CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Chan, Cassy |
|---|---|
| Title | Behavioral and Strategic Differentiation in Hong Kong's Digital Brokerage Market: A Comparative Analysis of Global and Local Platforms |
| Summary | This thesis explores the strategic and behavioral differentiation between global and local digital brokerage platforms in Hong Kong’s retail investment market. It investigates how smaller, mobile-native brokers compete with large-scale global incumbents by emphasizing user experience (UX), onboarding design, education integration, and referral-based acquisition strategies. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study combines a structured survey of 100 retail investors with a feature-level benchmarking of four brokerage platforms. Results indicate that while global brokers dominate in functional breadth, local platforms excel in behavioral alignment, resulting in higher user satisfaction and conversion intent. A strategic positioning matrix illustrates the trade-offs between technical capability and UX optimization. The findings contribute to fintech strategy and behavioral finance literature by empirically validating the importance of experience design in platform competitiveness. The thesis concludes that user-centric features—such as localized onboarding, embedded education, and gamified flows—can serve as durable sources of advantage for local brokers in a mobile-first financial environment. Limitations and directions for future research are also discussed. |
| Supervisor | Schindele, Iboya |
| Department | Economics MSc |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/chan_cassy.pdf |
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