A study of the antecedents of slogan liking

A slogan is an integral component of a brand's advertising platform that helps shape its identity and define its positioning. While prior literature has focused on the recall of slogans, knowledge regarding why consumers like some slogans more than others is still limited. This paper uses data from a large field study to explore the key factors that determine the likeability of slogans. It uses a bilinear mixed model to assess the relative importance of slogan characteristics, media expenditure, and respondent characteristics as antecedents of slogan likeability. The findings suggest that the liking for a slogan may be unrelated to media expenditure, and driven largely by the clarity of the message, the exposition of the benefits, rhymes, and creativity. Further, in sharp contrast to industry practice and conventional belief, the study finds that jingles or brevity have no systematic effects on the likeability of slogans.     

Seasonality and Wage Responsiveness in a Developing Agrarian Economy

This paper studies the wage responsiveness of labour supply and demand, simultaneously addressing the twin issues of the non-clearing of developing rural labour markets and seasonality. It employs a data set pertaining to south-central India, and limits itself to the agricultural market for daily-rated labour (by far the predominant form of wage contract in the sample villages). Estimating a theoretically robust and empirically justified disequilibrium model of the agricultural labour market, we find no evidence of backward-bending supply curves or 'vertical' demand curves, contrary to findings in the literature. Further, while the agricultural labour market appears to be in equilibrium during the kharif (or rainy) season, it manifests excess supply in the rabi (or post-rainy) season.     

Impact of patenting on firms' performance: an empirical investigation based on manufacturing firms in India

The study aims to estimate the impact of R&D expenditure and patenting on the performance of firms using productivity, profitability and Tobin's q ratio as the performance indicators. The study uses firm-level data of 489 high- and medium-technology firms during the period of 2000–2010. We employ relatively a new source of data particularly in the context of India, firm-level patent granted, that has not been explored earlier. The study finds that firms patenting result in productivity improvement of firms, whereas R&D expenditure does not. The study further finds the evidence of positive impact of patenting on financial performance of firm with significant differences between foreign and domestic firms.     

A paradigm for examining second-order factor models employing structural equation modeling

We present here a paradigm for assessing second-order measurement models. Our approach is hierarchical in nature. We discuss the need for higher-order models from a conceptual perspective and illustrate how some common challenges in empirical research can be resolved through the deployment of higher-order modeling. Essentially, we argue that many constructs can be meaningfully described by a higher-order structure and testing for the existence of such structures requires a careful examination of alternative models. There is a need for conceptual as well as empirical support. In order to demonstrate our paradigm, we use data that relate to airline service quality. Our sample includes two databases. Responses from 170 individuals are employed for exploratory purposes and responses from 437 individuals are used for subsequent data analyses.     

Oil Risk Exposure: The Case of the U.S. Oil and Gas Sector

We estimate oil price risk exposures of the U.S. oil and gas sector using the Fama‐French‐Carhart's four‐factor asset pricing model augmented with oil price and interest rate factors. Results show that the market, book‐to‐market, and size factors, as well as momentum characteristics of stocks and changes in oil prices are significant determinants of returns for the sector. Oil price risk exposures of U.S. oil and gas companies in the oil and gas sector are generally positive and significant. Our study also finds that oil price risk exposures vary considerably over time, and across firms and industry subsectors.     

Private and public disclosures and the efficiency of stock prices

In this paper I examine the effects of private and public disclosures on the informational efficiency of stock prices. In addition to making a public announcement such as an earnings announcement, a public firm can make private disclosure to an analyst. If the analyst's relative information advantage is below a threshold level, private disclosure to the analyst leads to more efficient stock price. I demonstrate that the allocation of information across market participants is an important determinant of price efficiency. While accounting regulators often argue the need for equal access to information, the paper shows that there are conditions under which a limited amount of informational inequality may lead to more efficient stock prices.     

Layoffs and duration dependence in a model of turnover

A semi-Markov model of turnover, resulting from optimizing behavior on the part of workers, is developed. Duration dependence in the transition out of employment is modelled as resulting from a layoff probability which decreases with tenure. Some preliminary results, based on DIME data, are presented. These indicate that a declining hazard rate in the transition out of employment is a significant feature of the data.     

Enhancing the business-to-business supply chain: Insights from partitioning the supply-side

A market orientation has long been established as the key to success in supply chain management. A central concept of this orientation is market segmentation. The concept of market segmentation, however, has primarily been focused on the demand side of the supply chain; its potential application on the supply side has not thoroughly been addressed. This paper extends the purview of the concept behind segmentation by presenting the concept of “supply-side partitioning” to refer to the management of heterogeneities on the supplier side of the supply chain. Further, the concept of “transvectional alignment” is proposed for the purpose of simultaneously aligning market segments with appropriate suppliers at all levels of the supply chain by identifying, evaluating, and selecting supply groups that satisfy the demand function(s) of each segment. This paper discusses supply-side partitioning, includes a model for the supply chain utilizing transvectional alignment, and offers implications for the application of supply-side partitioning in the business-to-business marketspace.     

Do Banks Follow Their Customers Abroad?

The market share of US business loans made by foreign‐owned banks has increased dramatically since 1980. At the same time, foreign direct investment in the US rose, so that much of the growth in foreign‐owned US‐based bank lending to businesses in the US could conceivably be accounted for by an increase in loans to the nonbank US affiliates of firms headquartered abroad, an expectation consistent with the conventional wisdom that banks "follow their customers" abroad. Our study investigates the lending patterns of US‐based banks from Japan, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK, countries that account for the vast majority of foreign bank activity in the US. Simultaneously, we look at the borrowing patterns of nonbank US affiliates of firms from those countries. We find that banks from four of the six countries (Japan, Canada, the Netherlands, and the UK) allocated a majority of their loans to non‐home‐country borrowers for some or all of the 1981–1992 period. These findings suggest that the "follow the customer" hypothesis may have a more limited applicability than previously supposed.     

Negotiation via the World Wide Web: A Cross-cultural Study of Decision Making

INSPIRE is a Web-based system for the support and conduct of negotiations. The primary uses of the system are training and research. Between July 1996 and April 1997, 281 bilateral negotiations were conducted through the system by managers, engineers and students from over 50 countries. INSPIRE has been used at eight universities and training centers. In research it is being used to study cross-cultural differences in decision making and the use of computer support in negotiation. This paper outlines the system, the negotiation methodology embedded in it, and reports the initial results of the experimental study of the impact of culture on Web-based bilateral negotiation.