Consumer attitude towards brand-extension incongruity: The moderating role of need for cognition and need for change

Abstract

This paper integrates two contradictory predictions from the schema incongruity theory: a linear versus an inverted-U relationship between brand-extension incongruity and evaluation. It suggests two personality variables, namely, need for cognition and need for change that moderate the relationship. The major proposition that the relationship would be linear for individuals low in both personality dimensions and inverted-U for those high on both was supported by the data obtained through a questionnaire study. The highest evaluation was obtained for the moderately incongruent extension compared to the congruent and extremely incongruent brand extensions of an established brand for individuals high on both personality dimensions. Four innovative behaviour types identified on the basis of a combination of high and low categories of participants on the two personality dimensions also provided similar results. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings, limitations of the present study, and future possibilities are discussed.     

Selling-price estimates in revenue recognition and the usefulness of financial statements

Revenue is one of the largest and most value-relevant items in firms’ financial statements. Based on the “realizable” and the “earned” criteria of SFAC No. 5 (FASB in Concepts statement no. 5. Recognition and measurement in financial statements of business enterprises, 1984), revenues should reflect both selling price and timing of delivery. Of those two aspects, selling-price estimates are required for revenue recognition when standalone selling prices for products and services are not available. In this study, I examine the effects of selling-price estimates in revenue recognition on the contracting and informational roles of financial statements. Particularly, I examine the setting of SOP 97-2 (AICPA in Software revenue recognition. Statement of Position (SOP) 97-2, AICPA, New York, 1997) that removed software firms’ flexibility to recognize revenues using selling-price estimates. I find that SOP 97-2 implementation did not improve the contracting role of earnings. However its implementation partly shifted the informational role of financial statements from income-statement to balance-sheet components.     

Estimation of ratio of population means in survey sampling when some observations are missing

This paper considers the estimation of the ratio of population means when some observations are missing. Four estimators are presented and their bias and mean square error properties are studied. Received: June 1998     

The Dempster‐Shafer Theory: An Introduction and Fraud Risk Assessment Illustration

This article introduces the Dempster‐Shafer theory (DS theory) of belief functions for managing uncertainties, specifically in the auditing and information systems domains. The use of DS theory is illustrated by deriving a fraud risk assessment formula for a simplified version of a model developed by Srivastava et al. (2007). In this formulation, fraud risk is the normalised product of four risks: risk that management has incentives to commit fraud; risk that management has opportunities to commit fraud; risk that management has an attitude to rationalise committing fraud; and risk that an auditor's special procedures will fail to detect fraud. The article demonstrates how to use such a model to plan for a financial audit where management fraud risk is assessed to be high. In addition, it discusses whether audit planning is better served by an integrated audit/fraud risk assessment as now suggested in SAS 107 (AICPA 2006a, see also ASA 200 in AUASB 2007) or by the approach illustrated here where a parallel, but separate, assessment is made of audit risk and fraud risk.     

Income Growth and Earnings Variations in New Zealand, 1998–2004

This article analyses changes in the distributions of working‐age individuals' earnings and total income in New Zealand over the period 1998–2004. We find that there have been broad gains in income across the distribution, suggesting the spoils of growth have been shared widely. Mean and median earnings increased 15 and 23 per cent respectively, while mean and median income increased 12–13 per cent. Inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, was more stable: earnings inequality fell 4 per cent, while income inequality was unchanged. The main drivers of the changes were employment and real wage growth. We estimate that roughly one‐half of the growth in average incomes was due to employment growth, and one‐quarter each to demographic changes and wage growth. The relative employment and wage contributions varied across the income distribution: employment growth dominated gains at the lower end of the distribution, while wage gains dominated changes at the higher end.     

Walking the tight rope of coopetition: Impact of competition and cooperation intensities and balance on firm innovation performance

This study empirically investigates an important question in the coopetition literature: to what extent does coopetition impact a firm's innovation performance? With a focus on the intensity of competition and intensity of cooperation of a focal firm with its alliance partners, our theory proposes that a moderate level of competition with alliance partners is more beneficial than a very high or a very low level of competition. We further develop the concept of “balance” in coopetition and examine how the interplay of competition and cooperation and the balance between the two matter for innovation performance. Results from our empirical study using data from the semiconductor industry show that competition and cooperation intensities have non-monotonic positive relationship with firm's coopetition-based innovation performance. Further, balanced coopetition (i.e., when competition is moderately high and cooperation is high) has a positive effect on innovation performance. A key contribution of this paper is the conceptualization and empirical demonstration of the effects of various aspects of coopetition such as competition dominant, cooperation dominant, and balanced coopetition on innovation performance.