Are two brands better than one? Investigating the effects of co-branding in advertising on audience memory

Co-branded advertising, where advertisements feature two partnered brands from different categories, should ideally benefit both brands. We test this assertion by studying the effect of featuring a second brand in advertisements on ad and brand name memorability, and the role of category context on which brand is recalled. Our test covers online display advertisements for consumer-packaged brands paired with charity and retailer brands in three markets (USA, UK, and Australia). Independent sample comparisons across 54 brand pairs show that advertising two brands has a neutral effect on ad memorability and negative effect on brand memorability. Furthermore, the advertisement’s category context determines which of the brands is recalled. Our findings support a competitive interference theory of dual-brand processing, whereby the two brands compete for attention resources. The results have implications for the return on investment from advertising expenditure, which will vary substantively depending on whether the costs of advertising are shared or borne by one brand in the pair.     

Enterprise Risk Management and the Financial Reporting Process: The Experiences of Audit Committee Members,CFOs, and External Auditors

The recent financial crisis has brought to the forefront the need for companies to effectively manage their risks. In this regard, one approach that has gained prominence is enterprise risk management (ERM). Importantly, little is known about the link between ERM and the financial reporting process. This link is critical, because it is imperative that financial reporting adequately depicts the financial status (e.g., valuations, estimates) and associated risks of a company as revealed by ERM. Additionally, from an auditing perspective, ERM affects the risks of misstatement, which should impact audit planning. Accordingly, the objective of this study is to examine the experiences of audit partners, CFOs, and audit committee (AC) members (“the governance triad”) on the link between ERM and the financial reporting process. To determine whether members of the governance triad focus on monitoring, strategy, or both, we also examine their definition of and experiences with ERM with respect to agency and/or resource dependence theory. To address these issues, we conduct semistructured interviews of experienced individuals that form the governance triads from 11 public companies. There are three major findings from our study. First, importantly, all three types of participants see a strong link between ERM and the financial reporting process. Second, despite recognition of the broad nature of ERM, the predominant experiences of the actual roles played by triad members center on agency theory, while resource dependence may be relatively underemphasized by all triad members. Finally, CFOs and AC members indicate that auditors may be especially underutilizing ERM in the audit process, suggesting an “expectations gap.”     

Effectiveness and safety of betrixaban extended prophylaxis for venous thromboembolism compared with standard-duration prophylaxis intervention in acute medically ill patients: a systematic literature review and network meta-analysis

Abstract

Aims: To determine the clinical effectiveness and safety of venous thromboembolism (VTE) prophylaxis using US- and Europe-approved anticoagulants relative to extended-duration VTE prophylaxis with betrixaban. Low molecular weight heparins (LMWHs), unfractionated heparin (UFH), fondaparinux sodium and placebo were each compared to betrixaban, as standard-duration VTE prophylaxis for hospitalized, non-surgical patients with acute medical illness at risk of VTE.

Materials and methods: A systematic literature review was conducted up to June 2019 to identify randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of VTE prophylaxis in hospitalized, non-surgical patients with acute medical illness at risk of VTE. Studies that reported the occurrence of VTE events (including death) and, where possible, major bleeding, from treatment initiation to 20–50?days thereafter were retrieved and extracted. A Bayesian fixed effect network meta-analysis was used to estimate efficacy and safety of betrixaban compared with standard-duration VTE prophylaxis.

Results: Seven RCTs were analyzed which compared betrixaban, LMWHs, UFH, fondaparinux sodium, or placebo. There were significantly higher odds (median odds [95% credible interval]) of VTE with LMWHs (1.38 [1.12–1.70]), UFH (1.60 [1.05–2.46]), and placebo (2.37 [1.55–3.66]) compared with betrixaban. There were significantly higher odds of VTE-related death with placebo (7.76 [2.14–34.40]) compared with betrixaban. No significant differences were observed for the odds of major bleeding with all comparators, VTE-related death with any active standard-duration VTE prophylaxis, or of VTE with fondaparinux sodium, compared with betrixaban.

Limitations and conclusions: In this indirect comparison, betrixaban was shown to be an effective regimen with relative benefits compared with LMWHs and UFH. This indicates that betrixaban could reduce the burden of VTE in at-risk hospitalized patients with acute medical illness who need extended prophylaxis, though without direct comparative evidence, stronger conclusions cannot be drawn.     

Scale and scope economies for drug abuse treatment costs: evidence for Washington State

Drug abuse treatment has been pervasive in the US in the recent years, and the associated direct treatment costs approached $18 billion in 2001. However, there have been few published studies on scale economies, and none on scope economies, for drug abuse treatment costs. We estimate a restricted cost function for 17 hospitals in Washington State that provided inpatient and/or outpatient drug abuse treatment during the years 1997–2004. We find significant evidence of scale economies for hospitals that provide only outpatient drug abuse treatment services. The marginal costs of outpatient services are even smaller for hospitals that produce both outpatient and inpatient drug abuse treatment services. Further, these joint-production hospitals exhibit diseconomies of scope, or specialization economies. These results all imply that recent trends towards additional outpatient treatment services will enhance cost efficiency.     

The conjoint community resiliency assessment measure as a baseline for profiling and predicting community resilience for emergencies

Community resilience is a term that describes the community's ability to function amidst crises or disruptions. Community resilience is perceived as a fundamental element in emergency preparedness and as a mean of ensuring social stability in the face of crises, including disasters. However, there is a paucity of empiric evidence for this conjecture. This paper demonstrates the use of the Conjoint Community Resilience Assessment Measurement (CCRAM) for estimating the ability of a community to be resilient in the face of disaster. Six factors of community resilience were identified based on a study conducted in nine small to medium size towns (N = 886): Leadership, collective efficacy, preparedness, place attachment, social trust and social relationship. Multiple logistic regressions yielded the CCRAM protective factors for perceived community resilience. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis confirmed the quality of the CCRAM as a diagnostic tool for perceived community resilience. The CCRAM tool is presented as a potential provider of information for authorities and decision makers as an aid for foreseeing and planning towards the challenges present during emergency times.     

LABOR MOBILITY OF IMMIGRANTS: TRAINING,EXPERIENCE, LANGUAGE,AND OPPORTUNITIES*

This article analyzes the labor mobility and human capital accumulation of male immigrants from the former Soviet Union to Israel. We estimate a dynamic choice model for employment and training in blue‐ and white‐collar occupations, where the labor market randomly offered opportunities are affected by past choices. The estimated model accurately reproduces the patterns in the data. The estimated direct earning return to local training, local experience, and knowledge of Hebrew are very high, whereas imported skills have zero (conditional) return. The welfare gain from the impact of training on job offer probabilities is larger than its effect on wages.     

MBTI Personality Types of Project Managers and Their Success: A Field Survey

This paper describes a survey of 280 project managers that reveals both their personality types (via Myers‐Briggs personality inventory) and their success in project management. The results show that a project manager's personality is better suited for functioning with partial data and under ambiguity than the rest of the population. These traits were found for both women and men. The conclusion is that project managers (females and males) have a unique personality‐type distribution that distinguishes them from the general population. The findings can contribute to better understanding the traits that characterize the project management population, and their relationship to project success.     

Panda and elephant – contesting animal icons in Thai tourism

In May 2009, during a period of rising political polarization in Thailand, a cub was unexpectedly born in Chiang Mai's Zoo to a pair of Chinese pandas. The authorities used the occasion to boost the crisis-ridden tourism to the northern Thai city, instigating an unprecedented national craze around the tiny cub, and promoting a massive pilgrimage of domestic visitors to the zoo. In a conspicuous act of protest against the prioritization of the foreign pandas, some elephant keepers in the Ayutthya kraal, painted their animals in panda colors, leading to an implicit contest between the two animal icons. In this case study, the wider theoretical and comparative implications of that contest are analyzed. Whereas previous studies of tourists engagement with captive wild animals paid scant attention to its wider social context, the article examines the cultural and economic background of the contest, and the manner in which it became implicated in the process of political polarization between the societal center and the periphery.     

Stock of downstream complementary assets as a catalyst for product innovation during technological change in the U.S. machine tool industry

Research summary : We investigate the effect of incumbents' stock of downstream complementary assets on their product innovation during a disruptive technological change. We theorize that a firm's stock of downstream complementary assets, by providing critical information about shifting demand conditions, will play a catalytic role in firm adaptation during such a change. Using the advent of disruptive computer numerical control machine tools in the U.S. machine tool industry during the 1970s and 1980s as the context, we find that firms with greater stocks of downstream complementary assets are likely to be product innovation leaders during such a change. Managerial summary : Disruptive changes are challenging firms across industries. We concentrate on the U.S. machine tool industry during the 1970s and 1980s when Japanese manufacturers with disruptive computer numerical control systems challenged the U.S. manufacturers. We find that, under the threat of disruption, the greater the stock of downstream complementary assets a U.S. machine tool manufacturer has, the more likely it is to be the product innovation leader with the disruptive technology. Our findings provide novel insights for managers in companies that face disruptive changes and can help them avoid the consequences of such changes as predicted by prior research. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Seeing the market: performative sensemaking and the case of advertising agencies and their clients

ABSTRACT

How do market intermediaries help other market actors see the market and their opportunities for action within it? This article introduces a theoretical framework of performative sensemaking to explore this question using the case of advertising agencies and their clients. Drawing on 12 months of participant observation and 81 interviews conducted across four general market American advertising agencies, the article illustrates how advertising practitioners provide their clients with visions of what the market is and what opportunities for action lie within it, developing advertising campaigns to match that vision. These performed accounts of the market are dynamically negotiated and socially embedded, reflecting the identities of the clients, their target audiences, and the intermediaries themselves. Because intermediaries dramaturgically perform these interpretations of the market for their client in micro-level interactions, they must also deal with contestation and negotiation over their visions of the market.