Int. J. Economics and Business Research, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2015 81 Copyright © 2015 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Attribute-based perceptual mapping of mutual fund schemes: a study from an emerging market Moonis Shakeel* and Shivani Chaudhry Jaypee Business School, Sector 62, Noida, U.P., India Email: moonis.shakeel@gmail.com Email: shanic112@yahoo.co.in *Corresponding author Abstract: The mutual fund industry in India has undergone considerable changes and is maturing over the years. The rationale behind the present study is to know the perception of financial advisors towards few selected equity mutual fund schemes. This study attempts to find that whether the perception of financial advisors is based on real numbers or personal preferences. The technique called multidimensional scaling (MDS) technique is used to figure out the perceptual map, on the given responses. The researchers have concluded that there is a gap between the perception of the financial advisors on the various attributes of the mutual fund schemes and the actual figures. Thus, to enhance the confidence of investors in mutual funds, the advisors must resort to proper technical and fundamental analysis of the schemes instead of following their personal preferences or biases. Keywords: attributes; financial advisors; India; mutual fund; multidimensional scaling; MDS; perceptual map; perception. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Shakeel, M. and Chaudhry, S. (2015) ‘Attribute-based perceptual mapping of mutual fund schemes: a study from an emerging market’, Int. J. Economics and Business Research, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp.81–103. Biographical notes: Moonis Shakeel is an Assistant Professor (Senior Grade) at Jaypee Business School, Noida. He has done his Honours, Master’s and Doctorate in Economics from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He has over ten years experience, of which, he has seven years of academic experience and three years of industry experience. He teaches subjects related to business analytics, finance and economics. He provides training in softwares like R, Evews, SPSS, Excel and Microstrategy. His research interests are in the area of market microstructure and behavioural finance. Shivani Chaudhry is a Research Scholar at Jaypee Business School, Noida. She has done her Masters in Management (Finance) from Lucknow University, Lucknow. She has also cleared National Eligibility Test (NET) for lecturership, an exam conducted by University Grants Commission (UGC) in India. She has over 12 years of academic experience as a full time and visiting faculty in various management institutes of Delhi-NCR. She teaches subjects related to finance like financial services, financial markets and financial management.