Exploiting online social gambling for marketing communications

Internet technology provides a new approach to how gambling is conducted in postmodern times. Drawing on constructivist research and utilising a single case study strategy, this paper examines online social gambling and real money gambling marketing communication practices, as well as offering some insights into the development and implementation of effective marketing communication programmes. In contrast to existing studies, this paper, in part, proposes integrative and higher levels of marketing communication programmes between online social gambling and real money gambling environments. The paper reveals the implicit structure of meanings underlying the link between online social gambling activity and real money gambling practices.     

Estimating the Half-life of Advertisements

The effectiveness of an advertisement wears out over time; eventually, it becomes totally ineffective. The author proposes a concept for measuring the lifetime of an advertisement and derives closed-form expressions for it under certain conditions. In addition, the author distinguishes the proposed concept, the half-life of an advertisement, from the prevalent notion of the duration of advertising effects. More importantly, the information on the half-life of ads is actionable from a managerial standpoint, whereas that on the duration of advertising effect is hypothetical. To enable advertisers to estimate the half-life of their ads, the author describes an estimation approach and illustrates its use by applying it to the advertising of the Dockers® brand of Levi Strauss and Company. Substantively, the lifetime of advertisements for the Dockers® brand is about three months. Thus, advertisers are well-advised to periodically estimate the half-life of their ads, so that they can plan the timing to replace worn out advertisements.     

International Trade and the Business Cycle

This paper develops a new empirical framework for analysing the dynamics of the trade balance in response to different types of macroeconomic shocks. The model provides a synthetic perspective on the conditional correlations between the business cycle and the trade balance that are generated by different shocks and attempts to reconcile these results with unconditional correlations found in the data. The results suggest that, in the post-Bretton Woods period, nominal shocks have been an important determinant of the forecast error variance for fluctuations in the trade balance in G-7 countries.     

The impact of just-in-time manufacturing on firm performance in the US

Just-In-Time manufacturing has been subjected to numerous studies both empirical and methodological. This work attempts to measure the impact of JIT on accounting measures of performance. Most technologies and investments are justified on the basis of their impact on financial and accounting measures which are not easily quantified. Our empirical methodology, simultaneous equation estimation, allows us to isolate the partial effects of JIT on various accounting measures thus gauging the true impact of this method on firm performance. Our results show that after JIT adoption firms reduced the labor content in facilities, increased inventory turnover and enhanced earnings. There was no significant impact on prices charged by the firm. These results support the anecdotal evidence on JIT and the theoretical work done by various authors. Even though the firms studied experienced a downturn in their performance our empirical methodology could identify positive benefits resulting from JIT adoption.     

Production costs for consolidated multibank holding companies compared to one-bank organizational forms

Economies of scale and scope for consolidated multibank holding companies (MBHCs) are examined with a translog cost function and are compared with one-bank holding companies (OBHCs) and independent banks. Empirical results indicate that costs curves are generally U-shaped for independent banks and OBHCs but are relatively flat for MBHCs. This evidence implies that banking organizations should prefer the MBHC to one-bank forms at higher output levels. Implications for bank regulatory policy and interstate banking are discussed.     

The Short-Term Inflation-Hedging Characteristics of U.K. Real Estate

This study investigates the short-term inflation-hedging characteristics of U.K. real estate compared to other U.K. investments. It considers not only total returns but also changes in income and changes in capital values. The analyses are undertaken using annual and quarterly data. Stocks, bonds, appraisal-based real estate (including the three property types, separately), and real estate stocks are considered. Real estate series, constructed from the original appraisal series to take account of autocorrelation, also are used. The methodology is based on that devised by Fama and Schwert (1977) and tests are undertaken for stationarity and structural breaks. Hypotheses are established about the coefficients on expected and unexpected inflation in the model, and these are tested. It is concluded that real estate has poorer short-term hedging characteristics for total return, change in capital value, and change in income than stocks but better characteristics than bonds. However, there is evidence to suggest that the relationships change under different economic environments.     

Energy use in eight rural communities in India

A study of eight rural communities in India indicates that levels of energy consumption vary widely among the communities and that consumption depends on socioeconomic and agroclimatic factors. Irrigation is the most significant factor influencing energy consumption and demand. Fuelwood is not used mainly by the low-income households but by the higher-income households. There is a progressive trend towards monetizationof fuelwood, animal wastes and agricultural residues. Energy planning for rural communities should be location and household-specific, and disaggregated information should be generated for this purpose using baseline surveys.     

Assessing the Economic Worth of Corporate Event Sponsorships: A Stock Market Perspective

Sponsorships of events represent a significant and growingcomponent of firms overall investment in marketing and promotions.While the marketing literature suggests that sponsorships maybe a potential communications tool, relatively little empiricalresearch has been devoted to studying efficiency issues in sponsorships.To understand if sponsorships are efficient investments, we assesstheir economic worth via the event study methodology. Specifically,we hypothesize that a corporate sponsorship announcement providesinformation to market analysts who evaluate the potential profitabilityof a firm. This evaluation of a companys potential profitability,in turn, affects the firms stock price. Announcements of 76sponsorship events were analyzed using the event-study method.Results indicate that on average, corporate sponsorship announcementsimpact the stock market positively and that sponsorships areviewed as worthwhile investments by the financial community.The findings of this study contribute to a better understandingof performance issues surrounding sponsorship investments, andextend recent literature which examines the financial impactof marketing decisions.     

Are government-linked IPOs underpriced? A three country privatization effort comparison

Underpricing in the case of the initial public offerings of private (non-government) firms has been well documented. However, there does not appear to be any systematic study of the price performance of “government-linked” companies or GLCs, which have been “privatized” through public offerings in the stock market. This study examines the hypothesis that the initial public offerings (IPOs) of such companies in the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Malaysia will not only be underpriced, but their degree of underpricing will be relatively greater when compared to firms with no governmental links. The results provide strong support for this hypothesis.