The Impact of Competitiveness on Consumer Responses to Comparative Advertisements

We examine the impact of consumers' competitive tendencies on responses to comparative advertising appeals and the underlying role of schadenfreude: pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. Consistent with our theory that the depiction of others' misfortunes is compatible with more-competitive consumers' concerns for distinguishing themselves via competition, our studies show that comparative ads are associated with greater schadenfreude, as well as more favorable attitudes and a greater willingness to pay (WTP), among more- (versus less-) competitive consumers. Further results indicate that such relatively more favorable responses among consumers with greater competitive tendencies are limited to comparative ads depicting misfortunes involving brands whose choice is more deserving of failure (i.e., lower-quality brands). Importantly, even less-competitive consumers are revealed to respond favorably to comparative ads and to experience more schadenfreude when they are assured that they will not suffer the depicted misfortune.     

Creativity under the gun

If you're like most managers, you've worked with people who swear they do their most creative work under tight deadlines. You may use pressure as a management technique, believing it will spur people on to great leaps of insight. You may even manage yourself this way. If so, are you right? Not necessarily, these researchers say. There are instances where ingenuity flourishes under extreme time pressure--for instance, a NASA team within hours comes up with a primitive but effective fix for the failing air filtration system aboard Apollo 13. But when creativity is under the gun, it usually ends up getting killed, the authors say. They recently took a close look at how people experience time pressure, collecting and analyzing more than 9,000 daily diary entries from individuals who were working on projects that required high levels of creativity and measuring their ability to innovate under varying levels of time pressure. The authors describe common characteristics of time pressure and outline four working environments under which creativity may or may not flourish. High-pressure days that still yield creativity are full of focus and meaningful urgency--people feel like they are on a mission. High-pressure days that yield no creativity lack such focus--people feel like they are on a treadmill, forced to switch gears often. On low-pressure days that yield creativity, people feel like they are on an expedition--exploring ideas rather than just identifying problems. And on low-pressure days that yield no creative thinking, people work on autopilot--doing their jobs without engaging too deeply. Managers should avoid extreme time pressure when possible; after all, complex cognitive processing takes time. For when they can't, the authors suggest ways to mollify its effects.     

Social marketing: the family planning experience

The authors explore social marketing applications in the Louisiana model of statewide program for family planning. The marketing concept has 4 major elements: 1) consumer orientation; 2) social process; 3) integrated effort; 4) profitable operation. Success of program and continued growth are the results of defining services needed by consumer; determining market target; taking services to customer; and emphasizing concept of selling family planning rather than giving free birth control method. Another important facet is the recognition of many participants--community agencies, the church, the American Medical Association, funding sources, and hospitals. This project used anyaltical marketing tools and defined services as human services rather than the narrow family planning services. It also extended activities to multinational environment and adapted the product offering to meet these needs.     

Is it the weather? Comment

This comment discusses some errors in a recent paper by Jacobsen and Marquering [Jacobsen, B., Marquering, W., 2008. Is it the weather? Journal of Banking and Finance 32 (4), 526–540], in which the authors challenge our previous finding that stock market returns exhibit seasonal patterns consistent with the influence of seasonal affective disorder on investor risk aversion. We find that we cannot replicate the authors’ findings, even after corresponding with them. Furthermore, we document several problems with their methodology, including misspecification of their economic model, misspecification of their econometric model, and use of inappropriate data. While we agree that seasonal affective disorder is not an explanation for all variation in equity markets, we do maintain that careful analysis leads to economically and statistically significant evidence of the effect we originally documented.     

The forced registration of hedge funds in the United States

This article recounts the history of hedge fund regulation in the United States over the last century, including Congressional legislation as well as legal cases mounted both by and against the Securities and Exchange Commission. Traditional arguments for and against hedge fund regulation are discussed. The article argues that neither hedge funds nor their managers should be regulated—whether directly or indirectly. Rather, financial or trusted advisors who recommend these products to investors should bear the regulatory burden.     

How Top‐down and Bottom‐up Budgeting Affect Budget Slack and Performance through Social and Economic Exchange

This paper investigates the effects of a top‐down (TD) versus bottom‐up (BU) orientation in different stages of the budgetary target‐setting process on slack and managerial performance. We use social exchange theory to explain the outcomes of these alternative budgetary arrangements, and complement the traditional focus on budgetary participation in target setting with a process‐oriented perspective. We develop hypotheses predicting that TD and BU orientations in the subsequent stages of the budgeting process have different effects on managers’ exchange relationships with the firm, and their behavioural responses. Using survey evidence from German managers across 127 firms we find that a TD orientation in the issuance of guidelines enhances economic exchange and that a BU orientation in the development of the initial budget proposal enhances social exchange, which in turn are associated with reduced slack and higher performance, respectively.     

Kontrollen und Sanktionen zur Eindämmung der Zinssteuer-Flucht

Im Februar 2006 hat die Bundesregierung ein Gesetz zur Versch?rfung von Finanzkontrollen verabschiedet. Welche Rolle spielen Sanktionen im Kalkül von Steuerhinterziehern? Welche Kosten-Nutzen-Berechnungen stellen Steuerbetrüger an? Prof. Dr. Dieter Cansier, 65, lehrte Volkswirtschaftslehre, insbesondere Finanzwissenschaft, an der Universit?t Tübingen.