Role transitions in older adults: A marketing opportunity

Consumers act out roles throughout their lives. Marketers assist in this role playing by providing the wardrobes, props, and sets in the form of products and services. They also help people understand acceptable role behavior by portraying roles in their communication programs. Consumers assume new roles as they age. This article is designed to enhance understanding of the often-ignored roles that accompany aging and provides examples of and suggestions for effective marketing for these role transitions.     

INTRA-INDUSTRY EFFECTS OF BOND RATING ADJUSTMENTS

Several studies find that bond rating downgrades cause negative valuation effects. Other studies find that signals conveyed by earnings releases, earnings forecasts, bankruptcies, and stock offerings of individual firms can be transmitted to their corresponding industries. By combining the two sets of studies, we hypothesize that bond rating changes may contain relevant information not only about the firm, but also about the corresponding industry. We find significantly negative valuation effects for rating downgrades, which are transmitted throughout the industry. Furthermore, we find that intra-industry effects depend on particular characteristics of the bond downgrade, the downgraded firm, and industry rivals. Specifically, the negative intra-industry effects are more pronounced when (1) the downgraded firm experiences a more severe share price response to the bond rating downgrade, (2) the downgraded firm is dominant in the industry, (3) the downgraded firm is more closely related to its rivals in the industry, and (4) the downgrade is due to a deterioration in the firm's financial prospects.     

Marriage Settlements

French couples may choose between two types of marriage settlements governing asset ownership after a divorce or inheritance: common property or separate property. A cooperative model considers the marriage contract as a means of providing for widowhood of the less endowed spouse. A second model addresses the probability of divorce and the production of a marriage good. The common property contract then becomes a means of inducing the wife to invest in the marriage good. Choice of contract, labor supply and fertility are simultaneous. Empirically we find that characteristics of the spouses such as relative age or differences in endowments influence the choice. So do the expected number of children and the wife's labor supply decision. This last decision is also shown to be influenced by the chosen settlement, while fertility is not.
JEL classification : J 12; J 4; K 12     

Reviews

'New technology a health and safety report'

APEX, London and Home Counties Area Sub-Committee; New Technology; a Health and Safety Report, February 1985. (Available from APEX, 3 Parkview Road, Welling, Kent, 0A16 1SZ, tel. 01-303 3407/8.)     

Job change and workplace learning in the public sector: the significance of new technology for unskilled work

Focussing here on local authorities and health services, this paper examines the significance of new technology to unskilled work in the public sector as it is developing and the implications for workplace learning. An argument is developed that new technology is central to a minority of examples of job change, although, significantly, it is more important to staff–initiated change and to workers' ability to fully participate in life beyond the workplace.     

Competitive and Information Effects of Cross-Border Stock Listings

We examine the effect of 269 cross‐border listings on rivals in the listing and domestic markets and find that U.S. rivals experience significant gains whereas domestic rivals do not. Both competitive and information effects are important in explaining the reaction of U.S. rivals. Regarding the competitive effects, the reaction of rivals is less favorable when listings originate in developed countries and more favorable when listing firms do not have prior operating presence in the United States. Regarding the information effects, the reaction is less favorable when listings are combined with equity offerings and more favorable when the listing is the first to occur within an industry.     

The Virtues of Green Strategies: Some Empirical Support from the Alliance Context

Whilst strategic alliance performance has been extensively researched through the resource-based lens, it has yet to be examined under the natural-resource-based view (NRBV) of the firm. Building on the NRBV, this article argues that a firm’s level of environmental proactiveness affects its level of alliance satisfaction. The argument is tested by surveying Norwegian CEOs, and the results confirm a positive relationship. Moreover, the partner’s environmental proactiveness equally influences the focal firm’s satisfaction with the alliance, in consistent with related studies. In addition to providing new empirical evidence in support of the NRBV, and extending the alliance performance literature, the findings add to the corporate environmentalism literature by offering insights on the virtues of green strategies in an underexplored context.