The customer orientation of financial advisers

Customer orientation, the disposition to meet customers' needs, is central to creating satisfactory relationships with clients. Yet to date, no research has examined the customer orientation of financial planners despite a number of recent scandals in the mutual fund industry that directly affected investors. This research provides survey results from 530 financial advisers regarding their customer orientation levels. The results indicate that financial advisers exhibit very high customer orientation levels, although customer orientation varied across gender, income, and company type. The results also indicate that the importance that advisers place on critical mutual fund characteristics varies according to advisers' level of customer orientation. Finally, the results indicate that advisers with higher customer orientation are more satisfied with their performance in a number of key areas.