Is similarity a constraint for service-to-service brand extensions?

Are service brands constrained in launching new service offerings? Both research evidence and managerial wisdom suggest brands should extend to similar categories. However, in five studies using real-life brands - four experiments and one large-sample survey - we provide evidence that similarity is less of a constraint for service brands extending to other service categories (service-to-service extensions), compared to cases involving parent brands or extension categories of a product nature. Importantly, we demonstrate that such an effect occurs because service brands possess associations relevant across the spectrum of service categories. Our results suggest that service brand managers have the opportunity to stretch their brands to dissimilar service offerings; yet, they need to ensure the marketing execution does not make the brands’ service associations inaccessible to consumers. The findings suggest that even product brands can build service associations by adding service components to their offering, thus becoming “servitized” and better able to extend to dissimilar service categories. Overall, our work contributes to the academic debate documenting that the principles governing the management of product vs. service brands are not identical.     

Impact of state-dependent oil price on US stock returns using local projections

In this paper, we investigate the impact of oil prices on both aggregate and industry US real stock returns over the period 1973–2017. The empirical analysis contributes to the related literature introducing a state-dependent oil price (high and low) and the local projections approach. Our main finding is that, depending on the nature of the shock and industry, the negative effects of oil price shocks become exacerbated -and the positive effects get moderated- if oil prices are already high.     

Catching up with the Americans

This paper develops an international version of the consumption-based capital asset pricing (CCAPM), which we refer to as “catching up with the Americans.” Previous CCAPM research develops the concept of “catching up with the Joneses,” where a representative economic agent exhibits higher marginal utility of consumption as a result of higher past per capita consumption in his own country. Catching up with the Americans, on the other hand, is an international habit-preference hypothesis. It extends the idea of catching up with the Joneses by stating that consumers of non-U.S. countries gain higher marginal utility of consumption as a result of higher past American consumption growth. Contrary to much of the CCAPM literature, we test this version of the model using long bond rates rather than equity returns. However, like most of the previous research on the CCAPM, the catching up with the Americans model fails to explain the relationship between consumption and asset returns.     

Past Returns and Investment Trust Discounts

Abstract:   The relationship between past net asset value returns and the current discount on investment trusts is investigated. The relationship is weaker for the component that is common to all trusts in the same sector, and is significantly stronger for more liquid trusts. The time lag before returns have their full impact on discounts is consistent with the requirements of distinguishing 'skill' from noise. Although discounts vary widely even within the same sector, the range of variation appears to be consistent with an arbitrage equilibrium, in which the profits of exploiting apparent pricing anomalies are just insufficient to invite arbitrage trades.     

我国商业银行私人银行业务的发展现状与对策

随着我国富裕阶层队伍的不断壮大,我国私人银行业务显示出巨大的市场潜力,中外银行因此展开了激烈的竞争。但是,我国商业银行发展私人银行业务也面临着诸多制约因素。因此,我国商业银行应在市场细分、产品的研发与创新、品牌建设、组织架构、专业人才的培养、外部环境建设等方面采取切实措施,以促进私人银行业务的发展     

Stock price reactions to earnings announcements: evidence from Chinese markets

We examine the stock price reactions to changes in earnings per share (EPS) in the Chinese stock markets. We find that domestic A-share investors do not correctly anticipate the changes in earnings and fail to adjust new earnngs information quickly, but international B-share investors can predict earnings changes better than A-share investors. As a result, abnormal returns (ARs) can be obtained by trading on the earnings information, but for A shares only. An explanation is that most A-share holders are individuals with short-term investment horizon while most B-share holders are large institutions that trade on more detailed and accurate financial information not immediately available to A-share holders.     

Demarketing as a differentiation strategy

Demarketing discourages consumers from buying. This paper shows that demarketing can be a profitable alternative when differentiation through product improvements is not cost effective. The impact of differentiating demarketing on profit, market share, consumers, and total welfare is investigated.This research began while Hess was visiting MIT's Sloan School of Management and was finished while visiting University of Haifa; he thanks both for their support.     

The application of Operation and Technology Roadmapping to aid Singaporean SMEs identify and select emerging technologies

In order to aid Singaporean SMEs identify and select emerging technologies for business benefit, a modified process of the Cambridge T-Plan methodology has been introduced and applied to a pilot sample of 30 companies in a variety of manufacturing sectors. This fast and simple process takes the company through five key steps to enable them to create their first Operation and Technology Roadmap (OTR). The paper explains the background to the approach and focuses on the initial benefits identified by a survey of the pilot companies.     

Are Fundamentals Priced in the Bond Market?*

To date, the discussion of the Lev and Thiagarajan 1993 fundamentals in the prior literature has been exclusively in the context of the stock market. Our study is the first to examine the value‐relevance of these fundamentals for default risk. By focusing on the market for new bond issues, we examine the value‐relevance of the fundamental score using expected rather than realized returns. Also, by focusing on the bond market we provide a different perspective than that brought by prior studies relying solely on stock prices. We find the fundamentals to be priced in the market for new bond issues as indicators of expected future earnings and to be value‐relevant in enabling the market to discern differences in bond credit quality over and above the published bond ratings.     

Game theoretic derivations of competitive strategies in conjoint analysis

While conjoint analysis has been applied in a wide variety of different contexts in Marketing, most applications fail to explicitly consider retaliatory reactions from competitors. In this paper, a methodological extension is developed for conjoint analysis by explicitly modeling competition in a game theoretic context. The Nash equilibrium concept is employed to model competitive reactions to produce design, and its implications for reactive product strategies are discussed. The optimal product design problem for each firm is formulated as a nonlinear integer programming problem, which is solved via a specialized branch and bound method combined with a heuristic. In order to compute a Nash equilibrium, a sequential iterative procedure is proposed. The proposed procedure is illustrated under several scenarios of competition using previously published conjoint data.This research has been supported by the Henry Rutgers Research Fellowship, Rutgers University.