Marketing strategies,financial structure,and innovation in U.K. retailing

This study examines the pattern by which retailers have adapted to recent changes in consumer markets. Information was obtained on the marketing strategies and financial structures of 88 of the leading U.K. retailers. The first section identifies the key environmental developments of the later 1970's and appraises their impact on retailers. In the second section, the methods by which retailers have sought to adapt to these changes are outlined. Finally, a model is developed which distinguishes successful from unsuccessful retailing strategies and provides a methodology for evaluating alternative approaches to market positioning.     

The application of probit,logit, and tobit in marketing: A review

Recent work on the analysis of qualitative dependent variables having considerable potential in marketing research are reviewed and illustrated. In particular, three related models, probit, logit, and tobit, are discussed in a nontechnical manner. In the last few years, there has been a resurgence of interest among biologists, economists, and other social scientists in developing and generalizing these three models. Yet, despite their apparent utility in marketing research, there have been only one or two rather limited applications to date. The object of this review is to enable researchers to evaluate these models and to relate them to their existing statistical procedures. The models are defined and related to the multivariate methods commonly used in marketing research. Second, the theoretical problems associated with using regression analysis and similar procedures on qualitative data are noted and the assumptions needed to resolve such problems are presented. Third, marketing applications are reviewed and an illustration of a general form of the probit model is evaluated and compared.     

Impulsive consumer buying as a result of emotions

The concept of impulse buying is discussed and characterized as encompassing purchases with high emotional activation, low cognitive control, and a largely reactive behavior. A study is conducted to investigate whether emotions causing impulse buying can be identified empirically by interview data and observation of the mimical expression of buyers and nonbuyers. The results support the validity of the techniques employed.     

Consumer habit forming,information acquisition,and buying behavior

Based on the three stages of consumer decision making proposed by Howard, this study analyzes the influences of consumer habit formation on information acquisition, stored information, and buying behavior. Using a sample of women having or expecting their first child, their habit formation with regard to three baby-related products is assessed. The data confirm most of the hypotheses derived from the theoretical model. Implications for marketing are discussed.     

An additional approach for interpretation of multiple discriminant analysis in business research

Several useful approaches for interpreting multiple discriminant analysis (MDA), including graph plots, have recently been illustrated for business researchers. This article proposes and illustrates an extension of the traditional plotting procedures in MDA that allows the depiction of both group overlaps and differences among groups. We also discuss several other interpretational approaches in MDA.     

Monetary policy and the daily behavior of interest rates

It is possible that previous research has failed to detect significant variation in the ex-ante real interest rate because the Federal Reserve follows a policy designed to stabilize the real rate. If the Fed is successful, there will be little month-to-month variation in the real rate. Nonetheless, research to date has relied on monthly or quarterly data. This paper presents the results of new tests that use daily data in an attempt to detect short-term variation in the ex-ante real rate. Though the tests reveal that the real rate is not constant, most of the detected variation is related to reserve settlement on Wednesday.     

Agency costs in banking firms: An analysis of expense preference behavior

Behavioral approaches to the theory of the firm contend that the agency relationship that must develop when a separation exists between management and ownership may have various agency costs. One such cost is the cost of monitoring managers to avoid expense preference behavior on their part. Managers may engage in expense preference behavior any time they manage firms in noncompetitive markets and ownership of the firm is dispersed enough to put control in the hands of management. This research reports on an analysis of the existence and influence of expense preference behavior on the salaries of chief operating officers of banks. Various studies have resulted in conflicting conclusions about the effect of expense preference behavior on various input costs facing banks. Only the study by Hannan and Mavinga (1980) includes an explicit measure of the separation of ownership from control of the firm. However, that study does not analyze executive compensation. Using such a measure, this study reports that the salaries of chief operating officers in banks are significantly higher if both the necessary and sufficient conditions for expense preference behavior are satisfied.     

Market efficiency across securities exchanges

Considerable empirical evidence has been presented in the literature of finance in recent years addressed to the question of the informational efficiency of the American capital market. The present paper adds to that evidence. In particular, securities traded off the NYSE—on the American Stock Exchange, on regional exchanges, and over the counter—are found to exhibit return characteristics that imply rather more frequent price departures from equilibrium than for their NYSE-listed counterparts. The data consist of the actual investment experiences of a large sample of individual investors with securities traded in the various locales.     

Capital market efficiency and the relationship between equity returns, interest rates, and monetary aggregates in Australia

This paper examines the efficiency with which the Australian share market incorporates new information relating to interest rates and the monetary aggregates into share prices. It finds a strong relationship between medium term government security yields and equity returns although little relationship could be found between unanticipated changes in the monetary aggregates and share returns. Furthermore, the interest rate relationship involved long lags and suggests inefficiency in stock market pricing in Australia.     

Inflation,currency exchange rates,and the international securities markets

A time-state-preference model of an efficient and complete international financial market is employed to investigate the conditions under which the international Fisher Effect will hold, and the forward currency exchange rate will be an unbiased estimate of the future spot rate. The presence of stochastic inflation within countries in the fiat-currency prices of real goods will destroy both relationships, even in the absence of any institutional imperfections or trading barriers. Similarly, expected inflation rate differentials across countries will not coincide with spot-versus-forward currency exchange rate differentials.     

A new approach for measuring wage ignorance in the labor market

In this article we offer a new econometric approach to the evaluation of information content within labor markets. We define ignorance as the difference between the wage (price) individuals earn (pay) with full information and the wage (price) they actually receive (pay) given their limited information stocks, and we make use of a frontier production function approach to measure ignorance for various markets. Our empirical results are highly consistent with the analytical results in six areas of search theory. Furthermore, our results suggest a new interpretation of the role of unions.     

Capital cost and adjusted present value: Reconciliation and amplification

In recent years the adjusted present value method has been propounded for capital budgeting analysis. A comparison of the standard cost of capital approach to the adjusted present value method indicates that the two analyses produce exactly equivalent present value appraisals, as long as the enterprise contemplating the asset has a policy of keeping the degree of leverage constant. The conclusions reached are independent of the firm's target leverage position matching its present posture.     

Some evidence on the role of money illusion in labor supply behavior

The Keynesian idea that workers are subject to money illusion in their labor supply decisions is tested by estimating a labor supply function that includes the price level as an independent variable. The model is estimated with data drawn from various BLS publications and is aggregated by SMSA. The results indicate a significant negative supply response to price-level changes after controlling for the nominal wage rate, income, and the SMSA's unemployment rate. There is no significant difference between workers' supply response to the price level and the nominal wage rate, which suggests that workers are not subject to money illusion.