Does corporate diversification create value in emerging markets? New evidence from Chile

Using a sample of 85 Chilean firms listed in the Santiago Stock Exchange from 2005 to 2013, we analyze the impact of corporate diversification on firm value. We consider voting rights of the main shareholder and institutional investors’ influence on firm value. We report firm‐value destruction for diversified firms. Regarding ownership concentration, we report a negative relation between the largest shareholder ownership and firm value. Separation between voting rights and cash flows rights of this shareholder is negatively related to firm value. While Pension Fund Administrators (AFP) mitigate firm value destruction in diversified firms, other institutional investors do not play an active role in controlling value destruction. Finally, if the largest owner is a family, we report firm‐value creation in diversified firms. Copyright © 2016 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How Does Web Personalization Create Value for Online Retailers? Lower Cash Flow Volatility or Enhanced Cash Flows

This study examines the performance consequences of web personalization (WP), a type of personalization in which web content is personalized and recommendations are offered based on customer preferences. Despite the growing popularity of personalization, there is a dearth of research at the firm level on whether and how web personalization creates shareholder value. We develop and test a conceptual model that proposes that the impact of WP on shareholder value is mediated by (1) cash flow volatility and (2) premium price. The hypotheses are tested based on 603 firm-quarter observations spanning 80 firms over six years in the online financial services industry. The results suggest that while WP lowers the volatility of cash flows, it only enables firms to charge premium prices when online trust is high. Additional tests reveal that the reduction in cash flow volatility is because of lower churn as opposed to acquiring new customers or greater cross-buying. Finally, online trust positively moderates the relationships between WP and cash flow volatility and price premia. Practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

It's a secret: Marketing value and the denial of availability

Marketing thrives on secrets, yet surprisingly little formal attention has been paid to how the marketing of secrecy and the secrecy of marketing can play a significant role in contemporary organizations. We draw upon the fields of organizational studies, psychology, and marketing to develop a typology of secrets that reflects their marketing value and their knowledge value. Marketing secrets can have value to the firm (strategic value), to the customer (marketing value), or to both parties. Based on these two dimensions, we identify four different types of marketing secrets: (1) appealing secrets have high strategic value, as well as high marketing value; (2) mythical secrets mean little to the firm but a lot to the customer; (3) plain secrets are critical to the firm but are irrelevant to customers; and (4) weak secrets have neither strategic value nor marketing value. Our typology enables academics to formulate research questions regarding secrecy in marketing, and serves as a guide for practitioners in the construction of strategies that can exploit the strategic value of secrets by ‘romancing’ them, and increase their knowledge value by ‘educating’ the secrets.     

Relationship marketing's role in managing the firm-investor dyad

This paper develops an interdisciplinary conceptual framework demonstrating the role of marketing in managing investor relationships. The framework illustrates how companies can turn investor relationships into market-based assets by analyzing and managing them from a relationship marketing and stakeholder perspective. Marketing can contribute to investor relationship management and increase shareholder value by lowering the cost of equity capital, increasing analyst coverage and stock liquidity, and reducing shareholder activism. An investigation among investor relations professionals working at publicly traded companies in the Euronext 100 stock index demonstrates the framework's empirical validity and provides managerial implications.     

Disruptive framing in value creation and price setting: Transforming value with strategic frames of reference

Framing in business is frequently found in the digital economy with dramatic and innovative new products and disruptive value propositions. However, framing in business is not an exclusively digital economic strategy. Creating or revising frames of reference, value propositions, and pricing based on either new or newly framed offerings is a basic strategy skill that brings new differential value creation to customers and new price-setting models to firms. In this article, I define framing and explain its influence on managerial cognition as well as its application to value-based marketing and price setting. Using economic value theory and behavioral economics, I propose steps managers and decision makers can take in an effort to achieve framing innovation as a way to leverage the disruptive competitive advantages that flow from strategic frames of reference in the marketplace.     

Integrated marketing as management of holistic consumer experience

In a bid to combine the two major perspectives (strategic communications and strategic brand management) of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC), this article proposes a Holistic Consumer Experience Management framework. According to the framework, the key mission of IMC is to effectively manage the mediated impression of and the direct encounter with the brand, so that synergism ensues among all the interrelated elements of IMC, including research and development, manufacturing, price formulation, channel arrangement, consumer service management, marketing message construction, and communication program execution. As such, IMC is capable of enhancing the holistic consumer experience and creating a holistic brand value structure, which can unite the consumer's sensory, emotional, social, and intellectual experiences in a new and positive way.     

价值链视角下城市商业银行战略成本管理研究

城市商业银行异军突起,成为银行业发展最快的新生力量。为寻求长远发展,城市商业银行应进行战略成本管理。由于价值链分析是战略成本管理的核心,城市商业银行价值链中的战略环节包括研究开发、市场营销和客户服务环节,所以战略成本管理应围绕服务中小企业、实施金融产品差异化、开发战略联盟和发展网络银行四个方面进行。     

The marketing and strategic planning interface

This article examines the potential contribution and implementational problems of developing marketing planning as a means to increase the marketing orientation of a company. It draws on the experience gained from a two year involvement in the design and implementation of a planning system for a large manufacturer, and reviews some of the literature on marketing and strategic planning. The focus is on the problems of managing the interface between strategic and marketing management, and the important role played by marketing information, the Chief Marketing Executive and the planning function in achieving effective and integrated strategic marketing planning.     

Responsible Marketing: Can Social Enterprises Show the Way?

In this article, the authors present a new perspective on responsible marketing. We discuss if and how social enterprises can present a new understanding of responsible marketing. Relevant publications (14 on social entrepreneurship, 40 on marketing in non-profit organizations and social enterprises and 41 papers on marketing) are selected and reviewed. The result of the literature analysis and synthesis show that social enterprises can gain from a more formal, systematic approach to marketing. Since social enterprises prioritize social goals over business results, successful adoption of marketing policies and practices can help then create a blueprint for responsible marketing. Marketing of socially relevant products and services by social enterprises thus create a new paradigm of responsible marketing. Such models can also be useful for larger corporations who look at social business and shared value creation as part of their business and marketing strategy.     

THE IMPACT OF INTERNAL MARKETING EFFORTS IN DISTRIBUTION SERVICE OPERATIONS

Marketing efforts can offer firms a greater competitive advantage by overtly stimulating the impact of frontline logistics employees on customer value creation. In such a situation, internal marketing becomes the strategy of choice in both service and product support contexts. A broad marketing mix framework is introduced shifting the traditional application from marketing products to marketing the workplace to logistics distribution employees. Research findings support a multidimensional operationalization of internal marketing. Holistic tests indicate that internal marketing on an interpersonal level is associated with satisfied and higher performing distribution center employees and increased interdepartmental customer orientation.     

Broadening the concept of marketing

Marketing in business is the task of finding and stimulating buyers for a firms's output. Product development, pricing, distribution, and communication are the mainstays of marketing, while progressive firms also develop new products and chart the trends and changes in people's needs and desires. Marketing can either apply its knowledge to social problems and organizations or remain in a narrowly defined business activity. Every organization has basically the same functions: personnel management, production, income, and promotion, which are using modern marketing skills in commercial sectors. Suppliers and consumers are needed by all organizations. In Canada a group wished to promote an antismoking campaign but they had little money compared to the tobacco companies. This group used modern marketing techniques to combat their lack of funds and found many ways, e.g., books, articles. A business firm uses a multitude of marketing tools to sell its product. Nonbusiness organizations frequently do not integrate their programs the way the businesses place all activities under one marketing vice president and department. Astute marketing depends on continuous feedback from consumers and suppliers. They are dependent upon up-to-the-minute research that tells them about changes in the environment and moves of competitors. Nonbusiness organizations are often casual about the research upon which they base their vital decisions.     

A New Kind of Marketing: Creating Micro-Niches Using Resonance Marketing

ABSTRACT

Marketing has been dramatically changed by the Internet, the old rules do not apply. The Web allows companies to create products using micro-segmentation for target markets that are extremely small. Firms that want to be successful have to learn about resonance marketing. Resonance marketing used in conjunction with cause marketing and/or multicultural marketing can help a company find new market niches, charge premium prices. It can also be of great value to those interested in starting a small business.     

Book Reviews

In a world of limited resources, marketing managers tasked to deliver shareholder value face decisions about how to maximise the returns on their marketing portfolio. Risk is less often considered. In finance the picture is very different; financial portfolio management is concerned with both risk and returns. The central innovation in this paper is the application of modern portfolio theory (MPT) to the management of marketing portfolios in food retailing and in drinks manufacturing. The authors develop a model that calculates an efficient frontier of marketing portfolios that maximise overall return within certain risk constraints, first for a simple two-segment marketing world and then for a more realistic multi-segment portfolio. However, marketing portfolios differ from financial ones in the sense that the allocation of marketing spend affects the returns from the portfolio. Therefore, a second innovation, an extension of MPT to take account of marketing spend allocation decisions, has been developed. Using this model, marketers can determine the risk and the returns of marketing investments, helping them select an optimal portfolio. This would go some way to ensuring that marketing contributes to shareholder value creation, currently one of its major challenges.     

手机营销在酒店行业的运用与新模式探讨

手机对于营销最大的价值,在于无可比拟的精准度及即时互动性,手机营销已成为营销专家们不容忽略的话题。以酒店行业为依托,在研究手机营销意义的基础上,分析了手机营销在酒店行业中的阶段性运用,并探讨手机营销的新模式。     

Relationship marketing

Relationship Marketing is emerging as a new phenomenon. However, relationship oriented marketing practices date back to the pre-Industrial era. In this article, we trace the history of marketing practices and illustrate how the advent of mass production, the emergence of middlemen, and the separation of the producer from the consumer in the Industrial era led to a transactional focus of marketing. Now, due to technological advances, direct marketing is staging a comeback, leading to a relationship orientation. The authors contend that with the evolution of Relationship Marketing, the hitherto prominent exchange paradigm of marketing will be insufficient to explain the growing marketing phenomena of collaborative involvement of customers in the production process. An alternate paradigm of marketing needs to be developed that is more process rather than outcome oriented, and emphasizes value creation rather than value distribution.     

Limits to growing customer value: Being squeezed between the past and the future

Marketing managers often have to balance between marketing exploitation strategies (reaping value from what already is known) and marketing exploration strategies (reaping value from new sources). However, do marketing strategies once exploited or explored in a certain way or direction leave enough potential for further exploration? Based on the various cases of Apple, Alpro, Intel, Nutella, Patagonia, and Ryanair, this article shows that several risks and limits come into play when trying to answer this question. Companies may get squeezed between the past and the future while facing the pressure of temporal consistency driven by past behavior and experiencing the limits of future growth in the dominant customer value drivers. To counter this problem, companies often start integrating new value drivers in their story, leading to other risks, such as incompatibility with existing drivers. The cases discussed in this article reveal that companies may have to accept more sacrifices in order to increase returns within their growth trajectory. Value engineering will become a crucial discipline for companies to survive in many industries. This article gives a step-by-step approach on how to implement this in an organization.     

Customer benefits and value creation in streaming services marketing: a managerial cognitive capability approach

Customer value analysis and management is a key theoretical and empirical issue in marketing management and strategic management. However, little is known about the influence of customer benefit on customer value from the microfoundations of the dynamic capabilities perspective. Currently, a boom in online video and music streaming services is changing the entertainment industry structure. Thus, marketing managers in the fast‐growing streaming services industry should have dynamic managerial capabilities to anticipate other service elements that customers consider valuable. Based on managerial cognitive dynamic capabilities, this research explored the influences of customer‐perceived functional benefit, experiential benefit, financial benefit, and psychosocial benefit on perceived instrumental and terminal values. General linear model (GLM) and fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) were conducted to gain a more nuanced understanding of how different customers’ perceived benefits have different impacts on perceived value. The findings illuminate complex benefit configurations that drive perceived instrumental and terminal values and contribute to the development of value creation and its drivers. The proposed framework can help managers develop managerial cognitive dynamic capabilities by increasing their understanding of the impact of different perceived benefits on value creation for different types of customers.     

Ultimate ownership,risk-taking and firm value: evidence from China

This article investigates the relationship among ultimate ownership, risk-taking and firm value using firm-level data from Chinese companies. The results indicate that dominant ultimate controlling shareholders exacerbate the agency problem. The larger the divergence between ultimate shareholder’s control rights and cash flow rights, the stronger motivation is to reduce corporate risk-taking (CRT) to safeguard private benefits. Furthermore, the presence of a dominant ultimate controlling shareholder is harmful to firm value, and the divergence between its control right and cash flow right has a significantly negative effect on firm value. Corporate risk-taking plays a significant mediating effect between ultimate controlling shareholder and firm value. Based on these results based on theory and practice, we propose a number of practical implications for managers.     

The Interactive Effects of Strategic Marketing Planning and Performance: A Neural Network Analysis

Marketing managers practice in a consistently changing environment necessitating the need for the formalisation, implementation and evaluation of strategic marketing plans. Nevertheless, despite the advocated benefits of strategic marketing planning, a paucity of empirical evidence makes this notion speculative. This study examines the relationships between strategic marketing planning and performance. The interactive effects of strategic marketing planning and performance are stressed and examined. Findings suggest that the issue is not whether strategic marketing planning affects performance, but rather what marketing capabilities are required to enhance performance. This study extends the knowledge of strategic marketing planning and performance by focusing on the service industry, and provides controls for market-level influences by being restricted to the hotel sector.     

关于提升我国上市公司市值管理水平的探讨

伴随着股权分置改革而出现的市值管理正被我国越来越多的上市公司所认知和实践,但由于市值管理是我国资本市场的新事物,许多上市公司还存在着不少认知和行动上的误区。上市公司应该从诚信、系统性规划、良好的公司治理、管理手段的创新、并购重组、做大做强主业、重视资本市场营销、＂社会责任＂意识、危机管理等方面更新市值管理观念。