Where is the opportunity without the customer? An integration of marketing activities, the entrepreneurship process, and institutional theory

Marketing and entrepreneurship have long been recognized as two key responsibilities of the firm. Despite their tight integration in practice, marketing and entrepreneurship as domains of scholarly inquiry have largely progressed within their respective disciplinary boundaries with minimal cross-disciplinary fertilization. Furthermore, although firms increasingly undertake their marketing and entrepreneurial activities across diverse settings, academe has provided little insight into how changes in the institutional environment may substantially alter the processes and outcomes of these undertakings. Herein, we integrate research on marketing activities, the entrepreneurship process, and institutional theory in an effort to address this gap. We first discuss market orientation as enhancing a firm??s opportunity recognition and innovation, whereas marketing mix decisions enhance opportunity exploitation. We then examine how entrepreneurship leads to innovation directed toward market orientation and marketing mix activities. Based on this foundation, we examine differences in marketing and entrepreneurship activities across institutional contexts.     

The effects of social TV on television advertising effectiveness

Social TV is the use of communication devices to connect with family and friends watching other TV screens. Plausible arguments suggest both positive and negative effects of social TV viewing on ad-effectiveness. This study contributes by providing evidence for the direction of social TV's effects. The results of a controlled laboratory experiment suggest that the benefits of social TV, principally its association with live TV and therefore less ad-avoidance, come at the cost of negative distraction effects. Like normal coviewing, social TV viewing distracts from ad-processing, reducing unaided recall and brand attitude favorability, compared to individual (solus) viewing. However, social TV messaging about ads improved brand attitude. Perceived creativity increased the likelihood of ad-related messaging. Social TV also has an additional source of distraction, multitasking, but in this study, multitasking did not further reduce ad-effectiveness compared to coviewing. The paper concludes with implications for advertisers and future research.     

HOW CHANGES IN BOND CALL FEATURES AFFECT COUPON RATES

In April 1998, Level 3, a telecommunications company, sold $2 billion of 9.19%, ten-year bonds to finance the building of a fiber-optic network. Like most below-investment-grade issues, as well as many investment-grade issues, the Level 3 issue contained an embedded call option that gave the company the right to repurchase the bonds after five years at par value plus the (semi-annual) coupon rate, with the call price declining to par two years before maturity.
Because issuers must pay for the call provision in the form of a higher coupon rate, the choice of whether or not to include a call option can be a difficult one. And, once management decides to include a call option, it must then decide how to structure the call. The most important call structure decisions are how long to make the call protection period and how to set the call price—both of which can have a significant impact upon the coupon yields required to attract investors. Using a well-known option pricing model, the authors of this article summarize their recent research on how variations in bond call features can be expected to affect par coupon yields of new issues under different market circumstances—circumstances that include market conditions relevant to option valuation such as the shape of the term structure and the volatility of interest rates.     

Corporate distinctive competence,strategy, industry and performance

Corporate distinctive competencies may facilitate effective management of interdependencies among multiple units. Relationships between corporate distinctive competencies and firm performance were examined in 185 industrial firms. Results suggested that distinctive competencies associated with performance vary according to the grand strategy used and the firm's principal industry. Specific distinctive competencies were identified for each strategy and industry type.     

PRICE VOLATILITY OF MUNICIPAL DISCOUNT BONDS

The price volatility of municipal bonds is a vital concern to bankers and regulators. Although great strides have recently been made in understanding bond price volatility, many significant refinements encompassing specific institutional characteristics of the municipal bond market are needed. This research stresses the taxability of the capital gains inherent in discount municipals to illustrate interesting patterns of price volatility dependent upon maturity. The impact of geographic segmentation is also discussed.     

Learning teaching in the sustainability classroom

This article analyzes the experience of a particular sustainability learning classroom model, examining the classroom composition, structure, positioning, and atmosphere components in an experimental course on the topic of sustainable buildings. The course, called Angles on Green Building, offered as the second in a suite by the Learning City sustainability in higher education collaborative, experimented with content, which concerned the emerging practice and policy of green building, and with form, exploring the most appropriate pedagogical methods for the advancement of sustainability learning and action. The course took as its practical focus the green building industry in Vancouver, Canada, with an initial case study of the new Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS), a green building and research facility planned for completion in 2009. This article uses evidence drawn from the instructors, students and visiting professionals in the course, together a diverse and interdisciplinary group from four different higher education institutions in Vancouver. Our findings contain lessons about the careful attention needed for instructors to design, run and implement courses in sustainability topics that enable students from widely different backgrounds and levels of self-directedness to engage with, take responsibility for, and transform their behaviours in favour of sustainability.     

Managing the risk of loan prepayments and the optimal structure of short term lending rates

Loan pricing is an extremely important aspect of bank operations because loans are typically over two-thirds of bank assets. Many researchers have analyzed the theoretical and empirical impact of how different factors should and do affect fixed rate loan rates and loan prepayments. However, a theoretical decision making model for maximizing expected profit in a declining rate environment has not been developed. After describing the conditions for the optimal loan rate, we develop numerical solutions for it under varying conditions. The varying conditions include the trend in interest rates, volatility of interest rates, and loan maturity. We thank Yen Low and Hamed Bagherpour for their assistance.     

THE ANALYTICS OF TAX EFFECTS IN DISCOUNT BOND VALUATION

This paper discusses the analytics of tax effects in discount bond valuation. The author illustrates that bond value is a simple linear function of the tax rate on interest income, whereas bond value is concave to the capital gains tax rate. The author also analyzes how changes in tax rates interact with yield changes to affect bond valuation and how tax rates interact with maturity to determine the depth of bond discount.