Buying decisions in four Indian organizations

This article addresses the organizational buying structures and systems in India. The intent was to identify the emerging trends and changes that have taken place over a period of time in buying designs. The impact of these trends and changes on organizational marketers is considered.The four firms studied are large Indian firms, which will allow the readers of other countries to compare the situations between a developing country like Indian and their own. Case method of data collection has been used to capture both the details and perspective.The Indian buying scene has changed a great deal in the last decade. It has become more professional, systematic, and demanding. Failure to recognize this may lead to business failures.     

Where the Water is Free but the Buckets are Empty: Demand Analysis of Drinking Water in Rural India

This paper examines how a policy of providing free domestic water can be unsustainable. Using a conditional logit model, this research looks at the demand side and identifies the determinants of choice. Under assumptions normally associated with developing societies, the model shows that the people's perception of benefits of safe water is significant, household variables like female literacy are important variables determining the choice of safe water and the capability to pay and willingness to pay already exists. The governments in poor countries need to have a fresh look at their policy relating to rural water supply.     

Marketing strategy in emerging markets: a conceptual framework

Citing difference between emerging and developed markets, scholars highlight need for different approaches to marketing in emerging markets. In this paper, we argue that while there are some unique characteristics of emerging markets, all countries within emerging markets do not have similar levels of product penetration and consumption. As a result, it is wrong to assume that emerging markets are untapped and under-served across the product categories. To a list of characteristics identified as unique to emerging markets, we add large population as an important characteristic and discuss its strategic implications. We develop a conceptual framework that factors in combined effect of varying degrees of product penetration & consumption levels with large population of emerging market countries. The conceptual framework identifies four strategic alternatives for marketing in emerging markets. Instead of recommending any generic marketing strategy, we propose that marketers need to choose an appropriate mix of strategies aimed at primary and selective demand creation in emerging markets.     

Diversification by the audit offices in the US and its impact on audit quality

Audit offices in the US exhibit a wide variation in the number of industries they service. Strategic management theory suggests that diversification can affect the quality of output, depending on the nature and circumstances of diversification. This paper examines the effect of diversification at the audit office level on audit quality. Five proxies of audit quality are examined, mainly, absolute discretionary accruals, propensity to meet-or-beat earnings expectations by a cent, propensity to restate financial statements, propensity to receive a comment letter after an SEC review and propensity to issue a going concern opinion. Results suggest that diversification has detrimental effects on audit quality. On the other hand, when the diversification is part of the audit firm level strategy, the detrimental effects on audit quality are dampened. Moreover, when the diversification at the office level is part of a revenue expansion strategy, the audit quality is adversely affected. However, there is no detrimental effect on the audit quality when revenue expansion is not the objective. Also, diversification across dissimilar industries leads to more adverse effect on audit quality than diversification to similar industries. Results also suggest that when the audit office is located in a market with more (less) diversified client base, the adverse effects of diversification on audit quality are weaker (stronger). Finally, the offices of big-4 audit firms handle diversification better with less adverse effect on audit quality. The findings are important since they identify additional factors that explain audit quality at the audit office level.     

A generalized framework for estimating customer lifetime value when customer lifetimes are not observed

Measuring customer lifetime value (CLV) in contexts where customer defections are not observed, i.e. noncontractual contexts, has been very challenging for firms. This paper proposes a flexible Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) based data augmentation framework for forecasting lifetimes and estimating customer lifetime value (CLV) in such contexts. The framework can be used to estimate many different types of CLV models—both existing and new. Models proposed so far for estimating CLV in noncontractual contexts have built-in stringent assumptions with respect to the underlying customer lifetime and purchase behavior. For example, two existing state-of-the-art models for lifetime value estimation in a noncontractual context are the Pareto/NBD and the BG/NBD models. Both of these models are based on fixed underlying assumptions about drivers of CLV that cannot be changed even in situations where the firm believes that these assumptions are violated. The proposed simulation framework—not being a model but an estimation framework—allows the user to use any of the commonly available statistical distributions for the drivers of CLV, and thus the multitude of models that can be estimated using the proposed framework (the Pareto/NBD and the BG/NBD models included) is limited only by the availability of statistical distributions. In addition, the proposed framework allows users to incorporate covariates and correlations across all the drivers of CLV in estimating lifetime values of customers.

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Fee competition among Big 4 auditors and audit quality

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - Both the GAO (Public accounting firms: mandated study on consolidation and competition. GAO, Washington, 2003; Audits of public companies: continued...     

Economic reform, voting, and local political intervention: Evidence from India

This paper uses the Indian tariff reforms of the early nineties to estimate how voters hurt by economic reforms respond. Regions more hurt by the tariff reform increased their support for both the party that initiated their suffering and parties with similar preferences in favor of poverty-centric policies. This response is surprisingly sophisticated, where voters did not simply punish incumbents for negative income shocks and correctly discounted initial anti-reform stances by opposition parties that later turned out to be false. Furthermore, the strength of this voting response varied with both geography and local political incentives, suggesting that the economic effects of reforms might vary substantially in large and decentralized democracies.     

The effect of EDGAR on the market reaction to 10-K filings

This paper examines the impact of making accounting information available on the Internet simultaneously and almost costlessly to all market participants. More specifically, we examine if filing form 10-K on EDGAR has any effect on the information dissemination process when compared to the traditional method of filing. We examine a random sample of firms that file on EDGAR for the first time and compare the market response to their 10-K filing to that of the previous year's filing which was not on EDGAR. Consistent with the preexisting literature, we do not find a market reaction to the pre-EDGAR filing. In contrast, we find both a price and volume reaction to 10-K's filed on EDGAR. We perform a variety of univariate and multivariate tests to ensure that our results are not driven by other factors, i.e., firm characteristics and timing of 10-K filings. Overall, we find evidence that the market reacts more significantly to 10-K's filed on EDGAR. In our multivariate tests we also examine whether the EDGAR effect is more important for certain types of firms. Consistent with our expectations, we find the EDGAR effect is smaller for faster growing firms for which we believe there are more non-EDGAR sources of information. Finally, we document that, on average, 10-K's filed on EDGAR are filed earlier than 10-K's filed under traditional methods.     

A review of deterministic, stochastic and hybrid vehicular exhaust emission models

Vehicles spend more time near junctions and intersections in different driving modes, i.e., queuing, decelerating or accelerating and thus generating more pollutants than at road links [Claggett, M., Shrock, J., Noll, K.E., 1981. Carbon monoxide near an urban intersection. Atmos. Environ. 15, 1633-1642]. As a result, the receptors in these urban corridors are prone to frequent exposures of high pollutant concentrations (episodic conditions). In order to predict such ‘episodes’, an air quality model, capable of estimating the entire range (middle and extremes) of pollutant concentration distribution is needed. Hybrid models (combining deterministic and statistical distribution models) have demonstrated the ability to predict the entire range of pollutant concentrations in such co mplex dispersion situations with reasonable accuracy [Jakeman, A., Simpson, R.W., Taylor, J.A., 1988. Modelling distributions of air pollutant concentrations-III: Hybrid modelling deterministic-statistical distributions. Atmos. Environ. 22 (1) 163-174]. The present paper reviews the relevant deterministic and stochastic based vehicular exhaust emission models that may be hybridized and thus generate a hybrid model with improved prediction accuracy. The paper also describes the implications of hybrid models in formulating the Episodic-Urban Air Quality Management Plan (e-UAQMP).     

Persistence of financial efficiency in indian hospitality and tourism industry: a dynamic panel Approach

This paper analyses the degree of persistence of financial efficiency for the hospitality and tourism industry in India. The paper deploys the Data Envelopment Analysis technique to generate overall technical efficiency scores as well as pure technical efficiency scores. Furthermore, a dynamic panel technique proposed by Arellano and Bond (1991), is employed to test the degree of persistence of financial efficiency and its key determinants. The results confirm positive and significant persistence of efficiency for the sample firms from the hospitality industry in India. The overall results indicate that hospitality firms in India can create entry and exit barriers to generate positive persistence of financial efficiency. The study suggests regulators specifically focus on policies that can enhance the competitive dynamics of the industry. Such measures may make it imperative for the management of the firms in the sector to streamline their financial management policies to control costs and devise methods for the enhancement of revenues.