Brand related information as context: the impact of brand name characteristics on memory and choice

Consumer exposure to new brand names can occur in contexts with or without brand information being present. Whereas previous research has examined the effects of brand name characteristics (association set size and word frequency) on memory in the presence of brand information, this paper also assesses brand name effects in contexts without brand related information and extends it to brand consideration and choice. Two different processes are found to be operating as consumers retrieve brands and make a choice. Recall seems to benefit from a distinctiveness based route, which also guides consideration and choice. In contrast, implicit memory is influenced by familiarity, with corresponding consideration and choice effects. The implications are that firms’ choice of brand names and media needs to consider the combination of brand name characteristics that will lead to desired outcomes vis-à-vis distinctiveness or familiarity based processes.     

CEO founder status and firm financial performance

Founders create their organizations, yet are often expected to eventually become liabilities to these same organizations. Past empirical research on the relationship between CEO founder status (i.e., is the CEO also the founder?) and firm performance has yielded inconsistent results. This study of 94 founder‐ and nonfounder‐managed firms finds that founder management has no main effect on stock returns over a 3‐year holding period, but that firm size and firm age moderate the CEO founder status–firm performance relationship. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

ZETATM analysis A new model to identify bankruptcy risk of corporations

The paper explores the development of a bankruptcy classification model which incorporates comprehensive inputs with respect to discriminant analysis and utilizes a sample of bankrupt firms essentially covering the period 1969–1975. Financial statement data and market related measures are transformed along guidelines suggested by traditional security analysis to promote comparability of companies and to reflect the most recent reporting standards so as to make the model relevant to future analysis. The results of the study are compared with alternative bankruptcy classification strategies via the explicit introduction of prior probabilities of group membership, observed accuracies, and estimates of costs of errors in misclassification. The latter is based on cost estimates derived from commercial bank lending errors. The results of the study indicate potential significant application to credit worthiness assessment, portfolio management, and to external and internal performance analysis.     

Learning,diversification and the nature of risk

In many economic settings, faster learning is achievable only through greater exposure to risk. We study this conflict in the context of project choice, where a risk-averse agent must choose whether to invest in two projects of the same type (focus) or of different types (diversification). Focus enables faster learning across periods, but is riskier due to common type-specific shocks. Optimal choice involves balancing these two considerations. We show that focus is preferred for intermediate learning speeds, and that higher prior uncertainty may encourage focus. Thus, what matters for the focus-diversification choice is not only the level of risk, but also whether the risk is permanent or can be “learned away.” We are grateful to two anonymous referees, Serkan Bahceci, Steve Cecchetti, Adam Jaffe, Bojan Jovanovic, Kala Krishna, Blake LeBaron, Rachel McCulloch, Yana Rodgers, participants at the 2004 AEA-CSWEP Meetings and the 2003 North East Universities Development Conference, and seminar participants at Brandeis University for comments and suggestions.     

Marketing controls and employee responses: The moderating role of task characteristics

A key concern in implementing organizational controls is that little is known about when controls lead to “negative” employee responses. Previous research has suggested that lower levels of negative responses will be observed only if the controls that are being employed “fit” the characteristics of the tasks being controlled. The two task characteristics usually referred to include performance (outcome) documentation and procedural (cause-effect) knowledge. Unlike previous studies, however, this study assumes that the two task characteristics should have a joint, rather than independent, influence on employee responses to controls. The reason is that knowledge of how well one is doing is not sufficient for expecting lower levels of negative responses if information on procedures that may lead to better performance is not available. Knowledge of procedures, likewise, is not sufficient for lower levels of negative responses if performance documentation is not available. Results of an empirical study provide general support for the above line of reasoning. He obtained his Ph.D. at the Ohio State University. His research interests include the areas of international marketing and sales management. He has previously published inAdvances in International Marketing, International Trade Journal, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, and contributed to several national and international conference proceedings. He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include sales management, marketing strategy, and international marketing. He has previously published inInternational Journal of Research in Marketing, International Trade Journal, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, Technology Forecasting and Social Change, and contributed to numerous conference proceedings.     

The Role of Target Termination Fees in REIT Mergers

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics - Target termination fee provisions are widely used in merger agreements and require the target firm to pay the bidder a fixed cash fee in the event...     

Rethinking the impact of GDP on financial development: Evidence from heterogeneous panels

This paper examines the nonlinear impact of real GDP per capita on financial development in a panel of 125 countries. It also determines the moderating effect of inflation on the impact of GDP on financial development. It employs the dynamic panel system generalized method of moments (GMM) and the dynamic common correlated effects (CCE) to do both panel and country‐specific analysis, as well as control for cross‐sectional dependence, heterogeneity and endogeneity. This study shows that GDP has a positive impact on financial development in the entire panel. However, when we split the panel into different income groups, we find a positive impact in the high‐ and middle‐income groups while the impact is insignificant in the low income group. Although we find no evidence of a nonlinear impact of GDP on financial development in the panel, the country‐specific analysis reveals a significant nonlinear relationship between GDP and financial development in 73 countries. We also show that inflation adversely moderates the positive impact of GDP on financial development in middle‐income countries. This study implies that the relationship between GDP and financial development depends on the levels of GDP and inflation rate. We recommend some policy options based on the findings.     

Investment decisions: The trade-off between economic and environmental objectives

While there are broader socio-political, psychological, and structural factors that influence investment decisions (see Harris et al., 2016), in line with the critical approach, this study provides an empirical insight into the notion that financialization, specifically the tendency to prioritise economic over environmental objectives, has a strong bearing on how managers view investment trade-off decisions in relation to sustainability issues. The study empirically investigates this notion by examining the investment trade–off preferences of Australian managers in relation to three decision attributes – economic outcomes (i.e. financial returns), environmental impact (i.e. carbon emissions) and stakeholder pressure to consider environmental issues. We use the discrete choice experimental method to quantify the trade-offs between the above mentioned three attributes. In addition, we also investigate the potential effect of three contingency factors on individual's preferences. Specifically, at the organisational level, we explore the effects of financial and environmental rewards and at the individual level, we explore the effect of environmental consciousness. In line with the financialization hypotheses our results indicate that managers prioritise financial returns over carbon emissions and stakeholder pressures with the preference for financial returns found to be positively associated with rewards for financial performance. However, in line with the pragmatic approach and despite the overall dominance of financial returns, there is evidence that manager's focus on financial returns can be influenced, with the preference for financial returns negatively associated with rewards for environmental performance and environmental consciousness. In addition, while stakeholder pressure was not found to be associated with any of the three contingency factors and, manager's emphasis on carbon emissions was not associated with financial rewards, manager's emphasis on carbon emissions was found to be positively associated with both rewards for environmental performance and environmental consciousness. Therefore, our findings suggest that corporate management have an important role to play, both in respect to the design of performance rewards systems and the recruitment of environmentally conscious managers, in order to promote the sustainability agenda.