J. P. Morgan Funds and Stealth Price Marketing
We said three posts but couldn’t resist a quick fourth on price competition. Click to read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
To close off the series of posts on price competition, an interesting tidbit. Check out the sponsored links in the Google results for “low cost mutual funds”.*
At the top you’ll see Vanguard, T. Rowe Price, and Fidelity. No surprises there. Now look on the right side. The name that jumps out to me: J.P. Morgan Funds. The firm has many competitively-priced offerings, but never before have I seen them overtly market themselves as a low-cost provider. The sponsored link caught me off-guard.
Looking further, the firm makes no mention of pricing or fees anywhere in the content about the firm on its Web site. This makes me suspect that J. P. Morgan is doing some “test and learn” when it comes to sponsored links.
However, there’s the possibility that this represents a little stealth, price-centric marketing by J.P. Morgan. If so, it’s another interesting way to inject price into marketing strategies.
* I repeated the same search 20 times on 10/25/10 and J. P. Morgan Funds appeared in the sponsored links 19 times. The sponsored results will change over time.