A Study of Demographic Influence on Use of Web-Based Information in Investment Planning for Retirement

Abstract

The Digital world is like a virtual galaxy of knowledge. This pandemic situation has further propelled people to depend upon the world of internet. This research is aimed at analysing the use of internet for gathering information for decision-making and depending upon various tools available on web for calculating returns of investments and finally building the corpus for retirement. It has been observed that people are always apprehensive about paying for advices in case of planning for their financial needs post-retirement. They depend heavily upon their perception of what amount of money would be required to pay off their post-retirement expenses. The survey conducted also brought forth the attitude of self-reliance. Now with the world of the internet being an easier and cheaper source of information, people prefer to rely on information available on the internet, a few discussions with friends and family for drawing up conclusions on the quantum of funds required post requirement and the nature of investments to be made. Yet approaching a professional expert is still not surely a priority in the list of information sources of people.

The research was conducted vide the survey method and a total of 155 completed responses were gathered.

The study concluded that the individuals' age significantly influences their perception and attitude towards accessing information from the internet about investment plans for retirement.

Another objective of this research was to study whether people with finance-based educational backgrounds had more reliance than people from non- finance based educational backgrounds on web-based information as a source for planning their retirement-oriented finance.