Navigating the rise of finfluencers: a multidimensional quality framework for strategic partnerships

Abstract The rise of financial influencers, or “finfluencers”, on social networks like Instagram and their impact on consumer financial decision-making (especially investing) has raised concerns about their quality considering increasing cases of fraudulent investment promotions and financial misconduct. Thus, taking a mixed-methods approach, we establish a multidimensional finfluencer quality (FinQ) framework comprising 40 FinQ indicators to tackle quality uncertainty and provide a complementary solution to economically costly regulation. Our methods involve in-depth qualitative analysis of 12 semi-structured expert interviews and a subsequent multiple-case study of five German-speaking finfluencers on Instagram. We argue that the FinQ framework supports (corporate) stakeholders in navigating the world of finfluencers and simultaneously promotes more informed decision-making. While contributing to the professionalization of strategic partnerships, our study also supports consumer protection beyond regulation. However, our exploratory research is limited by (1) the dynamic regulatory and technological environment and (2) its small qualitative sample. Therefore, we motivate research using other (quantitative) methodologies or larger samples to enhance, validate, or even generalize our findings. Ultimately, our study seeks to enable managers to engage in strategic partnerships with credible finfluencers, especially for financial services marketing, but also to support government financial literacy initiatives.