Multivariate statistics in industrial marketing management: A practitioner tool kit

Much published work over the years has pointed to the differences between business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) marketing. An undesirable by-product of this sometimes misdirected distinction is that managers working within B2B environments have generally not considered the use of what are seen as B2C techniques, such as multivariate statistical analysis. This article is structured in three parts. First, the argument for the similarities between B2B and B2C marketing is developed; second, three different multivariate statistical techniques are presented and combined to form a practical tool kit for use by B2B managers on strategic, operational, and tactical levels; and third, the results of an application of the techniques in the life science research chemicals industry is reported, demonstrating that the tool kit substantially enhanced managerial understanding of customer decision processes.     

Bank CEO materialism: Risk controls,culture and tail risk

We investigate how the prevalence of materialistic bank CEOs has evolved over time, and how risk management policies, non-CEO executives’ behavior and tail risk vary with CEO materialism. We document that the proportion of banks run by materialistic CEOs increased significantly from 1994 to 2004, that the strength of risk management functions is significantly lower for banks with materialistic CEOs, and that non-CEO executives in banks with materialistic CEOs insider trade more aggressively around government intervention during the financial crisis. Finally, we find that banks with materialistic CEOs have significantly more downside tail risk relative to banks with non-materialistic CEOs.     

Rookes v. Barnard and the trade union question in British politics

In the 1950s, given the scope of the Trade Disputes Act 1906 that had granted immunity against specific torts (civil wrongs) to organisers of industrial action, the courts had little role in industrial relations. Hence, the importance of the House of Lords decision in 1964 that, in threatening to strike to secure Douglas Rookes's removal from the Heathrow design office of the British Overseas Aircraft Corporation after his resignation from the union, Alfred Barnard and others had used unlawful means because a threat to break a contract of employment came within the tort of intimidation that was unprotected by the Trade Disputes Act's statutory immunities, and thus, they were liable to pay damages to Rookes. The legal arguments deployed are analysed within growing unease in the Conservative Party and among employers at the emergence of workplace union organisation and national strikes. Despite being partially neutralised by the Trade Disputes Act 1965, Rookes was a harbinger of a new judicial activism that outflanked trade unions' tort immunities by creating novel common law liabilities. This in turn laid the political basis for subsequent Conservative legislation to restrict and regulate trade unions and industrial action, a project that is ongoing.     

The Discriminating Beta: Prices and Capacity with Correlated Demands

Uniform customer‐class pricing can do much of the work of congestion‐based or time‐of‐day pricing in communication or wireless networks. A monopolist exploits differences in the stochastic characteristics of demands. If demands are correlated and the firm faces a capacity constraint, then it can set prices to reduce the variability of aggregate demand, thereby reducing the probability of excess demand and the associated service quality deterioration. Demands that covary negatively with aggregate demand are valuable to the firm in much the same way that securities that covary negatively with the market are valuable in a stock portfolio. Customer classes that exhibit low covariance with aggregate demand realize lower optimal prices. Optimal capacity is also affected by these covariances. As long as demands are not perfectly positively correlated, expected costs of joint production are less than expected costs of serving demands separately.