Attributes of social and human capital disclosure and information asymmetry between managers and investors

We extend the literature on voluntary disclosure by investigating the impact of precision attribute of social and human capital disclosure on information asymmetry. We provide evidence on how the stock market reacts to different levels of information precision. Overall, results suggest that quantitative disclosure reduces share price volatility and increases Tobin's Q. As expected, firm size attenuates the impact of precision attribute of disclosure on information asymmetry. Furthermore, it appears that firms take into account ultimate costs and benefits to shareholders when determining precision attribute of their disclosure. Finally, our results suggest that efficient governance leads to more disclosure. Copyright © 2009 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Quality disclosure in the presence of strategic consumers

Consider a market for short-life products, such as smartphones, where a firm and consumers have asymmetric quality information, the firm sells products in two periods, and consumers make purchase decisions strategically. We investigate when a firm should disclose quality and the interaction between consumers' strategic behavior and the firm's disclosure behavior. We obtain several findings. First, regardless of whether consumers have low or high patience, the firm should disclose quality information if product quality is high and conceal it if product quality is low. However, for products with moderate quality levels, the firm will disclose more quality information to consumers with relatively high or low patience levels than when consumer patience is moderate. Second, firms will disclose less information when consumers behave strategically than when they are myopic. Third, when concealing quality information is an equilibrium, product prices are affected only by disclosure costs and independent of true product quality. Finally, the firm can benefit from consumers' strategic behavior and a higher disclosure cost, but greater patience might be detrimental to consumer surplus and social welfare.     

产品市场竞争对企业水信息披露的影响研究——基于2010-2016年中国高水敏感性行业的经验证据

面对日益严格的水监控,企业应如何调整竞争战略以适应竞争与政策呢？基于2010—2016年中国高水敏感性行业300家上市企业的面板数据,文章采用Tobit模型实证检验了产品市场竞争（行业竞争强度与企业市场势力）对企业水信息披露的影响机理。结果表明：行业竞争强度与企业水信息披露呈倒U型相关;温和竞争行业内最高市场势力的企业能够起到行业标杆作用,更愿意主动披露水信息;在进一步分析中,发现国有制身份强化了产品市场竞争（行业竞争强度与企业市场势力）对企业水信息披露的影响。文章丰富了产品市场竞争与环境信息披露的研究文献,为市场竞争能否促进环保责任的履行提供了经验证据,并对相关政府部门引导企业正视水问题具有重要指导意义。     

Share of wallet in retailing: the effects of customer satisfaction, loyalty cards and shopper characteristics

In retailing, consumers typically patronize multiple outlets. Thus, an important issue is why consumers vary in how they divide their purchases across outlets and how outlets can get a greater share of consumer expenditures. Two potential avenues for increasing customer share are to raise customer satisfaction, and increase repeat purchase through loyalty cards. This study examines the effects of customer satisfaction and loyalty cards as well as consumer characteristics on customer share spent on the primary grocery store. The findings suggest that customer satisfaction has a positive, albeit modest, effect on share while consumer economic shopping orientation has a negative direct effect on share. The economic orientation of shoppers, their felt importance of a personal relationship with store personnel, and the level of their aggregate purchase volume moderate the effect of satisfaction on customer share. Finally, the results provide mixed support for the impact of loyalty cards on customer behavior.     

Would You Like to be a Prosumer? Information Revelation,Personalization and Price Discrimination in Electronic Markets

Electronic commerce and flexible manufacturing allow personalization of initially standardized products at low cost. Will customers provide the information necessary for personalization? Assuming that a consumer can control the amount of information revealed, we analyze how her decision interacts with the pricing strategy of a monopolist who may abuse the information to obtain a larger share of total surplus. We consider two scenarios, one where consumers have different tastes but identical willingness to pay and another with high and low valuation customers. In both cases full revelation may only result if the monopolist can commit to a maximum price before consumers decide about disclosure.     

The Effects of Information Disclosure and Board Independence on IPO Discount*

This paper examines the effect of strategic information disclosure and corporate governance on the stock market performance of initial public offering (IPO) firms in France. It argues that information disclosure and board independence mitigate agency problems between the IPO firm and investors, thus reducing the IPO discount defined as the difference between the offer price and the intrinsic value of the firm. However, extensive disclosure may damage the firm's competitive advantage and lead to a curvilinear (an inverted U‐shape) relationship between information disclosure and the IPO discount. Further analysis suggests that it is not necessarily the quantity of information, but rather the type of information, that causes the IPO discount to increase with the amount of disclosure.     

Market Justification for Policy on Small Enterprise Development

The process of liberalization in developing economies and the increasing competition faced by Small Enterprises raise crucial policy issues on small enterprise development. The policy maker in developing economies like India are faced with the option of supporting small enterprises through steps like reserving certain industries or by developing their ability to compete in niche markets. Enterprise level decisions are also critical for survival of these organisations. Selecting from these options require an understanding of the advantages that small enterprises have over the large enterprises. The advantage of flexibility and responsiveness to consumer needs of small enterprise is expected to result in customer satisfaction in a market with differing consumer needs. The hypothesis relates customer satisfaction to market share in a heterogeneous market. A field study is carried out among consumers of packaged butter in a state in India. The results do not indicate customer satisfaction with lower market share in a heterogeneous market.     

THE LAST MILE: AN EXAMINATION OF EFFECTS OF ONLINE RETAIL DELIVERY STRATEGIES ON CONSUMERS

The Internet has increased the level of importance of the end‐consumer market to transportation carriers. In two between subject experiments, carrier disclosure on retail merchant websites is examined as a strategic differentiation strategy. Predictions are offered concerning effects of carrier disclosure strategies on product delivery‐related expectations, consumer attitudes, and intentions to purchase a product online. Results from Study 1 reveal significant differences between disclosure and nondisclosure of the carrier for numerous product delivery‐related variables, as well as many differences between the six carriers examined in this first study. Study 2 extends these findings by showing that providing consumers with a choice of carrier leads to increased levels of satisfaction with the online experience and greater willingness to buy, relative to nondisclosure and disclosure strategies.     

Recent Advances in Structural Econometric Modeling: Dynamics, Product Positioning and Entry

In the empirical analysis of consumer markets, recent literature has begun to explore the dynamics in both consumer decisions as well as in firms' marketing policies. Other research has begun to explore the strategic aspects of product line design in a competitive environment. In both cases, structural models have given us new insights into consumer and firm behavior. For example, incorporating consumer and firm dynamics may help explain patterns in our data that are not well-captured by static models. Similarly, the strategic aspects of firm entry and product-positioning may be intrinsically linked to firm conduct and the intensity of competition in a market. Structural analysis of these consumer and firm decisions raise a number of substantial computational challenges. We discuss the computational challenges as well as specific empirical applications. The discussions are based on the session “Structural Models of Strategic Choice” from the 2004 Choice Symposium.     

Property rights,R&D spillovers,and corporate accounting transparency in China

We explore how property rights protections across different regions in China affect the flow of proprietary information and managers' incentives to disclose details of financial and operating performance. Our focus on research and development spillovers as a proxy for information leakages to competitors allows an examination of whether or not opacity (low transparency) is employed as a mechanism to attenuate such leakages. We find that when the threat of proprietary information leakage is high, information reported by firms is opaque. This relation appears in regions suffering from weak intellectual property rights protections, but not in those with stronger property rights protections. After taking into account the incentive to protect sensitive information, we also document that firm value is no longer related to accounting transparency. Our focus on accounting opacity to protect proprietary information differs from the agency cost explanation of most prior work. Thus we provide evidence of a cost of enhanced disclosure along with new insights on specific channels through which institutional factors influence the costs and benefits of firm disclosure policies.     

Dynamic Price Competition with Consumption Externalities

The dynamic price competition in a horizontally differentiated duopoly when consumers value previous market shares is analyzed. The conditions for the existence of stable Markov-Perfect Equilibrium (MPE) in linear strategies are established. When they exist, the optimal pricing policies suggest that a firm with a higher previous market share charges a higher price, all else equal. It is possible to observe pricing below cost for some periods. In the steady state, the MPE leads to a more competitive outcome (lower prices) than the case where there are no consumption externalities. The model can produce outcomes where the steady state is reached very slowly which provides an alternative explanation for slow emergence of competition when entrants face an established incumbent: It may be due to persistence in consumer tastes.     

A latent structure factor analytic approach for customer satisfaction measurement

The linkage of customer satisfaction, customer retention, and firm profitability has been well established in the marketing literature, and provides ample justification as to why customer satisfaction measurement (CSM) has been a focal point in marketing decision making. Although aggregate market level research on understanding the determinants of customer satisfaction is abundant, CSM decisions at segment level are possible only if the individual or market segment differences in the formation of overall satisfaction judgments and subsequent heterogeneity in the role these various determinants play are understood. Based on expectancy-disconfirmation theory in customer satisfaction, we propose a maximum likelihood based latent structure factor analytic methodology which visually depicts customer heterogeneity regarding the various major determinants of customer satisfaction judgments involving multiple attributes, and provides directions for segment-specific CSM decisions. We first describe the proposed model framework including the technical aspects of the model structure and subsequent maximum likelihood estimation. In an application to a consumer trade show, we then demonstrate how our proposed methodology can be gainfully employed to uncover the nature of such heterogeneity. We also empirically demonstrate the superiority of the proposed model over a number of different model specifications in this application. Finally, limitations and directions for future research are discussed.     

Online Repurchasing: The Role of Information Disclosure,Hope, and Goal Attainment

The emergence of online purchasing has changed the relationship between consumers and brands. Our research focuses on online information disclosure and consumer hope in an online shopping environment. Two studies are undertaken to test the theoretically derived hypotheses. Study 1 evaluates the causal relationship between information disclosure and hope via an experiment in an online shopping context. Study 2 involves an online survey to test the nomological network presented in this research. The models identify the moderating effect of consumer product knowledge on online information disclosure and consumer hope. For academics, this research advances knowledge of how consumers' confidence in sharing personal information develops hope, consequently enabling them to attain their goals and repeat their purchases. For practitioners, it offers a better understanding of how investments are successful in aiding consumers to attain their goals and generate repeat purchase intentions in an online shopping environment.     

上市公司信息泄露减少了吗?——基于《上市公司信息披露管理办法》实施前后的比较

运用事件研究法对《上市公司信息披露管理办法》实施前后两年,即2005—2009年深沪两市A股业绩预告利多、高送转和增发三类重大事件信息披露的市场反应进行实证分析,利用内幕交易和信息泄露程度测度上市公司信息披露的公平性,检验了《上市公司信息披露管理办法》的实施效果。结果显示,信息公平披露规则在实施当年的短期内发挥了作用,但总体效果并不明显,信息泄露程度呈先下降后回升的趋势,内幕交易依然存在。为此,应进一步加强信息披露的监管,加大对违规信息披露的处罚力度;在强调公平信息披露的同时,关注上市公司信息披露的及时性;正确处理好资本市场效率与信息披露公平两者之间的关系。     

审计师选择、留存股权和盈余披露——中国IPO公司价值信号传递机制研究

公司通过权衡信号成本与信息收益,选择一种或多种市场信号,包括审计师选择、留存股权和盈余披露等。各信号间的内生性问题是本文的研究重点。我们以2000—2002年中国155家IPO公司为研究样本,通过构建联立方程系统实证,发现：我国IPO市场审计师选择、盈余预测与留存股权并非替代信号,风险越大公司越倾向保留较低股权;盈利预测对股权留存并没有显著影响;审计收费对公司审计师选择具有显著影响,但审计风险对审计收费的影响并不明显。     

Perceived value and customer loyalty in financial services

Taking into account how expensive it is to maintain customer loyalty programmes, it is necessary to know which aspects of the firm’s service are the ones that really deliver value to the customer. The aim of this paper is to study the relationships between perceived value, satisfaction and consumer loyalty in the financial services market, in order to know which factors are the most important for gaining the customers’ loyalty. A personal survey was made of 200 customers of financial entities, and structural equations models were used to test the relationships posited.     

基于信息披露的QFII超额收益率与中小投资者保护

本文研究了QFII机构2007-2009年投资我国A股市场的超额收益率,静态分析结果表明QFII持股上市公司无法产生正的超额收益;动态分析结果表明QFII增仓上市公司可以产生显著为正的超额收益,而QFII减仓上市公司产生显著为负的超额收益。另外,通过问卷调查法获取中小投资者的投资弱点,从QFII机构信息披露的角度研究如何保护中小投资者利益,对证券监管部门规范QFII信息披露,引导中小投资者理性投资,以及保护中小投资者利益等方面均有一定的启示意义。     

顾客满意度、企业营销战略与社会福利变化分析

随着买方市场的出现、信息管理技术的发展以及消费者主权意识的逐步形成,现代企业的营销发展与顾客满意度有着非常紧密的联系。在"顾客与企业共赢"模型基础上,只有系统地研究基于顾客满意度的现代企业营销战略选择问题,才能对"一对一"营销战略下的社会福利变化进行分析。     

Online consumer behaviour and its relationship to website atmospheric induced flow: Insights into online travel agencies in China

Although the study of flow has recently received a lot attention, little is published about what factors controllable by firms influence its formation. Furthermore, there is a lack of knowledge between the relationship of website atmospheric cues and flow experience. Using a stimulus–organism–response framework (S–O–R framework) as the theoretical basis, this study examines the impact of consumer perceptions of website atmospheric cues (informativeness, effectiveness and entertainment) on the development of flow and its subsequent impact on purchase intention and satisfaction. A self-administered online survey was used for data collection through an internet market research firm which randomly selected individuals from its online panel. Our results support the validity of the S–O–R framework in the context of online tourism and indicate that flow fully mediates the three site atmospheric cues with regards to purchase intention and satisfaction with the travel website. This study enhances our understanding on the determinants of online purchase intention and satisfaction as well as on how a proper web atmospheric design alters consumer shopping experience which entices favourable purchase intention and generates satisfaction.     

State Used Motor Vehicle Disclosure Laws: Do They Make a Difference to the Consumer?

Because of recurring unfavorable consumer experiences, there have been a number of market and nonmarket responses to the quality uncertainty encountered in the used vehicle market. Several states have enacted used vehicle disclosure laws. This paper examines whether certain state used vehicle disclosure laws provide consumers with enough additional information so as to impact the quality mix of traded vehicles. The reported repair records of recently transacted vehicles in three states were examined: Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota. Using Census data from the TIU Survey, pairwise tests of the equality of the mean maintenance expenditures of recently transacted vehicles from these three states were performed. Results were verified with a regression analysis. We were unable to find evidence that the currently mandated disclosure requirements in Wisconsin and Iowa were effective in increasing the number of good quality vehicles traded in the market. Our conclusions are drawn exclusive of any secondary benefits or costs that might accrue to the consumer and to society.