The impact of advertising regulation on industry: the cigarette advertising ban of 1971

This article studies the impact of the 1971 TV/radio advertising ban on the cigarette industry. Data indicate that industry advertising spending decreased sharply immediately following the ban but recovered and actually exceeded the preban level within five years. A dynamic oligopoly model of advertising is developed to incorporate two potential explanations. The estimated model fully accounts for the puzzling trend, with 74% of the postban advertising spending increase explained by industry dynamics, and 26% explained by learning. Furthermore, this article uses the new concept of nonstationary oblivious equilibrium to handle intractable state space and accelerate equilibrium computation.     

The impact of customer firm data breaches on the audit fees of their suppliers

This study investigates whether audit risks that accompany data breaches of major customer firms can spillover into the supply chain and affect audit fees of their suppliers. Based on the economic bond that exists between supplier firms and their major customers, we predict that data breach incidents of customer firms will lead to higher audit fees for their respective suppliers. Consistent with customer breaches increasing the audit risk to the supplier, we observe a positive association between breach disclosures made by major customers and audit fees of the supplier firm. This association exists for both internal and external data breaches. We further find that audit fees are increasing with the number of major customers disclosing a breach in a given year. Our results are robust to both a matched sample design and a difference-in-difference approach. Interestingly, we find that while supplier auditors appear to price the risks associated with customer breaches, the breaches do not appear to affect audit quality. The findings of this study are timely and relevant to academics, practitioners, and regulators as supply chains continue to become larger and more complex.     

The impact of strategy communications, incentives and national culture on balanced scorecard implementation

Professionals are challenged daily with difficult decisions. Capital budgeting decisions are one type of difficult decision, especially in firms that embrace a Balanced Scorecard management philosophy. In these firms, the decision maker frequently must choose among multiple options on the basis of multiple criteria with no one option dominating across all criteria. Not only must the decision maker evaluate each option on each criteria, the decision maker also must weigh the relative importance of each criteria when making a final judgment. When faced with difficult decisions, decision makers will resort to various coping behaviors, such as decision avoidance or delay, status quo bias, deferral to others' preferences, or reliance on decision aids. In a Balanced Scorecard environment, one important type of decision aid is the strategy map. The ambiguity introduced by multiple options and multiple criteria also creates a condition in which the subjective biases of the decision-maker can easily manifest in the absence or despite decision aids. Among those potential biases are self-interests and national culture. In this study we examine the effects on capital budgeting decisions of two common types of strategy maps as well as incentive effects and national culture. An objective of Balanced Scorecard management practices is to overcome a common North American fixation on short-term financial outcomes. Recent research submits that an appropriate strategy map will facilitate that end by overcoming certain other cognitive limitations (such as fixation on common metrics). Our inquiry will examine whether biases related to self-interests and national culture persist in the presence of two common strategy maps. A behavioral experiment was conducted in which 140 MBA students from Spain and the U.S. with average work experience of 10 years participated. Findings were that significant fixation on short-term financial outcomes persists in the presence of one common strategy map, but not in the presence of an alternate common strategy map, and that incentive and national culture biases persist in the presence of both. In addition, all three experimental variables exhibited significance and equivalent influence, although prior research has only addressed the influence of incentives.     

‘Who owns the customer?’: A commentary on channel debate through the eyes of the customer

Amid intense changing competitive environments in the insurance industry, insurance manufacturers and intermediaries are preparing themselves to be closer than ever to their customers. But are they collaborating to serve the customer or are they still playing ‘tug of war’ over who owns the customer, while their customers seek greener pastures with the competition? In this paper the authors discuss six realities of customers and the insurance industry today and finish with suggestions on how collaboration between manufacturer and intermediaries will help serve the common interest of building stronger customer relationships.     

Neural networks for the analysis and forecasting of advertising and promotion impact

Allocating advertising expenses and forecasting total sales levels are the key issues in retailing, especially when many products are covered and significant cross-effects among products are likely. Various statistical and econometric methods could be applied for such analyses. We explore how well neural networks can be used in analyzing the effects of advertising and promotion on sales in this article. The results reveal that the predictive quality of neural networks depends on the different frequency of data observed, i.e. daily or weekly data models, and the specific learning algorithms used. The study also shows that neural networks are capable of capturing the nonlinear aspects of complex relationships in non-stationary data. By performing sensitivity analysis, neural networks can potentially single out important input variables, thereby making it useful for scenario development and practical use. Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An approach for the identification of cross-sell and up-sell opportunities using a financial services customer database

The collection, management and manipulation of customer data are key to the successful operation of many relationship marketing and customer relationship management endeavours. To make effective use of the data, however, requires that organisations know how to analyse it in order to generate valuable information for marketing purposes. One of the key challenges to maintaining an ongoing relationship with customers is to be able to predict what products customers will need to buy next and at what point so that appropriate marketing offers can be made. This paper illustrates an analytical approach that can be used in such a situation. Using actual customer data from a financial institution, the paper illustrates the application of segmentation analysis, purchase acquisition trees and survival analysis. While the results are of particular interest to financial institutions, the methodology has applicability in a number of contexts where customer data are available.     

The securitization of gold and its potential impact on gold stocks

We study the market impact of a very successful financial innovation – the SPDR Gold Trust exchange-traded fund (GLD). GLD holds physical gold, and provides traders with a convenient and cost-effective way to gain exposure to gold. We find that after the introduction of GLD, the liquidity of gold company stocks declined, and their adverse-selection risk increased. Over the two-month period after GLD’s introduction, the stocks’ relative effective bid-ask spreads increased by over 15%, while their adverse-selection cost, as measured by the price impact of trades, went up by more than 30%. Gold stocks also experienced significant negative abnormal returns (−12% on average) in the month after GLD started trading. Our findings suggest that GLD attracted traders, especially uninformed traders, away from gold company stocks, and that the resulting negative demand shocks and decrease in the stocks’ liquidity caused their prices to decline. Our results show that existing securities can be seriously adversely affected when a new security enters the market.     

Let us work together: The impact of customer strategic alliances on IPO underpricing and post-IPO performance

Leveraging the availability of three years of pre-IPO data and related vs unrelated-party customer information for Chinese firms, we examine the impact of customer strategic alliances (CSA) on IPO underpricing from 2007 to 2015. Our core findings suggest that IPO firms with CSAs have less IPO underpricing than those without such a relationship. The decrease in underpricing is more salient for IPO firms that have non-related-party customers. Additional analysis suggests that the core findings are primarily driven by firms with good information environment pre-IPO, including high audit quality, high analyst following, and low earnings management. We interpret the results as indicating that a good pre-IPO information environment enhances the credibility of CSA relationships and signals high IPO quality. Furthermore, we document that a CSA relationship has a positive impact on an IPO firm's post-IPO performance, especially when the firm has non-related-party customers. Overall, CSAs reduce IPO underpricing and enhance IPO returns post-IPO.     

光大银行：实现电子渠道统一管理 注重客户易用性体验

中国光大银行（以下简称＂光大银行＂）网上银行始建于1999年,经过10多年的发展变革,光大银行网上银行业务成绩斐然。2009年1月,光大银行95595客户服务中心正式划归光大电子银行部;     

Multimedia: Forecasts of employment growth in the media and communications sector often exaggerated

Summary In the light of the probable market development of new multimedia products and services, domestic demand for media and communications goods in the year 2010 will be around three times its level at the start of the 1990s. The increase in private sector demand will be somewhat higher than general economic expansion, the rise in private household demand will be slightly higher than the growth of private consumption. This is, however, contingent on solutions being found by 1998 for the technical and regulatory questions that are as yet still unresolved. What is decisive for the pace at which the telecommunications infrastructure will develop is the degree of competitive and innovative pressure. German policy makers can contribute to this by ensuring that the (still publicly owned) Telekom AG sells off its cable TV networks. It would also seem important to restrict the time-consuming licensing procedure for broadcasting companies to programmes with a bearing on public opinion and to render the regulatory procedure more efficient by setting up a national body to perform this task.The number of employees in firms producing and distributing M&C technology will expand to a far lesser extent than domestic demand to the year 2010, largely due to productivity growth. Model calculations point to an increase of the order of 10% to around 2.1 million jobs. This means that the significant positive employment effects frequently forecast for the new M&C technologies can only come about if the potential for rationalisation inherent in these technologies is utilised throughout the economy in a rigorous fashion to raise efficiency and international competitiveness. Such competitive advantages can only be generated, however, if a broad-based application of the new multimedia is realised earlier than in Germany's leading competitors.     

Towards a better understanding of mobile banking: the impact of customer experience on trust and commitment

In the current context of ubiquitous connectedness through portable mobile devices and services, it is important to comprehend more fully the nature of consumer/bank interactions and relationships. At the same time, firms in the service sector are trying to provide customers with impactful positive experiences. This article examines the impact of mobile banking experience on trust and commitment based on the customer experience dimensions defined by Schmitt and expanded to include the negative aspect of the affective dimension. A total of 396 panellists of a recognized Canadian research firm responded to a self-administered online questionnaire. Findings demonstrate that the cognitive and negative affective dimensions of mobile experience impact trust, whereas the positive affective/sensory dimension influences commitment. The behavioural and social dimensions do not have significant impacts. This study enriches the theoretical corpus of knowledge in customer experience, relationship marketing and m-banking literature, lending practical implications for mobile services managers. Financial institutions, for example, should offer sensory mobile applications designed to appeal to the eye or to the touch (positive affective/sensory dimension), provide tools and information intended to arouse user curiosity and provoke reflection (cognitive dimension), while avoiding negative experiences which can lead to damaging feelings/emotions such as disappointment and anger (negative affective dimension).     

The effects of advertising and solicitation on audit fees

Leading academic and professional accountants have suggested that the crisis in auditing over the past few years may have had its origin in deregulation which allowed firms to advertise their services and solicit new clients, encouraging accounting firms to become more commercial. In this paper, we look at this issue in New Zealand which has the unique distinction of having separated two key forms of deregulation, namely advertising and solicitation, by 6 years. This allows us to separately examine the effect of each form of market competition on audit fees. We find that advertising is associated with increases in fees, not decreases, which suggests that quality-based advertising took place, and not price-based advertising. In contrast, solicitation corresponded with a general decrease in average fees for clients of the Big 8. We interpret this result as indicating an increase in competition among accounting firms. Our results suggest that there may be a much more complex relationship among market competition, advertising and solicitation, and fees than the arguments used to originally justify deregulation.     

The potential impact of new technology and European mail deregulation on financial services marketers

This paper identifies the problems and opportunities presented to financial services marketers by European mail deregulation and the advent of new document technology in 2003. It explains the theory and current reality of mail deregulation in the UK and explains the timetable for its introduction. It goes on to explore the opportunities deregulation will create for more targeted direct marketing and even one-to-one marketing through new services and technology. It concludes that the financial services companies that utilise these new opportunities earliest to meet the needs of their customers will benefit most in both brand and net revenue terms.     

提升支行渠道信用卡营销力的策略探究

商业银行拥有数量众多、遍布各地的分支机构和网点资源,是信用卡产品重要的销售渠道.而支行网点又具有全天候服务、面对面接触、交互性沟通、交叉性营销等特点和优势,是信用卡产品天然的、有效的分销渠道.如何利用好、发展好这一渠道,是实现信用卡业务快速健康发展的重要基础,是有效应对同业竞争、增强核心竞争力的重要举措,也是进一步促进信用卡业务快速发展所需要研究的重要课题之一.     

The impact of management and board ownership on profitability in banks with different strategies

In this study I combine the ownership and diversification literature and show that the agency problem varies across traditional, diversified and non-traditional banks. In a sample of European banks, I find that management ownership has a positive impact on profitability in non-traditional banks, whereas board ownership has a positive impact on profitability in traditional banks. These findings indicate that management ownership is important in opaque banks, which are difficult to monitor, whereas board ownership is important in banks where the government guaranteed safety-net reduces the monitoring incentive of depositors, but which are not too complex or opaque for the board to monitor.     

Mediating role of trust in the impact of perceived empathy and customer orientation on intention to continue relationship in Indian banks

Journal of Financial Services Marketing - Despite the relevance of empathy in banking services, very few studies in literature have investigated the multidimensional nature of both cognitive and...     

The effect of measurement timing on the information content of customer satisfaction measures

We use two sets of customer satisfaction measures obtained from a homebuilding company to examine the effect of measurement timing on the association between customer satisfaction measures and future financial performance. The research site employs two separate consulting firms that measure customer satisfaction at different times from the same homebuyer population. A national consulting firm captures customer satisfaction at a fixed time in the year following purchase (the “NF” measure), whereas an industry-focused, boutique consulting firm captures customer satisfaction at three specific points in time (30 days, 5 months, 11 months) after purchase (the “BF” measures). We analyze data for the period 2002–2004 and have the following findings: first, customers’ satisfaction varies over a homebuyer's consumption period. Comparing across the three BF measures, we find that on average a homebuyer is most satisfied 30 days after purchase and least satisfied 11 months after purchase. Second, we compare the NF measure with the BF measures and find significant differences in their predictive abilities for future financial performance. The BF measures are significant leading indicators of future financial performance, as measured by higher revenues and profits and lower warranty costs, but the NF measure is not. Additional analyses indicate that the relatively higher predictive ability of the BF measures is due to the more precise timing of those measures, rather than differences in measurement content. Finally, we find that the point of diminishing returns to improvements in customer satisfaction varies across customer satisfaction measures obtained at different points in the consumption period. We conclude that timing has a significant impact on the information content of customer satisfaction measures, at least for goods and services that are consumed over extended period of time.     

Use of social media by university accounting students and its impact on learning outcomes

The proliferation in the use of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, among university students is well documented. With many universities providing student resources in formats suitable for iPad, laptop, and mobile phone use, the use of social media for university activities has become easier. This study explores the use of social media by university accounting degree students to support their academic activities in an informal setting. It explores the impact these media have on learning outcomes. Our findings suggest that university accounting degree students use social media for a number of academic-related purposes. Students establish and maintain fluid mentor/mentee relationships around academic activities related interactions through the social media. We have found that the use of Social Media is significantly associated with students’ grades.     

The influence of growth opportunities on the relationship between equity ownership and leverage

This study investigates whether the association between ownership structure and leverage varies with the magnitude of growth opportunities. According to the free cash flow hypothesis, managers receive utility from increasing firm size and the over-investment problem is more severe for firms with fewer growth opportunities. Considering the disciplinary role of leverage on the over-investment problem and ownership structure as a control mechanism to affect financing decisions, we hypothesize that the association between ownership structure and leverage is stronger for firms with fewer growth opportunities. We find that the association between equity ownership and leverage is significant for low-growth firms, but not for high-growth firms. The results mostly hold when sample firms are partitioned into large and small firms to directly control for the effect of firm size on the association between ownership structure and leverage.

Relationship marketing in the financial services industry: The importance of customer education,participation and problem management for customer loyalty

The effectiveness of relationship marketing efforts in services selling is to a large extent dependent on customers' commitment to increase the depth and breadth of their relationship with the organisation. In this study, we seek to extend current thinking by presenting a model that examines the relative importance of customer education, participation and problem management in driving customer loyalty. To test the relationships between these variables, we use data collected from 1,268 clients of a global financial services firm. Overall, the results support the hypothesised model and show customer education to be the strongest determinant of client loyalty. Current findings provide implications for multi-product financial institutions that are of theoretical and practical interest alike.