The Immediate Impact of New Product Introductions on Stock Price: The Role of Firm Resources and Size*

New product development and introduction is an ongoing important issue to facilitate a firm's success. To demonstrate the financial impact of new product introductions and the supporting role of firm resources and organizational structure, the authors collected 409 new product announcements from 1990 to 1998 and used event methodology and regression models in this research. Building on resources and capabilities perspectives, the present study argues that firm resources with emphases on research and development (R&D) are imperative to materialize new product concepts. However, the research revealed that R&D resources have dual effects on immediate shareholder value (i.e., abnormal stock returns). On one hand, when the firm commits only lower to moderate levels of R&D, investors would have perceived such R&D as expenditures reducing the firm's profit margin and thereby negatively evaluate R&D resources. Nevertheless, when the firm has dedicated its resources to R&D significant enough to signal investors its potential benefits can outweigh its costs, it generates positive shareholder value. Further, the study found that investors honor positive marketing resources that are critical to promote and launch new products to customers. Apart from resources perspectives, according to the organizational structure literature, firm size reflects the layers of bureaucracy within an organization. The research found a negative effect on shareholder value, indicating that investors evaluate more optimistically smaller firms that are likely to be more innovative and entrepreneurial resulted in more breakthrough products. In conclusion, this study provides value to practitioners in understanding the impact of firm size and, more importantly, to what extent they dedicate their resources in R&D and marketing to generate different performance outcomes.     

Entry through Acquisition: Determinants of Multinational Firm Choices

This paper examines the factors that determine the decision of multinational firms to enter a foreign market through acquisition. In addition to the traditional industry variables attracting or discouraging entry through their effects on expected returns, the relative size of multinational entry in Greece in 1987–96 is found to be affected by a new group of variables, shaping rational profit expectations and characterizing the target, the industry and the origin of the buyer. A better understanding of the decision to enter a market through acquisition instead of greenfield investment and of its possible consequences is thus provided.     

Foreign Entry and Firm Advertising Intensity: Evidence from China

This paper investigates the determinants of advertising intensity at the firm level by focusing on the role of foreign entry. In a monopolistically competitive market with heterogeneous firms, we show that foreign entry affects the expected advertising intensity of domestic firms through its impact on the cost of resources, brand image, and productivity spillovers and its impact on firms’ exit behaviour. Then, using comprehensive firm-level data from China’s manufacturing sector between 2005 and 2007, we test this hypothesis and find that foreign entry significantly affects advertising intensity.     

Pseudo-Generic Products and Barriers to Entry in Pharmaceutical Markets

This paper examines incentives for brand-name pharmaceutical producers to market pseudo-generic versions of their own branded products upon the expiry of patent protection.Using a two-stage game model, we determine that under plausible demand and cost conditions, brand-name incumbents can find it profitable to produce pseudo-generics as a means of blocking rivals' entry even when independent firms producing true generics face low entry costs.The model shows that social welfare can be higher when firms use pseudo-generics instead of capacity for entry deterrence as long as substitutability between brand-name and generic products is sufficiently high.     

Exploring Robust Design Capabilities,Their Role in Creating Global Products,and Their Relationship to Firm Performance*

With the increasing desire for products suitable for widely varying markets worldwide, this study offers insight into capabilities associated with successful robust design in global product markets. These robust design capabilities (i.e., the possibility for success under varying circumstances or scenarios) are a potential organizational response to rapid change and uncertainty, which also improve the likelihood of product acceptance on a global basis. From literature, executive interviews, and anecdotal evidence, four capabilities associated with robust product design are derived: (1) functional; (2) aesthetic; (3) technological; and (4) quality based. A model is proposed and an empirical test conducted that considers the moderating influence of environmental uncertainty on the relationship between these robust capabilities and firm performance. The findings suggest that the use of robust design capabilities are affected by uncertainty and have an important influence on firm performance and speed to market. Specifically, the product development process tends to be characterized by aesthetic and technological robust design capabilities in more certain environments and functional robust design capabilities in more uncertain environments when seeking to improve firm performance. Alternatively, technological design capabilities in more certain environments and functional design capabilities in more uncertain environments are associated with improved speed to market.     

Monopoly Rents and Price Fixing in Betting Markets

Betting markets provide an ideal environment in which to examinemonopoly power due to the availability of detailed information on product pricing. In this paper we argue that the pricing strategies of companies in the U.K. betting industry are likely to be an important source of monopoly rents, particularly in the market for forecast bets. Pricing in these markets are shown to be explicitly coordinated. Further, price information is asymmetrically biased in favor of producers. We find evidence, based on U.K. data, that pricing of CSF bets is characterized by a significantly higher markup than pricing of single bets. Although this differential can in part be explained by the preferences of bettors, it is reasonable to attribute a significant part of the differential as being due to monopoly power.     

A Model of Supplier Integration into New Product Development*

In many industries, firms are looking for ways to cut concept‐to‐customer development time, to improve quality, and to reduce the cost of new products. One approach shown to be successful in Japanese organizations involves the integration of material suppliers early in the new product development cycle. This involvement may range from simple consultation with suppliers on design ideas to making suppliers fully responsible for the design of components or systems they will supply. While prior research shows the benefit of using this approach, execution remains a problem. The processes for identifying and integrating suppliers into the new product development (NPD) process in North American organizations are not understood well. This problem is compounded by the fact that design team members often are reluctant to listen to the technology and cost ideas made by suppliers in new product development efforts. We suggest a model of the key activities required for successful supplier integration into NPD projects, based on case studies with 17 Japanese and American manufacturing organizations. The model is validated using data from a survey of purchasing executives in global corporations with at least one successful and one unsuccessful supplier integration experience. The results suggest that (1) increased knowledge of a supplier is more likely to result in greater information sharing and involvement of the supplier in the product development process; (2) sharing of technology information results in higher levels of supplier involvement and improved outcomes; (3) supplier involvement on teams generally results in a higher achievement of NPD team goals; (4) in cases when technology uncertainty is present, suppliers and buyers are more likely to share information on NPD teams; and (5) the problems associated with technology uncertainty can be mitigated by greater use of technology sharing and direct supplier participation on new product development teams. A supplier's participation as a true member of a new product development team seems to result in the highest level of benefits, especially in cases when a technology is in its formative stages.     

Price Discovery in American and British Property Markets

This paper examines the securitized (public) and unsecuritized (private) commercial property markets in the United States and the United Kingdom for evidence of price discovery. Appraisal-based returns are corrected for smoothing, without presupposing the true returns to be uncorrelated or unpredictable across time. Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and property company returns are corrected for leverage. We find evidence that price discovery occurs in the securitized market structure in both countries, and that this price information does not fully transmit to the unsecuritized markets for a year or more. In Britain, the unsecuritized market appears to be more closely and immediately linked to the securitized market than is the case in the U.S.     

Deregulation,Entry, and Competition in Local Banking Markets

Review of Industrial Organization - By applying the Bresnahan-Reiss empirical entry threshold model on Census data for the waves 1981 to 2011, we study the evolution of entry conditions in Italian...     

Entry,Standards and Competition: Firm Strategies and the Diffusion of Mobile Telephony

This paper studies the effects of a countrys regulatory setting and competitive environment the performance of second-generation (2G) mobile on telecommunication. We consider three dimensions of sector performance: entry time, service prices and diffusion. We address the question of non-random selection arising from cross-country differences in the timing of the commercialization of new technologies. Our empirical exploration shows that this type of sample selection may indeed be a substantial problem in cross-country studies on technology diffusion and yield biased estimates of the policy variables of interest. Our estimation results suggest that standardization accelerates 2G entry and diffusion, although within-standards competition triggers less aggressive price competition than between-standards competition. We also find that an early monopolist will price more aggressively to build up an installed base. Furthermore, we find that liberalizing markets for incumbent technologies (i.e., fixed line telephony) has accelerated the commercialization of 2G.     

A Comparison of the Wholesale Model and the Agency Model in Differentiated Markets

We compare the wholesale model and the agency model that characterise a vertical relation in a bilateral duopoly framework. Results suggest that the agency model may be regarded as an example of retailer power resale price maintenance and provide an economic view of why restraints of this kind should be evaluated under the rule of reason. While competition is more likely to be undercut under the agency model, relative to the wholesale model, the agency model benefits consumers by offering relatively lower retail prices and greater demand.     

Efficiency and Firm Ownership: Some New Evidence

The paper investigates the effect of state ownership on efficiency of firmsusing an econometric model that allows for the separation of technical from allocative efficiency in adynamic setting. The estimation results, based on a sample of international airlines, suggest that state ownershipis associated with lower technical and allocative efficiency. State ownership's effect on technical efficiencyis mainly a dynamic one – lowering the rate of cost decline, whereas its effect on allocativeefficiency is static – raising the level of costs. Thus lower technical, rather than allocative, efficiency isthe main reason for state-owned firms to be less efficient than their private counterparts.     

A Simple Search and Bargaining Model of Real Estate Markets

This paper examines the impact of brokers on buyers' and sellers' search behavior and on the transaction prices in real estate markets. It is shown that the seller and the buyer search less intensively if the house is listed with a broker. The seller gets a higher price when he employs a broker, but the increase in price is smaller than the commission fee. More specifically, the portion of the commission covered by the increase in price is directly related to the bargaining powers of the buyer and the seller. In the special case where the price is determined according to the Nash bargaining solution, the increase in price is shown to be half of the commission fee. It is also shown that an increase in the commission rate increases the equilibrium price but decreases the equilibrium search intensities.     

Investment in Design and Firm Performance: The Mediating Role of Design Management*

Design management is an increasingly important concept, research into which is remarkably scarce. Although the literature suggests that design management has an effect on design effectiveness, there is no empirical support for the impact of design management on firm performance. Furthermore, few studies have quantified the contribution that design makes to company performance. The aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of design investment on company performance and how this relationship is mediated by design management skills. Structural equation modeling was used to test the research hypotheses on a data set from the Italian and Spanish ceramic tile industry. Results suggest, first, that design management enhances firm performance. Second, this research also provides empirical evidence that investing in design is positively related to design management. Third, design management plays a significant role in determining the effects of design investment on firm performance. Companies that manage design effectively and efficiently attain better performance than those that do not. Therefore, good design does not emerge by chance or by simply investing in design but rather as the result of a managed process. Additionally, a methodological contribution of the present study lies in the empirical validation of a scale to assess design management skills. Finally, some suggestions are put forward for future lines of research that would complement this study and would go beyond some of its limitations.     

企业内部市场定价:基于行为的理论模型

本文从行为的视角探讨内部市场定价问题。根据内部市场主体之间的合作、竞争行为提出并界定了内部市场结构的概念，将内部市场划分为简单型、合作主导型、竞争主导型、复合型四种结构类型；通过分析企业战略、内部定价对内部市场主体之间合作、竞争行为的影响，得出了企业战略决定内部市场结构应然、内部定价调节内部市场结构实然的结论：以内部市场结构的实然与应然相一致为原则．构建了企业内部市场定价的理论模型，阐述了在各种内部市场结构应然要求下的内部定价方法、决策权安排、绩效考核标准和激励机制等。     

FROM EXPERIENCE: Creating Synergy between Marketing and Research and Development*

The tensions between marketing and research and development (R&D) are so common that we have come to accept them as the way organizations are. If we remain resigned like this, how will we ever reap some of the benefits that can accrue from these groups working better together? If we can improve the working relationships between marketing and R&D, researchers promise a variety of desirable organizational outcomes, such as cycle‐time reduction and new product success. This article describes in detail the changes that a Fortune 500 company made to its product development process to foster synergy between marketing and R&D. The modified process formalized the roles of marketing and R&D at both the front and back ends of the product development process, increasing productive interaction between the groups. The company found that at the front end, marketing and R&D needed to work together (1) to clarify the market requirements implicit in the market attack plan and (2) to develop a technical strategy that responded to the market requirements and that consequently implemented the market attack plan. At the back end, the groups needed to work together (3) to formulate the value messages used to market the company's products. The synergy created between marketing and R&D through the new process is credited for enabling the company to compete successfully in a market it never before had entered.