Knowledge that Transforms

This section is based on a selection of article abstracts from a comprehensive business literature database. Marketing-related abstracts from more than 125 journals (both academic and trade) are reviewed by JM staff. Descriptors for each entry are assigned by JM staff. Each issue of this section represents three months of entries into the database. Each entry has an identifying number. Cross-references appear immediately under each subject heading. The following article abstracts are available online from the ABI/INFORM database, which is published and copyrighted by ProQuest Information and Learning. For additional information about access to the database or about obtaining photocopies of the articles abstracted here, please call (800) 521-0600 or write to ProQuest, 300 N. Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor, MI 48106.

This section is based on a selection of article abstracts from a comprehensive business literature database. Marketing-related abstracts from more than 125 journals (both academic and trade) are reviewed by JM staff. Descriptors for each entry are assigned by JM staff. Each issue of this section represents three months of entries into the database. Each entry has an identifying number. Cross-references appear immediately under each subject heading. The following article abstracts are available online from the ABI/INFORM database, which is published and copyrighted by ProQuest Information and Learning. For additional information about access to the database or about obtaining photocopies of the articles abstracted here, please call (800) 521-0600 or write to ProQuest, 300 N. Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor, MI 48106.

This section is based on a selection of article abstracts from a comprehensive business literature database. Marketing-related abstracts from more than 125 journals (both academic and trade) are reviewed by JM staff. Descriptors for each entry are assigned by JM staff. Each issue of this section represents three months of entries into the database. Each entry has an identifying number. Cross-references appear immediately under each subject heading. The following article abstracts are available online from the ABI/INFORM database, which is published and copyrighted by ProQuest Information and Learning. For additional information about access to the database or about obtaining photocopies of the articles abstracted here, please call (800) 521-0600 or write to ProQuest, 300 N. Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor, MI 48106.

David W. Stewart is Robert E. Brooker Professor of Marketing and Deputy Dean, Gordon Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. My time as editor has been a dynamic period for the marketing community. It has witnessed the maturing of information technology, the Internet boom and bust, and the collapse of some of the most widely recognized and trusted of brands, including Andersen, Sunbeam, Oldsmobile, and Firestone. Even such seemingly powerful brands as Disney, McDonald’s, AT&T, and CocaCola have struggled. At the same time, the attention of the popular business press and the public at large has become increasingly focused on markets and marketing practices. Issues of intellectual property, consumer privacy, and fair business practices have become part of the daily business headlines. The celebrity attorney has been replaced by the celebrity chief executive officer. The locus of economic growth and new organizational forms has increasingly shifted westward from Europe, the East Coast, and the Midwest to the West Coast and Asia. The only exception to these broad shifts appears to be Japan, once feared as an economic powerhouse and now reduced to a troubled economy. Change is evitable and is what sustains the need for research and scholarship. Paradigms, assumptions, and even “facts” that dominate thought and practice at one point give way to new facts and modes of thought. In my editorial statement at the beginning of my term as editor (Stewart 1999), I discussed the role of Journal of Marketing (JM) as a tangible artifact of an intellectual community. This intellectual community is very much alive and responsive to change. It is again time for a change in the stewardship of the Journal. This change will, no doubt, bring new energy, new perspectives, and new directions to the Journal. However, editors merely manage in a modest way the real changes that occur in the intellectual discipline. Most of the articles to be published by the new editor during her first year are already written and in the review process. The problems and topics on which scholars within marketing’s intellectual community are working and will work reflect the broader social and economic environment of which marketing is a part. An editor has little, if any, influence on this environment. However, an editor plays an especially important role in ensuring that the scholarship that derives from response to change is captured and published on a timely basis. I discuss three things in my last editorial as editor: First, I describe the changes that have occurred in the Journal over the past three years. These changes suggest a great deal about the nature of the changes in markets and marketing practices that have taken place. Second, I share my perspective as an editor on what is most likely to be valuable to the discipline and find its way into the pages of the Journal. This will be a brief treatise on how to get published. Third, I acknowledge the contributions of the many people who have contributed to the Journal’s success.

The allocation of excess cash has long been recognized in the finance literature as an important aspect of the basic agency conflict between managers and owners. In the advertising budgeting context, marketing scholars report that firms possessing high levels of cash tend to spend more on advertising than what seems necessary or desirable. Indeed, this positive link between excess cash and advertising expenditures constitutes a part of what is commonly referred to as the affordability method of advertising budgeting. Surprisingly, there has been little research that attempts to view this association as a manifestation of agency costs. Therefore, in this article, the authors examine whether agency costs, as measured by managerial ownership, moderate the relationship between excess cash and advertising expenditures. On the basis of received theory, the authors conceptualize that agency costs will first decrease, then increase, and then decrease again with the level of managerial ownership. Accordingly, the authors hypothesize and find that the fraction of incremental earnings reinvested in advertising follows the same pattern in managerial ownership. These findings support the notion that the use of the affordability method is driven, in part, by agency costs. The authors conclude by discussing the theoretical and managerial implications of the findings.

Horizontal arrangements are increasingly deployed in organizational networks, yet research has rarely examined the effectiveness of these alliances. The coalition of disparate corporate cultures yields appreciable levels of role stress for people in boundary-spanning positions. Dedicated assets and communication modality are factors that influence the level of role ambiguity and conflict. The authors implicate these facets of role stress as antecedents to four forms of effectiveness drawn from the competing values framework. The authors present alternative perspectives that examine the relationship between stress and performance. The received view frames role stressors as linear, negative antecedents to organizational outcomes. The authors contrast this perspective with theories that espouse triphasic, parabolic, and interactive influences of stressors on organizational outcomes. Data gathered with 218 managers of dual-branded retail oil outlets indicate that the relevance of these alternative perspectives is mitigated by the form of effectiveness pursued by the organization. The results support a linear relationship between role conflict and bargaining efforts, yet they also offer evidence of nonlinear influences of role ambiguity on contributions to sales, customer satisfaction, and competence. The study concludes with a discussion of relevance of the findings to the management of horizontal alliances and to interorganizational theory.