Students in marketing research: Surrogates vs. role-players

The usefulness of the student surrogate has been debated extensively in the marketing literature. The results discussed here suggest that business students are ineffective role-players with regard to anticipating consumers' and businesspersons' reactions; however, students' own evaluations were very much like those of businesspersons.     

Examining product managers’ job satisfaction and performance using selected organizational behavior variables

The product management form of organization has been around for quite a while; yet little empirical research has been done on product managers. This article reports a study of product managers and some organizational behavior factors which contribute to their job satisfaction and job performance. These factors include centralization of decision making, job structure, job scope, role ambiguity, and role conflict. Finally, several suggestions are made for creating an environment more conductive to having product managers who are satisfied with their jobs.     

Discrete choice surveys by telephone

In two consumer studies, discrete choice surveys were administered both by telephone and by traditional pencil and paper methods. Study participants responded to discrete choice surveys concerning pizza restaurants in the first study and fast food restaurants in the second. Neither aggregate level estimated utilities for the pizza restaurants, nor market shares for the fast food restaurants differed by method of administration. The results indicate that discrete choice surveys can be successfully administered by telephone. He received his Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Texas at Dallas. Dr. Perkins is interested in marketing research methodology and in the use of marketing research information in managerial decision making. Dr. Perkins has published articles in theJournal of Marketing Research andPsychometrika. He is a member of the American Marketing Association, the Marketing Research Association, and the TIMS College of Marketing. Jacqueline Roundy recently completed the M.S. degree in marketing from the Pennsylvania State University. In addition she holds an M.B.A. from the University of Utah. She is currently working in Europe.     

Adjoint-based Monte Carlo calibration of financial market models

Adjoint methods have recently gained considerable importance in the finance sector, because they allow to quickly compute option sensitivities with respect to a large number of model parameters. In this paper we investigate how the efficiency of adjoint methods can be exploited to speed up the Monte Carlo-based calibration of financial market models. After analyzing the calibration problem both theoretically and numerically, we derive the associated adjoint equation and propose its application in combination with a multi-layer method, for which we prove convergence to a stationary point of the underlying optimization problem. Detailed numerical examples illustrate the performance of the method. In particular, the proposed algorithm reduces the calibration time for a typical equity market model with time-dependent model parameters from over three hours to less than ten minutes on a usual desktop PC.      

Legal protection of investors,corporate governance,and the cost of equity capital

This study examines the effect of firm-level corporate governance on the cost of equity capital in emerging markets and how the effect is influenced by country-level legal protection of investors. We find that firm-level corporate governance has a significantly negative effect on the cost of equity capital in these markets. In addition, this corporate governance effect is more pronounced in countries that provide relatively poor legal protection. Thus, in emerging markets, firm-level corporate governance and country-level shareholder protection seem to be substitutes for each other in reducing the cost of equity. Our results are consistent with the finding from McKinsey's surveys that institutional investors are willing to pay a higher premium for shares in firms with good corporate governance, especially when the firms are in countries where the legal protection of investors is weak.     

Analysis of risk and risk-reduction strategies—A multiple product case

This study investigated both the amount of risk that consumers face in a new car purchase situation and the different types of strategies that they use to reduce that risk. The findings revealed that owners of different makes of cars perceive varying amounts of risk to be associated with the purchase of a new car. However, no significant differences in the overall amounts of risk associated with the different purchase situations were found. Also it was found that different strategies for reducing the risk were utilized by the different car ownership groups.