being on investors’ psychological fitness and their companies were not covered in the existing literature, which is a major research gap in this study. Further, an inclusive conceptual model needs to be developed and examined to understand retail investors of the Indian financial market to dwell upon the area of financial well-being. Additionally, the role of pleasure and displeasure by retail investors during COVID-19 pandemic environment will provide new dimensions to the field of consumer well-being in emerging financial markets, such as India. The current exploration proposes a practice-based view of financial well-being of retail investors as consumers for companies offering financial services in Indian financial markets [25,26]. Considering the present scenario of pandemic and turbulent times, the current study attempts to address the following research questions:

• RQ1: What are the key drivers of investor’s well-being in financial markets during turbulent times?
• RQ2: What role does investors’ financial well-being play in individual life satisfaction and at enterprise level during pandemic times?

This paper thus combines theoretical framework of consumer psychology and behavioral aspects of retail investors for measuring consumer well-being during uncertain times, such as a pandemic. Therefore, by integrating the area of consumer well-being with retail investors, the impact on individual’s life satisfaction and enterprise is examined. This study intends to provide a novel framework for understanding consumer well-being in the domain of behavioral finance, psychology, and marketing research. Additionally, the exploration of the determinants of retail investors’ financial well-being will allow financial consultants, brokers, and institutions to plan their services in a way to protect the interests of investors so that their financial health should be sound. The present study is conducted in a post-pandemic time, which shall provide better understanding of the investor’s well-being in tough times, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time how well, their financial condition was and what was their experience during the tough time. The overall experience they had with financial service providers, their suggestions, and performance of their investments. The outcomes of this study shall motivate reader to understand the actual financial well-being in the uncertain time, which was very volatile. Furthermore, the understanding of determinant of financial well-being of retail investors will be helpful for many stakeholders in planning, policy formulation, and strategic decisions. The outcomes will be useful for individual, institutional, and government levels.

The remaining paper is comprised of a theoretical framework and a conceptual model in section two followed by a research methodology in section three. Section four covers data analysis and interpretation to provide a discussion with managerial implications and the limitations of the study are in section five.

2. Review of Literature

2.1. Theoretical Underpinnings of Well-Being

Initially, studies on well-being were conducted in the area of human psychology [11,27,28,29]. Later, researchers adopted the concept of well-being in the marketing domain under consumer psychology to understand the mental health of buyers [21,30]. The philosophical use of well-being is very broad, which narrates how the individual’s life glows in the total span of his life. The common philosophy to elucidate well-being is non-instrumental and best for measuring the individual’s life satisfaction level [13,31]. In the academic world, the determinants of well-being have always been a matter of mystery [32]. Well-being has always been a matter of great relevance, especially in the case of utilitarianism wherein individual moral requirements can be maximized [33]. This line of thought set the benchmark to differentiate the well-being theories into hedonist theory, theory of desires, and theory of subjective and objective list. A welfare view towards well-being explains inter-relation between the characters and actions attended by an individual [34]. As per the utilitarian view, it is believed that right actions of an individual in his life maximizes overall well-being [32].

Hedonist theories perceived well-being as a balance of pleasure over pain. The pressure and pain reside in the human mind is difficult to weigh as individuals’ experience differ from others [35]. This gave birth to the theory of desires where well-being is measured on achieving the preferences and choices by individuals [36,37]. Desires theory assesses well-being by ranking preferences, utility functions, and value of preference-satisfaction [38,39,40]. Subjective and objective list theories suggest list of items that constitute well-being neither in pleasurable experience nor in preference-satisfaction [26,41,42,43,44,45,46]. The desire theories and objective list theories are thus critical for evaluating buyer well-being [26].

Well-being of consumers delineate the state of pleasure gained by individual consumers and society at large from the usage and consumption of a product which also includes the process of acquisition and disposal [15,47]. The application of desires theories on consumer well-being is being associated with the satisfaction level in the consumers’ life [48]. The pleasure level of consumers is measure by their possessions and the kind of self-image expected by them out of that possession [17,49]. In the marketing domain, shopper’s well-being emanates two forms, that is, eudemonic and hedonic [50]. The aspect of eudemonic well-being refers to providing easy access to overall requirements of an individual, whereas decreasing access and discrimination may affect the overall happiness and satisfaction [50,51]. Hedonic version refers to simply meeting needs and the universal happiness felt by consumers, where consumers derive pleasure after meeting all their wishes in their life. Nevertheless, fulfilling all needs and consumer satisfaction may not be enough to measure hedonic well-being as the concept of well-being is beyond just satisfaction. This thought process has important relationship among quality of life of individual and consumer satisfaction [17].

In the last decade, consumer well-being has been alienated from consumer behavior. It has gained a distinct theoretical ground and research domain [52]. The physical and mental health of consumers promote consumer loyalty [15,53], word of mouth [54], personal health [55,56,57], and so on. Zhao & Wei (2019) have noticed a great disparity in both concepts, direction, and perspective of research on consumer well-being. Usually, well-being is considered as a state of satisfaction and inclination that consumers aspire by the possession and usage of products [58,59]. The different scholars have divided the measurement of consumer welling into three categories: degree of satisfaction from specific consumption, emotional and mood consideration while measuring satisfaction, and individual hedonism putting individual and social well-being into consideration. In light of these theories of well-being, the current investigation proposes conceptual model to determine consumer’s well-being under uncertain times in emerging economies of the world. Based on a literature review and diverse views of theories related to well-being, there is a need to observe the structure and measurement tool for consumer well-being. The existing literature lacks to provide universal, simple, and organized measurement scale to investigate consumer well-being. This study has tried to measure consumer well-being in an unpretentious way during the uncertain times like pandemic in emerging Indian financial markets. The study focuses on difficult times and try to measure consumer well-being by understanding retail investors’ behavior in financial market.

2.2. Conceptual Model and Hypotheses

From the extensive literature review, this study evaluates retail investors’ financial well-being by considering five major antecedents of consumer’s well-being. The antecedents of consumer well-being are ‘personal values’, ‘social and cultural norms’, ‘brand attributes’, ‘product and service attributes’, and ‘behavioral aspects.’ The study investigates two major consequences which have the impact of consumer well-being determinant. The consequences of consumer well-being were measure by two aspects, which are impact on individual ‘life satisfaction’ and impact at ‘enterprise level’.

2.2.1. Modeling Consumer Well-Being as a Second-Order Composite

In the existing literature, there are diverse opinions regarding the dimensions and connotation of consumer well-being and are considered as multi-dimensional notion. Several research studies have adopted a life satisfaction scale to quantify consumer’s well-being. However, this scale has a limitation that it only shows the characteristics of happiness which is not an indicator of consumer happiness [52,60]. The present investigation has adopted consumer life cycle model, demand satisfaction model, and Asian consumer’s well-being scale to measure consumer’s well-being. The consumer life cycle model states the level of satisfaction are experienced in the process of acquiring, consuming, and disposal of a specific product. This scale was duly compiled and validated by Lee et al. (2002) on a 7-point scale for five dimensions of consumer’s satisfaction consideration. Demand satisfaction scale deliberated that satisfy overall development needs to provide a greater happiness than just satisfying only one specific need of a customer. Asian consumer well-being scale was developed with more attention to Asian culture and consumption patterns and environment. This scale had three dimensions for consumer well-being like consumer behavior, emotion and cognition, and consumer environment. That is the reason this scale was used in this investigation.

Well-being is a subjective feeling of individual consumers and prejudiced by their personal values. Externally orientated values, that is, materialism has an inverse impact on the enhancement of consumer well-being. Materialist consumers overvalue, and set high expectation on property, therefore their consumption happiness does not match with their expectation. Burroughs and Rindfleisch (2002) found that materialistic consumers have experienced conflict with other individuals’ lifestyles and values. The collective-oriented standard generates greater mental compression and diminishes consumer’s well-being. On the contrary, internal oriented value promotes consumer well-being without consumption of product and services [61]. Keyes and Coffey identified that anti-consumerism develops apparent self-realization and self-determination by developing a sense of control. Further, reduction in material desire and returning to the internal world increases the level of happiness [59]. Research studies propose that personal values and consumer well-being has a significant relationship. Further, the various studies support that pursuing pleasure itself will carry pleasure, and those personal values which develops pro-social behaviour, self-expression, and mental healthiness of an individual leading to consumer well-being [58].

Social and cultural norms also regulate consumer well-being and their experience from consumption. Markus and Schwarts (2010) explored good interpersonal relationships and explained the happiness of consumers in group culture. However, individual consumers get more attraction on the number of alternatives that they can have in their lives. Consumers under the scenario of group culture have more choices in comparison to the limited number of choices as an individual. More choices provide more autonomy and freedom, and consumers experience more pleasure [62]. Consumers of different societies within a specific social culture differs in the level of happiness and are contingent on various factors [63]. The brand factors and word-of-mouth important role on Chinese consumers’ well-being, whereas sellers’ image and product quality have significant impact on Indian consumers’ happiness [63]. Similarly, social interaction has an important role on ensuring the happiness of Korean consumers.

Brand attributes are another important dimension which regulate consumers’ well-being. It is observed that a renowned and excellent brand reduces mental anxiety and if brand image is not good then it effects the well-being of the consumers [64]. Grzeskowiak and Sirgy explored that brand community ownership significantly impacts individuals’ perceived quality of life. It also affects consumer’s well-being, which is moderated by the propinquity of consumption [17]. In case consumer’s taste and identity matches with the identical personalities of consumers, then probability of purchase consumption increases [65]. Recent purchase decisions result into smooth transmission of consumer pleasure and ultimately enhance well-being of individuals [66]. Further, it was also observed that high brand loyalties of consumers represent higher significant effect on consumer’s well-being [17].

Product and service attributes are another important determinant that affects consumers well–being. Sheng et al. (2016) categorized product and service attributes into three categories, that is, high impact, moderate impact, and low impact to have an impact on consumer well-being [67]. The quality of product and services affect consumer well-being through transitional of overall consumers’ pleasure and consumer-enterprise identity (Su et al., 2016). Product category also affects consumer well-being wherein experimental products are conducive to material products, and have high conventional value, thereby improves consumer well-being [68]. Lee et al. (2002) observed that consumers buy hedonic products and services effortlessly than practical products and services because the guilt for hedonic products and services is greater than applied products and services. They also explored that practical products and services provide more long-lasting pleasure to consumers. The anthropomorphic products and services improve the well-being of a consumer by satisfying consumer their specific needs [69]. The smiling face of anthropomorphic products and services also enhances consumer well-being and attitude towards products and services [53].

Individual cognition also has significant role in development of consumer well-being. Devezer et al. (2014) explored that failure to achieve sub-goal of individual diminish his motivation and happiness. The study proposed that sub-goal failure was more important and serious matter than overall goal related pleasure attainment. Thus, consumers can achieve their overall goals by strict self-discipline behaviour of sub-goals in to order to have enhanced consumer well-being [58]. Consumer often participates in several activities to sustain better health and uphold self-discipline to fulfil their sub-goals in the sub-areas to develop a higher level of well-being [70]. The duration of perception of consumers also affects their well-being in the scenario of diversity in consumer activities [71]. The diversity in consumer activities enhance pleasure by making individual experience more stimulated for a longer period. However, it works adversely by making individual felt unproductive for a shorter period. Low diversity of consumer activities leads to higher attention of consumers towards their inner feeling. This results into a sense of adequacy and thereby enhance the level of happiness and consumer well-being [72]. These five dimensions of personal values, social and cultural values, brand attributes, product and services attributes, and behavioral aspects are used as formative indicators of consumer’s well-being in the present study.

2.2.2. Consumer Well-Being Impact on Individual

The emphasis of this investigation is to investigate the impact of consumer well-being on individual’s mental health that is conducive enough to the physical and psychological fitness. The physical and psychological fitness leads to higher creativity, energy [71], good social relationships, pro-social behaviour [73] among the individuals. The augmented consumers’ well-being increases consumer happiness, stimulate social welfare, and thus improves health condition of an individual [56]. Happy customers tend to accomplish long-term goals to explore high gravity of self-discipline and healthy lifestyles [74]. Chida and Steptoe (2008) carried out a meta-analysis on consumer well-being and found that consumer well-being can shrink the mortality rate of individuals [75]. They also found a significant effect of consumer well-being on both sick and healthy consumers. Research with consumer aspirations theory suggest that consumer hedonism, power values, and life satisfaction enhance individual subjective well-being [13]. Further prior studies indicate that voluntary anti-consumption has progressive importance on consumer well-being of an individual [46]. Responsible consumers with changing-coping-countering characterization also influence well-being of individual in difficult times of economy [76]. Advertisement also plays a considerable role for enhancing consumer well-being [77,78]. In this regard, measures like impulsive buying tendency and compulsive buying tendencies can be reduced to promote harmony in the life of an individual [79]. Based upon these vital studies, the present study posits the following hypothesis:

H1: 

Consumer’s Well-Being has a significant impact on the Individuals.

2.2.3. Consumer Well-Being and Impact on Enterprise

Satisfied and happy customers show more loyalty toward the enterprise and exhibit a sequence of positive attitudes towards enterprise, affirmative word-of-mouth, and recurrence purchases behaviour [12,65]. In this case, consumer feels happy after consuming a specific product or service, then they prefer that product or brand which enhances perceived value of product or brand, and reduce perceived risk [53]. Further, the overall satisfaction with the product or brand enhances trust of customers that leads to the development of loyalty toward brand. Brand loyal customers promote the brand and product through interpersonal communication. Additionally, positive word of mouth communication also influences peer group to buy the same brand and product. In present times, social media also plays an important role to enhance positive feelings in the minds to consumers towards companies and organizations [80,81]. During COVID-19 pandemic consumers have gone for digitization and think for sustainable and local products which can be enhanced by CSR activities by enterprises to establish consumer-organization well-being and contributions to the national economy [82]. Many a times, consumer also feels happy when they show patriotic consumption behaviour [18]. Additionally, enterprises can enhance marketplace literacy on well-being, and marketing related outcomes related to well-being [83]. Therefore, customer well-being generates pleasure, durable interest, positive word of mouth, and attitude toward enterprises [54]. All these measures by enterprises can diffuse adverse information about product in marketplace, and enhance consumer well-being [84]. In this line of thought, we proposed second hypothesis.

H2: 

Consumer’s Well-Being has a significant impact on the Enterprises.

Consumer well-being as measured for the retail investors in the financial market is thus present in Figure 1.

3. Materials and Research Methods

The survey was conducted in the heart of India, that is, Delhi and National Capital Region. In addition to this, the pulse of the financial market located in Mumbai was also covered to cover the best possible response of retail investors. Both national capital and financial hub of India thus represent the accurate response and patterns of investment decision making by retail investors of India. These retail investors were approached from some of the leading brokerage houses located in Delhi and Mumbai. In this regard, an offline and online survey was conducted with an adapted questionnaire (Appendix A). This cross-sectional survey was conducted for a period of 6 months (January–June 2022). The authors applied non-probability sampling method of purposive sampling as the population size was not known in the study. During this period, the third wave of the coronavirus was going on especially in the month of January and February, thus online survey was operationalized with the help of brokerage houses to fetch the data collection from the retail investors. These investors were primarily their clients to be part of our representative sample of the survey in order to represent the investment behavior in emerging financial market of India. The sample size requirements were determined by G*Power analysis [85] to investigate minimum sample size. With a power of 0.80 and 5 percent level of significance for our variables in the proposed model, the minimum sample size requirements were observed to be 262. However, the present study applied final data analysis with 290 correct responses after validation checks. Hence, the present study applied data analysis with 290 respondents to justify appropriate sample size [85]. The non-response bias was conducted on first 50 and last 50 responses obtained in the study. Paired t-test revealed that p-value was observed to be higher than 5 percent significance level in order to establish effective generalizability of results [86,87].

The present study was conducted with a descriptive research design to investigate coefficient of determination of individual investors and enterprise on account of their well-being. The hypotheses testing was investigated by variance based partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) in SmartPLS 3.3.9 version [88,89]. PLS-SEM as multivariate technique was found to be appropriate in this study as it involved investigation of formative predictor of consumer well-being [90,91]. Additionally, PLS-SEM was applicable in this study as another objective was to investigate moderation effects [92] of investors’ experience subject to measurement of invariance testing of composites (MICOM). PLS-SEM is also considered to be appropriate where measured theory lacks comprehensive substantiation [93] and requires operationalization of complex models. The higher order measurement model assessment for consumer well-being and structural model assessments for the proposed model in this study were analyzed by 10,000 bootstrap subsampling with bias-corrected percentile approach as per the guidelines of Hair et al. (2022). The Mardia’s multivariate normality was checked by web-based calculator (Mardia, 1970; Zhang and Yuan, 2018) to observe that skewness and kurtosis were significant at 1 percent level. Thus, the data represent multivariate non-normality to apply non-parametric statistical application of PLS-SEM in comparison to covariance-based SEM.

Further, full collinearity test was analyzed by investigating variance inflation factor (VIF), which were observed to be less than 3.3. Additionally, Harman’s single factor analysis was applied to observe that all statements were loaded to a single factor with 33.69 percent variance. This value was less than the threshold limit of 50 percent to suggest absence of common method bias in the present study [94].

4. Data Analysis and Interpretations

4.1. Descriptive Statistics

Table 1. Sample demographics (N = 290).

Investors’ Age	Count	Percentage	Educational Qualification	Count	Percentage
Less than 30 years	75	25.8	Graduate Level	71	24.5
Between 30 to 39 years	120	41.4	Post Graduate Level	130	44.8
Between 40 to 49 years	62	21.4	Professional	89	30.7
50 years and above	33	11.4		290	100
	290	100
Gender			Investor experience
Male	216	74.5	Pleasant	158	54.5
Female	74	25.5	Unpleasant	132	45.5
	290	100		290	100
Income			Marital Status
Below 30,000 per month	80	27.6	Married	187	64.5
30,000–50,000 per month	116	40	Unmarried	103	35.5
Above 50,000 per month	94	32.4		290	100
	290	100

reveals the demographic profile of the survey, which revealed that majority are in their middle age (41.4 percent), and males (74.5 percent), postgraduates (44.8 percent) and married (64.5 percent) with average income level of up to 50000 Indian rupees per month (40 percent). The consumer of broking house revealed that even during the lockdown period they obtained a pleasant experience from their brokers suggested financial products and services (54.5 percent), however many were not satisfied with the performance of their brokerage houses towards their investment decisions.

4.2. Measurement Model Assessments for Reflective and Formative Constructs

The convergent and discriminant validity of first order constructs in the proposed model of this study were investigated as per the guidelines of Hair et al. (2019) and Hair et al. (2022). The major criterion of convergent validity was checked by average variance extracted (AVE) method with a minimum requirement of 0.50 [93]. In

Table 2. Internal Consistency Reliabilities and Convergent Validities.

Construct/ Related Items	Factor Loadings		Type of Construct	rhoA—CR		AVE
	Pleasant Experience	Unpleasant Experience		Pleasant Experience	Unpleasant Experience	Pleasant Experience	Unpleasant Experience
Personal Value			Reflective	0.869–0.907	0.840–0.889	0.709	0.669
PV1	0.813	0.756
PV2	0.828	0.848
PV3	0.834	0.787
PV4	0.891	0.874
Social and Cultural Values			Reflective	0.873–0.912	0.867–0.908	0.723	0.712
SCN1	0.851	0.826
SCN2	0.875	0.868
SCN3	0.809	0.807
SCN4	0.863	0.872
Brand Attributes			Reflective	0.831–0.892	0.844–0.881	0.734	0.712
BRA1	0.858	0.868
BRA2	0.892	0.898
BRA3	0.818	0.761
Product and Service Attributes			Reflective	0.773–0.838	0.812–0.874	0.564	0.636
PSA1	0.788	0.757
PSA2	0.763	0.807
PSA3	0.785	0.826
PSA4	0.662	0.797
Behavioral Aspects			Reflective	0.772–0.775	0.877–0.897	0.554	0.744
BHA1	0.983	0.886
BHA2	0.712	0.910
BHA3	0.433	0.787
Impact on Individual			Reflective	0.758–0.840	0.821–0.879	0.568	0.645
IOI1	0.787	0.773
IOI2	0.747	0.780
IOI3	0.794	0.822
IOI4	0.681	0.837
Impact on Enterprise			Reflective	0.761–0.842	0.828–0.875	0.571	0.637
IOE1	0.791	0.853
IOE2	0.795	0.797
IOE3	0.730	0.753
IOE4	0.704	0.786
Consumer Well Being (Formative Assessments)	Outer Weights/ Loadings (Pleasant)	p-values	Outer VIF (Pleasant)	Outer Weights/ Loadings (Unpleasant)	p-values	Outer VIF (Unpleasant)	Overall Weights/Loadings
Behavioral Aspects	0.087/.0181	0.120/ 0.085 *	1.221	0.021/0.0150	0.706 /0.091 *	1.157	0.044 /0.165 **
Brand Attribute	0.232/0.661	0.004 ** /0.000 ***	1.924	−0.070/0.517	0.315 /0.000 ***	1.740	0.066 /0.589 ***
Personal Value	0.013/.507	0.892 /0.000 ***	2.049	0.079/0.542	0.281 /0.000 ***	1.579	0.064 /0.527 ***
Product and Service Attributes	0.363/0.740	0.000 *** /0.0000 ***	1.585	0.430/0.868	0.000 *** /0.000 ***	1.952	0.412 *** /0.815 ***
Social and Cultural Value	0.601/0.925	0.000 *** /0.000 ***	2.280	0.659/0.936	0.000 *** /0.000 ***	2.474	0.625 *** /0.935 ***
Redundancy Analysis	Pleasant Experience	Unpleasant Experience	OverallModel
Consumer Well Being-> Consumer Well Being Global Item	0.791 ***	0.836 ***	0.815 ***

Note: Path Coefficients (* p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.001).

, for both pleasant and unpleasant experience of investors the AVE was observed to be above 0.50 to establish convergent validity of first order reflective constructs. The second aspect of indicator reliability was observed by factor loading of all statements of reflective constructs. The factor loading of all statements were observed to be above the critical value of 0.708 [93], except for behavioral aspects (BHA4 with 0.433), product and service attributes (PSA4 with 0.662) and impact on individual (IOI4 with 0.681) for pleasant experience. However, these items were retained in the study as the convergent validity was established well above 0.50. Further, construct level reliability was investigated by Henseler’s rhoA and Composite Reliability (CR) with a threshold value of 0.70 [93]. For both pleasant and unpleasant experience of investors, the internal reliabilities were well established as the value of rhoA and CR were above 0.70 as mentioned in Table 2.

The study covered a second order formative construct of consumer well-being measured in reflective-formative mode [90]. The latent variable scores of personal values, social and cultural values, brand attributes, behavioral aspects and product and service attributes were used to measure consumer well-being. The convergent validity of consumer well-being was addressed by applying redundancy analysis, where the formative indicators were applied on the global single item of consumer well-being [91]. The beta was observed to be well above the critical value of 0.70 to establish the convergent validity of formative consumer well-being. Secondly, the discriminant validity of the formative indicators was well established by VIF outer values. All VIF outer values were less than the prescribed limit of 3 as the highest value was observed to be of 2.474 for social and cultural value to establish discriminant validity. Lastly, the relevance and importance of each and every formative indicator of consumer well-being was investigated by running 10,000 bootstrap subsampling method. In Table 2, the outer weights of product and service value and social and cultural value were significant at 1 percent level. On the contrary, the outer loadings of behavioral aspects and personal value were significant at 10 percent and 1 percent respectively to be considered important for further analysis and measurement for hypotheses testing. The findings of reliability and validity of both reflective and formative constructs are mentioned in Table 2.

Lastly, the criterion of discriminant validity was investigated by Heterotrait–Monotrait (HTMT) ratio of correlations The maximum permissible limits of HTMT are 0.85 [95] and 0.90 [96] and with a liberal view of HTMT_inference. The results revealed that all values for consumers having pleasant experience were below the maximum limits of 0.85, however, in case of impact on individual and impact on enterprise the value was 0.929. In such a scenario, HTMT_inference method was applied with 10,000 subsamples to draw confidence intervals [CI; 0.814; 1.000]. Since the HTMT of 0.929 was found in the acceptance region, thus discriminant validity was considered to be valid. In contrast, the HTMT values for unpleasant experience of investors were observed to be well below the limit of 0.850 to establish discriminant validity of constructs under study.

Table 3. (a): HTMT Ratio (Pleasant Experience). (b): HTMT Ratio (Unpleasant Experience).

(a)
HTMT Pleasant Experience	Behavioral Aspects	Brand Attribute	Impact on Enterprise	Impact on Individual	Perceived Value	Product and Service Attributes	Social and Cultural Value
Behavioral Aspects
Brand Attribute	0.170
Impact on Enterprise	0.299	0.520
Impact on Individual	0.272	0.595	0.929
Perceived Value	0.324	0.753	0.332	0.386
Product and Service Attributes	0.461	0.274	0.691	0.797	0.234
Social and Cultural Value	0.085	0.685	0.552	0.668	0.645	0.601
(b)
HTMT	Behavioral Aspects	Brand Attribute	Impact on Enterprise	Impact on Individual	Perceived Value	Product and Service Attributes	Social and Cultural Value
Behavioral Aspects
Brand Attribute	0.140
Impact on Enterprise	0.207	0.343
Impact on Individual	0.185	0.505	0.834
Perceived Value	0.199	0.619	0.491	0.460
Product and Service Attributes	0.317	0.411	0.827	0.846	0.441
Social and Cultural Value	0.103	0.698	0.674	0.776	0.592	0.763

a,b represents HTMT values for establishing discriminant validity for pleasant and unpleasant experience of investors.

4.3. Measuring Invariance of Composites (MICOM)

The moderation effect of experience of investors on the proposed model in the study was analyzed by PLS multi-group analysis (MGA) [92]. The application of PLS–MGA can be implemented only if the invariance testing is successful [93,97]. Therefore, we have measured invariance testing for composites (MICOM) for our model as per the guidelines of Henseler et al. (2016). The process of MICOM involves three steps:

-

Configural invariance;

-

Compositional invariance;

-

Mean and variance invariance.

Table 4. MICOM Analysis.

Measuring Invariance in Composites (MICOM)		Consumer Well Being	Impact on Enterprise	Impact on Individual
Configural Invariance (Application of Identical Algorithms)		Yes	Yes	Yes
Compositional Invariance (Correlation = 1)	C = 1	0.94	1	0.998
	Confidence Interval (CIs)	[0.931, 1]	[0.995, 1]	[0.996, 1]
Investigating Partial Measurement Invariance		Yes	Yes	Yes
Equal Mean Assessments	Mean Differences (Pleasant Experience–Unpleasant Experience)	0.085	0.227	0.209
	Confidence Intervals (CIs)	[−0.22, 0.237]	[−0.228, 0.236]	[−0.222, 0.239]
	Equal	Yes	Yes	Yes
Equal Variance Assessments	Variance Difference (Pleasant Experience–Unpleasant Experience)	−0.37	−0.313	−0.29
	Confidence Intervals (CIs)	[−0.370, 0.408]	[−0.357, 0.388]	[−0.393, 0.396]
	Equal	Yes	Yes	Yes
Full Measurement Invariance Established		Yes	Yes	Yes

represents MICOM analysis to satisfy all the pre-requisites of applying MGA in our study. The first step of configural invariance was established by stating the fact that same algorithm, same items were applied with same scale to both pleasant and unpleasant experience of investors in the model. The compositional invariance was duly established by the fact that permutation correlations were close to original correlations of the constructs and were observed to be in the acceptance region of confidence intervals at 5 percent. Lastly, the mean and variance difference for pleasant and unpleasant experience were statistically insignificant at 5 percent to establish the invariance for the same. Thus, full invariance was established in this study to justify application of MGA in this study [92] by MICOM analysis.

4.4. Structural Model Assessments for the Model

The hypotheses testing was conducted as per the guidelines of Hair et al. (2022) and tabulation of results were performed as per [98]. The hypotheses testing was performed by 10,000 bootstrap subsamples.

The study was conducted by model number 1 for pleasant experience with control variables and model number 2 for unpleasant experience with control variables of gender and age as represented in Figure 2a,b. The multi-collinearity issue was diagnosed by VIF inner values of the constructs, which were observed below the limits of 3.33 [99]. The coefficient of determination for individual was observed at 51.9 percent and for enterprise at 39.9 percent. These r-square values were considered as sufficient values as a value of 20 percent for determination purposes in social and behavioral sciences [100]. In case of pleasant experience, the impact is higher for individuals rather than enterprise.

Table 5. Structural Model Assessments.

Path Relationships	Path Coefficients (Standardized Beta)		Confidence Interval (95 Percent) Bias Corrected		p-Values
	Pleasant Experience	Unpleasant Experience	Pleasant Experience	Unpleasant Experience	Pleasant Experience	Unpleasant Experience
Consumer Well Being -> Impact on Individual	0.713	0.744	[0.593;0.791]	[0.64;0.815]	0.00 ***	0.00 ***
Consumer Well Being -> Impact on Enterprise	0.62	0.718	[0.474;0.707]	[0.592;0.789]	0.00 ***	0.00 ***
Gender -> Consumer Well Being	−0.079	−0.023	[−0.255;0.128]	[−0.189;0.168]	0.42	0.80
Gender -> Impact on Individual	0.023	−0.148	[−0.073;0.116]	[−0.272;−0.037]	0.62	0.014 **
Gender -> Impact on Enterprise	−0.031	−0.008	[−0.154;0.087]	[−0.135;0.113]	0.61	0.91
Age -> Consumer Well Being	−0.004	−0.012	[−0.165;0.162]	[−0.232;0.183]	0.96	0.91
Age -> Impact on Individual	0.118	0.104	[0.006;0.22]	[0.008;0.212]	0.034 **	0.046 **
Age -> Impact on Enterprise	0.113	0.054	[−0.025;0.24]	[−0.082;0.197]	0.092 *	0.45
Impact on Enterprise (R-square)	0.399	0.517	[0.232;0.497]	[0.352;0.623]
Impact on Individual (R-square)	0.519	0.583	[0.364;0.627]	[0.43;0.683]

Path Coefficients (* p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.001).

results revealed that consumer well-being has significant impact on an individual consumer in both the cases of prior pleasant (β = 0.713, p < 0.001) and unpleasant experience (β = 0.744, p < 0.001) conditions. Similarly, consumer well-being has a significant impact on an enterprise also in both the cases of prior pleasant (β = 0.62, p < 0.001) and unpleasant experience (β = 0.718, p < 0.001) conditions to support H1 and H2. This indicates that consumer well-being has substantial influence on the purchase behavior of individuals and enterprise. Gender of investors have significant impact on individual purchase behavior in the case of prior pleasant experience (β = 0.023, p < 0.05) and insignificant impact in the case of prior unpleasant experience. Further, the gender of investors as consumers has an insufficient impact on consumer and enterprise well-being in both the cases of prior pleasant and unpleasant experiences. The age of investors has significant impact on individual purchase behavior in both the cases of prior pleasant experience (β = 0.118, p < 0.05) and unpleasant experience (β = −0.104, p < 0.05), and it has also significant impact on enterprise in the case of prior pleasant experience. However, age of investors has insignificant impact on consumer well-being in both the cases of prior pleasant and unpleasant, and on enterprise in the case of prior unpleasant experience. The goodness of fit indices for the model in this study was examined by standardized root mean square residual (SRMR). The SRMR value was found to be 0.061 which was below the maximum limit of 0.08 to indicate good explanatory power. The importance of exogenous variables in the model were examined by the effect size (f2) on endogenous constructs in terms of r-square change [101]. The value of f2= 1.095 for Impact on individual was considered vital exogenous variable for consumer well-being. Lastly, Stone–Geisser’s Q2 of 0.311 was found for impact on individual and 0.255 for impact on enterprise, representing moderate predictive relevance in financial well-being of investors under study [102]. The final results of hypotheses testing are well explained in Table 5.

In addition to hypothesis testing, moderation effects of experience were investigated by Henseler’s PLS-MGA method as explained in

Table 6. PLS MGA Results.

Path Relationships	Path Coefficient Difference	p-Values Differences			Supported	Permutation p-Values
		PLS MGA	Permutation	Welch Satterthwaite Test
Consumer Well Being -> Impact on Individual	−0.031	0.641	0.641	0.634	NO	0.646
Consumer Well Being -> Impact on Enterprise	−0.098	0.179	0.194	0.185	NO	0.222
Gender -> Consumer Well Being	−0.056	0.673	0.684	0.679	NO	0.62
Gender -> Impact on Individual	0.171	0.027 **	0.025 **	0.027 **	Yes/No	0.041 **
Gender -> Impact on Enterprise	−0.024	0.792	0.787	0.787	NO	0.799
Age -> Consumer Well Being	0.008	0.96 **	0.951	0.952 **	YES	0.946
Age -> Impact on Individual	0.015	0.84	0.845	0.842	NO	0.861
Age -> Impact on Enterprise	0.059	0.543	0.546	0.544	NO	0.593

Source: Authors’ Calculations (Supplementary Materials); Path Coefficients (** p < 0.05).

. The first relationship of consumer well-being on individuals was observed to be on higher side for unpleasant experience as the beta difference was −0.031, but there is no statistical difference between the two types of investors’ experiences. The similar phenomenon was observed for enterprise with negative beta of –0.098 to represent the case that when there is an unpleasant experience in the financial markets of Indian economy like pandemic, inflationary trends or economic slowdown, then well-being has major role to play for retail investors. Overall, the moderation effects of investors’ experience between the relationship of consumer well-being and individual or enterprise was not significant. However, an important observation from PLS MGA indicated that gender was the most critical factor for the impact on individual. There was considerable difference between males and females between the relationship of consumer well-being and individual or enterprise. Males are highly satisfied by the broking firms to develop their well-being in financial markets. The results were duly supported by permutation test and Welch–Satterthwaite test. Second variable was age which moderated between the impact on investors’ well-being. In this case, the middle-aged adults were having significant difference between pleasant and unpleasant experience as mentioned in Table 6.

5. Discussion and Major Findings of the Study

The major findings of the present study revealed that consumer well-being was primarily driven by social and cultural values in case of pleasant experience by retail investors. Retail investors preferred to receive good product and services for financial products to have pleasant experience during pandemic times. However, in case retail investors have unpleasant experience during pandemic times in economy then enterprises can generate consumer well-being by laying more focus on social and cultural values followed by offering effective product and service attributes. The predictive relevance for the present study was found to be moderate and requires more research by upcoming studies in future to determine consumers’ well-being. Another major finding of the present study represents the fact that consumer well-being was found to be higher for individuals than enterprises in case of unpleasant experience of retail investors in the economy. Hence, companies and broking agencies offering financial products to their consumers must take care of individuals with more care during turbulent times in the economy. The role of gender expressed that males require more well-being in comparison to females in both scenarios. However, in case of older generation consumer well-being has more influence at individual level in comparison to enterprise level.

6. Implications of This Study

Theoretically, the study is the first study which have proposed a remarkably simple model to understanding retail investors financial well-being and its impact on enterprises and individual (retail investors). The present study has developed a standard measurement item to measure financial well-being of retail investors, and its impact on enterprise and individual. The situational contribution of this study is that it has tested the financial well-being in both pleasant and unpleasant conditions, and its impact. Additionally, the statistical approach i.e., MICOM, and PLS-MGA to estimate the situational effects and moderating effects on individual and enterprises shall empower future studies to make more rigorous and accurate in findings. Additionally, the sample taken in this study are the actual retail investors which had experience the pandemic situation and their financial well-being. Hence, the outcomes of this study are more suitable for larger and global markets. Theoretically, the present study extends the subjective well-being theory of financial well-being by investigating retail investors well-being based upon their experience in turbulence time such as pandemic [46]. Further, it also extends this theory through both pleasant and unpleasant situation how financial well-being can be ensured and what are the various activities may be crucial. The study also has contributed by measuring the impact of financial well-being on individual and organization.

This study offers some important indications to the financial institutions and broking companies offering investment advisory services to their retail investors interested in investment decisions. These companies can channelize their efforts effectively to attract prospective investors based on gender and age of investors in financial markets [61]. The outcomes of this study offer significant implications for the marketing managers and practitioners. Marketing managers are accountable for enhancing the consumer well-being. In this regard, personal values and organizational attributes are two critical determinants of developing consumer well-being, which can be well taken into consideration by brokerage service providers and financial products sellers. Personal values, individual behavioral aspects, and social and cultural norms are out of marketers’ control however, product and brand attributes are in the control of the organization [64,65]. Therefore, the organizational role is crucial in this context. This study provides support to organizational activities that aim to evaluate and establish policies to improve social and individual happiness [52,58,59,60]. Managerial roles are also important in setting customer expectations, providing backup to set the right goals, and keenly pursue these goals. Setting attainable goals increases the chance to obtain it. This also helps in marketing managers of brokerage firms to please customers easily and increase their level of pleasure [65]. Promoting consumer well-being is a goal-driven process, which can be followed from this study by marketing managers to develop goal-oriented interventions for consumers to achieve their goals [17,70]. Consumer moves through different stages of ownership, wherein this study guides the customization of marketing efforts that are required to enhance consumer well-being. Further, companies can understand that without proper support, consumers may fail to attain the pleasure experience [51,71,72]. The implications of this study are also useful in the context of new customers. New clients may be experiencing difficulties in achieving their goals at various stages, in such case allocation of additional resources will help to overcome obstacles and assist in achieving their desire goals pleasingly [69,72].

7. Limitations of the Study and Future Research Directions

The study was not free from some limitations as the population from which the samples were collected represented only the national capital region and the financial hub of India. Although major retail investors in India belong to these places, the results may not be generalizable to the requirements of multinational companies operating in the Asian context. In future, the area of study can be covered at the Pan India level. The major focus of this study was to investigate only the critical sources of well-being responsible for investor behavior. However, the researchers in future can address the aspects of fear, happiness, and emotions of retail investors to investigate investor behavior in emerging financial markets. The economic downturns due to inflationary trends, currency devaluations and wars can be researched ahead as moderators for the proposed models of investors’ well-being and investor behavior. Further, qualitative studies by focus group discussion of top executives of leading brokerage houses can facilitate better insights of investment advisory functions of such companies. Sentiment analysis on the behavior of retail investors and generating word clouds of investment related blogs and social media platforms can facilitate better understanding of the mindset of retail investors in future. The role of big data analytics and artificial intelligence in investment advisory functions can play a critical role in investment activities of retail investors.

8. Conclusions

The research on consumer well-being primarily addresses the domain of psychology and marketing. However, the dimension of financial well-being has been rarely investigated in the light of psychology for retail investors in financial markets, especially in emerging economies, such as India. The present study thus conducted an interdisciplinary approach to measure retail investors as consumers of financial services companies. More specifically, during the uncertain times on account of COVID-19, the area of financial well-being in light of individual’s experience was of utmost prime interest to investigate. Our perspective thus contributes to the literature not only in terms of discovering the financial well-being of investors but also to relate them as consumers of financial services firms in a financial market. The findings of the study thus provide a new line of thinking of financial well-being during pandemic times and encourages diffusion of theories of psychology and behavioral finance.

The results emanating from this study can facilitate investment advisors to establish an oxymoron of happiness for retail investors in emerging financial markets such as India. There were certain merits in terms of determining various dimensions of consumer well-being by formative assessments in this study. The present study provided an interdisciplinary approach to investigate retail investors’ well-being as consumers in financial markets. This study thus incorporates investors as consumers in the marketplace to select their financial advisors, companies, and brokering firms. The investment advisors can better understand the mindset of retail investors during pandemics and turbulent times in the economy. Furthermore, the present study provides two dimensions of investors experiences in terms of the pleasant and the unpleasant, during difficult times in the economy. This detailed approach can provide better insight into the behaviour of investors with respect to their individual experience, gender, and age aspects. Additionally, enterprises can better adjust themselves to address consumer well-being. They can facilitate better understanding of investment information by their corporate disclosure in financial markets.