The Performance,Asset Allocation,and Investment Style of International Equity Managers

This paper evaluates the performance of 114 international equity managers over the January 1988–December 1997 period. Performance tests are conducted using Sharpe (1966) and Jensen (1968) performance methodologies. The managers are divided into mutual fund (n=54) and separately managed fund (n=60) investment management categories. Each management category is further divided by foreign and world (global) investment objectives. Three major findings are reported. First, international equity managers, on average, were unable to outperform the MSCI World market proxy during the sample period. However, world managers did perform better than their foreign counterparts. Second, geographic asset allocation and equity style allocation decisions enhanced the performance of international managers during the sample period. Third, separately managed funds outperformed mutual funds during the period studied when mutual fund returns are measured net of management fees. The apparent managed performance advantage abates, however, when mutual fund returns are adjusted to include management fees. Thus, we find no significant difference in the performance of the management categories when returns are measured gross of fees.     

Market Segmentation Research: Beyond Within and Across Group Differences

Market segmentation research is currently focused too narrowly on the task of segment identification as opposed to its strategic relevance within a firm. In this paper we distinguish an ex ante approach to market segmentation research, which begins with studying the motivating conditions that lead people to the tasks and interests in their lives, from an ex post approach which begins with an individual's reaction to marketplace offerings. We argue that the marketing task of guiding managements to make what people will want to buy will be more successful in light of a deep understanding of behavior in the context of everyday life and work, rather than a detailed understanding of preferences in the marketplace. Directions for future research are discussed.     

Having Arrived: The Homogeneity of High‐Growth Small Firms*

This study explores the homogeneity of small firms that have achieved and sustained high growth. Using a recent population of the 50 “Best Managed” Canadian firms identified as achieving high business growth for three or more consecutive years, firm homogeneity in terms of current management challenges is analyzed. In contrast to the rich body of literature available regarding the heterogeneity of managerial challenges and patterns during small business growth and development, this study finds that once small businesses begin to sustain high growth, their reported management challenges converge. We find that, controlling for location and performance, the high‐growth small firms in our population experience similar management challenges regardless of the specific firm size, revenue level, or industry. Our results challenge the “received wisdom” that suggests the managerial challenges faced by small firms during their business growth and development always vary. Management implications and future research directions are discussed.     

Board structure and role of monitoring committees

Regulators and researchers alike have focused significant attention on the structure of the corporate board. In general, the results of prior empirical studies suggest that larger boards are costly to firms because of communication and co-ordination problems. How firms use committees to mitigate these costs, however, has not received as much attention. Since boards delegate authority for specific tasks to monitoring committees with independent directors, we re-examine the impact of board structure on firm performance by specifically focusing on the number of monitoring committees. Using ROA and EVA, we find that board size is positively associated with firm performance when firms use more than three monitoring committees. We also find that the previously documented negative association between board size and Tobin's Q disappears when a firm uses more than three monitoring committees. Overall, the results suggest that firms use monitoring committees to mitigate the costs associated with larger boards.     

Advertising productivity: developing an agenda for research

Despite its importance, research on advertising productivity is limited and fragmentary. This article consolidates the major research streams on different facets of productivity. This consolidation allows us to identify and prioritise various issues that need to be addressed, and thereby develop a comprehensive research agenda for this area.     

Context-general and Context-specific Determinants of Online Satisfaction and Loyalty for Commerce and Content Sites

We use the context-general and context-specific factor approach to examine the generalizability of satisfaction and loyalty models across two disparate online contexts—online retailing and content site browsing. Our conceptual models include the moderating effects of user-characteristic Web expertise, besides main effects of Web site factors and Web expertise. Results indicate that satisfaction and loyalty judgments are sensitive to both context-general and context-specific determinants, as well as to some interactions between them. Among context-general determinants, ease of use and customer service are positively related to satisfaction, Web community to loyalty, and Web expertise to both satisfaction and loyalty. Flow, a context-specific determinant, has a significant positive effect on satisfaction alone; security affects loyalty alone; and fulfillment/reliability and information quality are significant predictors of both satisfaction and loyalty. The results show that Web expertise moderates the effect of ease of use on satisfaction. The study contributes to marketing theory and practice by identifying satisfaction and loyalty mechanisms that are potentially generalizable across the two online contexts and providing a guiding framework for simultaneous consideration of context-specific and context-general factors in future research.     

A stochastic cellular automata model of innovation diffusion

A stochastic cellular automata model of new product diffusion is proposed. It is found that the growth for a given market potential can be determined by a parameter that quantifies chance preferences of individuals for the product and can be estimated from field surveys. It is also found that the “takeover time” in a given seed region is almost independent of the number of innovators. The results suggest possible strategies for the successful introduction of a new product.     

A non-homogeneous non-uniform influence model of innovation diffusion

A model of innovation diffusion which gives unequal weightage to the adopters of different temporal stages and captures commonly observed ups and downs in new product diffusion is proposed. It is shown that our model possesses features of the existing flexible diffusion models and shows better fit which is indicated by the values of R²_adj, mean absolute deviation, and mean percentage error and estimates a larger market potential, M. It has an interesting feature of conversion factors, first increasing then vanishing, much before we approach market saturation, implying that there is a scope of new thrust in converting remaining potential adopters.     

Information dynamics effects from major world markets to SAARC nations

This paper investigates the impact of major world equity markets on four founding countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). With a population of 1.47 billion, SAARC is the largest regional organization in the world. However, the issue of global integration of equity markets of the SAARC nations has largely been ignored. This study fills this important gap, adding results towards the ongoing debate concerning the issue of global market integration. After the onset of the financial crises of 2008, this issue is imperative. VAR analysis is used to determine whether there is any dependency of SAARC return on the performance of world equity markets. Further, GARCH-in-mean modeling is used to determine whether there is any evidence of Volatility spillover. It is found that volatility in major world markets do not impact returns in SAARC nation, but ample evidence of volatility spillover is found for India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Similar results are not obtained for Pakistan.     

Brand crises: The roles of brand familiarity and crisis relevance in determining the impact on brand evaluations

Brand crises, defined as well-publicized claims of unsubstantiated or false brand propositions can do severe damage to brands. Yet, the damaging effects of brand crises may not always be uniform. In other words, the effects of crises may be subject to moderators such as the relevance of the crisis to the brand and brand familiarity. We propose a framework that helps us understand the effects of brand crises on consumers' brand evaluations. We test the hypotheses that crisis relevance interacts with familiarity in its effect on brand evaluations, and that this effect is mediated by perceptions of the seriousness of the crisis. Results from two experiments support these predictions.