CEO regulatory focus and myopic marketing management

This study details the mechanisms on how CEO regulatory focus affects the salience of the gains versus losses involved in myopic marketing decision-making, and how such CEO psychological attributes interact with internal equity-based compensation, external pressure from equity analysts, and environmental turbulence to affect firms’ myopic marketing management propensities. We find that when faced with short-term earnings pressure to meet earnings expectations and when time is no longer a resource, predominantly promotion-focused are more likely to engage in myopic marketing management to benefit from the temporary stock price increase, which comes from meeting or beating earnings expectations. Conversely, predominantly prevention-focused CEOs are less prone to such short-termist actions which results in long-term value loss. For the moderating variables, we find that: (1) equity-based compensation tends to attenuate myopic marketing tendencies of promotion-focused CEOs but have no impact on prevention-focused CEOs, (2) whether equity analysts improve monitoring or aggravate short-term earnings pressure depends on the CEO’s regulatory focus, and (3) environmental turbulence does not increase the myopic marketing management tendencies of predominantly promotion-focused CEOs but rather intensifies the relunctance of prevention-focused CEOs to take short-termist actions. We further find that myopic marketing management mediates the impact of CEO regulatory focus on future firm performance. These findings have important implications for firms and boards when selecting new CEOs and structuring the compensation of existing CEOs. Firms need to simultaneously consider the fit between the CEOs’ regulatory focus, firms’ needs, the business environment, as well as CEO compensation structure.     

Financial return or social responsibility? An investigation into the stakeholder focus of institutional investors

Since the financial crisis, regulators have put emphasis on encouraging institutional investors to take their governance responsibilities more seriously. In the UK, the Stewardship Code was introduced to enhance the engagement of institutional investors with shareholdings in UK listed companies. In the literature, institutional investors have been predominantly conceptualised as owners, although a number of authors have rejected this view, arguing that traders would be more appropriate. The UK Stewardship Code adds a third view: the institutional investor as steward. The literature generally considers the stewardship concept to be the ownership role combined with wider stakeholder responsibilities. By focussing primarily on this new stakeholder element, this study examines empirically the new stewardship concept by undertaking a content analysis of the published Stewardship Statements of 81 asset managers. The results find support for both the ownership and stewardship role but also highlight significant variations in practices that point toward different competitive strategies.     

Consumer responses to trade-offs in eco-friendly clothing: The moderating effects of fashion leadership and regulatory focus

Consumers of eco-friendly clothing often face trade-offs between eco-friendliness and other product attributes. Across two experiments, we investigate the moderating role of fashion leadership and regulatory focus in such trade-off situations. Our results suggest that while non-fashion leaders are willing to trade-off hedonic attributes for eco-friendliness, fashion leaders are not willing to trade-off either hedonic or utilitarian attributes. It is also suggested that prevention-focused fashion leaders are more likely than promotion-focused fashion leaders to trade-off hedonic attributes for eco-friendliness. Implications for practitioners as well as directions for future research are discussed.     

What you see is meaningful: Does green advertising change the intentions of consumers to purchase eco-labeled products?

Consumers are increasingly worried that their current consumption patterns have negative environmental impacts, which in turn shapes their green purchase intentions. Based on the signaling theory and stimulus–organism–response model, the purpose of this research is to construct a theoretical framework to understand consumer intentions to buy eco-labeled products. Empirical results from 671 questionnaires show that as expected, green advertising receptivity positively affects intention, and the relationship between green advertising receptivity and intention is also moderated by promotion focus and mediated by system trust and personal trust. However, the relationship between green advertising receptivity and purchase intention is not moderated by prevention focus. Hence, this research suggests that stakeholders should conduct truthful green advertising campaigns to dispel consumer suspicion and target different consumers with different green advertising and marketing campaigns to increase sales.     

国有股权能促进民营企业“脱虚向实”吗？

基于“反向混改”的资源效应与治理效应,以2008—2019年我国沪深A股民营上市公司为样本,分析并实证检验了国有股权对民营企业“脱虚向实”的影响及其机制,形成以下结论：国有股权能促进民营企业“脱虚向实”;机制检验表明,治理效应即降低第二类代理成本与提高分析师关注度是国有股权促进民营企业“脱虚向实”的路径,而非资源效应,表明国有股权主要通过弱化参股企业逐利动机实现“脱虚向实”;异质性分析表明,在内部控制质量低及市场化程度高的样本中,国有股权的积极作用更显著。研究结论对引导民营企业利用国有资本发展实体经济具有借鉴意义。     

Managers as the bridge: How cultural friction influences the integration of cross-border mergers and acquisitions

Going beyond cultural distance, the present study adopts a more contextualized view of cultural friction to account for the “actual cultural contacts” in cross-border mergers and acquisitions (CBMAs), and meanwhile builds a case-based measure of cultural friction to quantitatively capture the country- and deal-level cultural differences between the acquirer and the target in each CBMA. Differing from the existing research that takes the influence of cultural differences on CBMA performance for granted, we highlight the importance of managers from the acquiring firm by theorizing that cultural friction between the acquirer and the target can shape acquiring managers' choice of managerial practices to complete the managerial tasks during integration, leading to different performance. In particular, we postulate a curvilinear relationship between the cultural friction and CBMA performance. By incorporating regulatory focus theory into our analytical framework, we further hypothesize how this curve is shaped by managers’ regulatory focus, a key motivational trait at the firm management level. Using a sample of 304 completed CBMAs conducted by Chinese listed firms, our empirical results verify the U-shaped relationship between cultural friction and the CBMA integration performance, and suggest that this relationship is flattened by acquiring managers’ prevention focus.     

Collective-based ad transparency in targeted hotel advertising: Consumers’ regulatory focus underlying the crowd safety effect

Facing transparency requirement of ad generation process, digital marketers need to design proper transparency messages to preempt consumer backlash. Based on crowd psychology literature and the regulatory focus theory, we proposed and tested the crowd safety effect of the collective-based (vs. individual-based) ad transparency strategy with two experimental studies in the context of online hotel booking. Results of two studies consistently demonstrate the crowd safety effect of the collective-based transparency on enhancing hotel booking intention and ad click-through willingness. Furthermore, we found that consumers’ trust toward the ad, rather than privacy concern, mediates this positive effect. These findings help us better understand how social dimensions in ad transparency messages shape consumer responses, as well as the role of consumer trust in promoting targeted ad effectiveness through promotion focused behaviors.     

The mitigating effect of matching regulatory focus with arousal-inducing stimuli in service failure situations

Service failures are pivotal touchpoints that can reduce customer satisfaction, encourage negative word-of-mouth, and ultimately impact a firm's market share. We advance a novel perspective that after a service failure occurs, matching incidental arousal-inducing stimuli to one's regulatory orientation can make the negative experience stemming from the service failure less deleterious. In three experiments (two stock out scenarios and one involving a rude salesperson), after a service failure, promotion-focused and prevention-focused individuals were exposed to high versus low arousal-inducing stimuli. Three approaches available to retailers were used to manipulate arousal levels: background pictures (Study 1), colors (Study 2), and music (Study 3). When high (low) incidental arousal-inducing stimuli were presented to those with a promotion (prevention) focus, this raised satisfaction, loyalty, and referral for brands compared to when promotion (prevention)-focused individuals were exposed to low (high) arousal-inducing stimuli. Changes in self-rated arousal and affect valence levels (arousal and valence levels were measured after the service failure and then after exposure to the incidental arousal-inducing stimuli) mediated the effect on these consumer behaviors. These insights extend theory by considering the combined effect of regulatory focus and affect. They also have practical relevance.     

Technology readiness and usage: a global-identity perspective

The past several decades have witnessed the rapid globalization of consumption markets and widespread diffusion of information and communication technologies. However, the use of technology by consumers is not a foregone conclusion. We investigate the role of global self-identity on the orientation toward technology readiness and usage. Relying on a social-identity model of motivation as our theoretical framework, we propose a model which incorporates global self-identity (i.e., cosmopolitanism/parochialism and global/local identification) and self-regulation (i.e., promotion and prevention focus) in predicting technology readiness and usage in a self-service technology context. The proposed model is tested in two different cultures, the U.S. and China, and is contrasted with two theoretically-competing models as well. Results provide support for the hypothesized model, and a number of limitations, implications, and directions for future research are discussed.     

分众时代广告媒体传播策略探析

广告媒体传播策略是企业营销战略的重要一环,媒体组合的终极目标是协助达成产品营销的目的,而营销的成功有赖于杰出的广告媒体组合策略。文章试从分众时代下,目标受众的生活片段实施立体化、无缝化传播策略角度,探讨广告的媒体传播策略。