• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.53-77
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• 2013

As advertising and promotions are categorized as operating expenses, managers tend to reduce marketing budget to improve their short term profitability. Gauging the value and accountability of marketing spending is therefore considered as a major research priority in marketing. To respond this call, recent studies have documented that financial market reacts positively to a firm's marketing activity or marketing related outcomes such as brand equity and customer satisfaction. However, prior studies focus on the relation of marketing variable and financial market variables. This study suggests a channel about how marketing activity increases firm valuation. Specifically, we propose that a firm's marketing activity increases the level of the firm's product market information and thereby the dispersion in financial analysts' earnings forecasts decreases. With less uncertainty about the firm's future prospect, the firm's managers and shareholders have less information asymmetry, which reduces the firm's cost of capital and thereby increases the valuation of the firm. To our knowledge, this is the first paper to examine how informational benefits can mediate the effect of marketing activity on firm value. To test whether marketing activity contributes to increase in firm value by mitigating information asymmetry, this study employs a longitudinal data which contains 12,824 firm-year observations with 2,337 distinct firms from 1981 to 2006. Firm value is measured by Tobin's Q and one-year-ahead buy-and-hold abnormal return (BHAR). Following prior literature, dispersion in analysts' earnings forecasts is used as a proxy for the information gap between management and shareholders. For model specification, to identify mediating effect, the three-step regression approach is adopted. All models are estimated using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to test the statistical significance of the mediating effect. The analysis shows that marketing intensity has a significant negative relationship with dispersion in analysts' earnings forecasts. After including the mediator variable about analyst dispersion, the effect of marketing intensity on firm value drops from 1.199 (p < .01) to 1.130 (p < .01) in Tobin's Q model and the same effect drops from .192 (p < .01) to .188 (p < .01) in BHAR model. The results suggest that analysts' forecast dispersion partially accounts for the positive effect of marketing on firm valuation. Additionally, the same analysis was conducted with an alternative dependent variable (forecast accuracy) and a marketing metric (advertising intensity). The analysis supports the robustness of the main results. In sum, the results provide empirical evidence that marketing activity can increase shareholder value by mitigating problem of information asymmetry in the capital market. The findings have important implications for managers. First, managers should be cognizant of the role of marketing activity in providing information to the financial market as well as to the consumer market. Thus, managers should take into account investors' reaction when they design marketing communication messages for reducing the cost of capital. Second, this study shows a channel on how marketing creates shareholder value and highlights the accountability of marketing. In addition to the direct impact of marketing on firm value, an indirect channel by reducing information asymmetry should be considered. Potentially, marketing managers can justify their spending from the perspective of increasing long-term shareholder value.

• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.137-164
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• 2008

This paper examines the operating performance of firms that for a four-year period, held more than 15% of their assets in cash and cash equivalents. During next four years, operating performance of firms maintaining high cash persistently is greater than the performance of firms matched by size and industry or firms adopting transitory high cash policy. Furthermore, the effect of persistent cash holdings on operating performance depends on the ownership structure and the level of information asymmetry. Foreign investors deteriorate the operating performance of high cash firms, suggesting that potential M&A and the pressure of excessive dividend reduce the usefulness of cash. The level of information asymmetry enhances the operating performance for the firms adopting persistent high cash policy. It suggests that cash holdings reduce the costly external financing and underinvestment problem for firms with high information asymmetry.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.9-21
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• 2014

Source and use of investment money in the content business has been subject to closer attention, This study attempts to identify the information asymmetry problem in the performing art are, focusing on the Korean musical play. Despite the various discussions in the venture capital practice in the performing art area, there has been few studies analyzing the investors' perspective. While juggling with the 'artistic value' and 'rate of return', the investors are concerned about the 'transparency' of the performing art practice. When coupled with the subjective judgment of 'artistic value', the information asymmetry between the investor and the performing art manager becomes more delicate. In the performing art business, 'SPC(Special Purpose Company)' is considered a possible solution to organize the deal structure in this field. This study analyzes the role of SPC regarding the information asymmetry problem.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.12 no.9
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• pp.3827-3833
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• 2011

This paper performed empirical tests of the validity of the pecking order theory which explains financing behavior of firms under information asymmetry. The results of regression analyses using the data of listed manufacturing companies in the Korean Stock Market from 1981 to 2010 have shown strong evidences supporting the pecking order theory. Especially regression coefficients of change of debt on funds deficit and control variables were found to be almost (+1) with statistically significance, which is interpreted as being consistent with the pecking order theory. Same results were found when I performed regression analyses by dividing the sample period into pre-currency crisis period, currency crisis period and post-currency crisis period and using 2 regression models. Change of tangible asset were found to function as collateral rather than reducing information asymmetry and as the firm size decreased, use of debt increased and as profitability increased use of debt decreased, which are consistent with the pecking order theory.

• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.125-130
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• 2017

In the business environment of the modern society, it is not possible for the company, which is a producer of accounting information, to provide accounting information to the users of accounting information because it can not satisfy the information demand of the accounting information users due to the problem of information asymmetry. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to find out what information should be provided for satisfying the information needs of users of accounting information. This study investigates the qualitative characteristics of accounting information based on K-IFRS in the provision of accounting information and conducts empirical studies based on the users of accounting information of listed companies and unlisted companies. And how to improve the satisfaction. As a result of empirical research, it was confirmed that the accounting information satisfying the qualitative characteristics is useful for meeting the information needs of users of accounting information.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.1-16
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• 2006

With the diffusion of the Internet, firms try to electronically collaborate with their partners in order to cut costs and gain profits. This, electronic Partnership, called 'Collaborative IT' is quite popular between large purchase enterprises and small-to-medium sized sub-contractors. This study investigates such relations. This study proposes three groups of research variables-interorganizational relationship, collaborative IT activity, and firm performance. the interorganizational relationship consists of trust, commitment, and asymmetry of commitment. Collaborative IT activity is composed of information sharing and workflow integration. The ultimate dependent variable is firm performance. It is hypothesized that the relationship factors influence the level of collaborative IT activity, while the latter in turn affects the firm performance. The relationship factors nay also directly affect the dependent variable. In addition, collaborative IT motive, as a moderating variable, may influence the causal relationship. By means of survey, ore hundred and eighty-two responses were obtained. Most sample companies are small-sized, in the manufacturing sector. The analysis of data reveals that both trust and commitment positively affects the level of collaborative IT activity, while asymmetry of commitment has negative effects. The workflow integration is significantly related with firm performance. Information sharing, however, has no signific3nt effects. Furthermore, asymmetry of commitment shows reverse relationship with firm performance. Collaborative IT motive works as a moderating variable between information sharing and firm performance. Finally, workflow integration is believed to mediate between relationship factors and firm performance.

• Journal of the Korean Data and Information Science Society
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.1557-1567
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• 2014

In this paper, I propose a general hypothesis that after the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOA) financial statements convey more accurate and reliable corporate information to investors who in turn reflect such improvements in stock prices and test four practical hypotheses that simultaneously feature the degree of information asymmetry, forecast bias, and investor reaction to biased earnings information. The empirical results unanimously suggest that the post-SOA investors take advantage of the improvement in informational efficiency and accuracy and actively adjust for analyst forecast bias in earnings forecasts. The SOA indeed appears to achieve its primary goal of investor protection.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.50-60
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• 2015

A Block-Time-Bounded Time Division Multiple Access (BTB-TDMA) medium access control protocol, which estimates the propagation delay of nodes according to their location and moving velocity information, has been proposed for underwater acoustic networks. BTB-TDMA provides nodes with their transmission schedules by a time block that is a time unit, newly designed for BTB-TDMA. In this paper, we investigate how the receiver collision, that is induced by the asymmetry between node's uplink and downlink propagation delay due to its mobility, affects the performance of BTB-TDMA. To do this, we analytically obtain the collision rate, the channel access delay, and the channel utilization by considering the asymmetry of propagation delay. Then, simulations are extensively performed with respect to the length of a time block by varying the number of nodes, the network range, and the node's velocity. Thus, the simulation results can suggest performance criteria to determine the optimal length of a time block which minimizes the collision rate and concurrently maximizes the channel access delay and the channel utilization.

• Agribusiness and Information Management
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.42-54
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• 2013

Information System (IS) Success Model proposed by DeLone and McLean is applied as a successful operation tool of information system, with its basic assumption of symmetric relationship between independent variables and dependent variables of the structural equation modeling. However, because previous studies have proved asymmetry of quality factors' influence structure on dependent variable by applying three-factor analysis, this study examined asymmetry of impact structure of quality factors introduced in IS Success Model on user satisfaction. Also the study applies structure equation modeling (SEM), three-factor analysis and importance and performance analysis (IPA) to develop resource allocation strategy for IS success. The study is able to provide IS practitioners with strategic implications for allocating and managing limited resources more effectively.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.10
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• pp.73-82
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• 2015

Purpose - This paper aims to investigate whether information asymmetry could explain capital structures in Korean corporations. According to Myers (1984), firms prefer internal funding to external financing due to the costs associated with information asymmetry. When external financing is necessary, firms prefer to issue debt rather than equity by the same reasoning. Since Shyam-Sunder and Myers (1999), numerous studies continue to debate the validity of the theory. In this paper, we show how the theory depends on assumptions and incorporated variables. We hope our investigation can provide helpful implications regarding capital structure, information asymmetry, and other firm characteristics. Specifically, our empirical results are complementary to the analysis of Son and Lee's (2015), a recent study that examines the pecking order theory prediction for Korean retail firms. Research design, data, and methodology - We test empirical models that are some variants of model used in Shyam-Sunder and Myers (1999). The financial and accounting data are provided by WISEfn for the firms listed on the KOSPI during 1990 to 2013. Bond ratings are supplied by the Korea Investor Service (KIS). We take into account the heterogeneity in debt capacity; a firm's debt capacity is measured by using the method of Lemmon and Zender (2010) based on its bond ratings. Finally, we estimate empirical models suggested by Shyam-Sunder and Myers (1999), Frank and Goyal (2003), and Lemmon and Zender (2010). Results - First, we find that Shyam-Sunder and Myers' (1999) prediction fails to explain total debt changes of Korean firms. Second, we find a non-monotonic relationship between total debt changes and financial deficits with respect to debt capacity. This contradicts the prediction of Lemmon and Zender (2010) that argues the pecking order theory survives with a monotonically increasing relationship. Third, we estimate a negative correlation coefficient between financial deficit and current debt changes. The result is the complete opposite of the prediction of Lemmon and Zender (2010). Finally, we also confirm the non-monotonic relationship between non-current debt changes and financial deficits with respect to debt capacity. Yet, the slope of coefficient is smaller than that of total debt change case. Indeed, the results are, to some extent, consistent with the prediction of pecking order theory, if we exclude the mid-debt capacity firms. Conclusions - Our empirical results complementary to the analysis of Son and Lee (2015), a recent study focusing on capital structure in Korean retail firms; their paper suggests interesting topics regarding capital structure, information asymmetry, and other firm characteristics in Korean corporations. Contrary to Son and Lee (2015), our results show that total debt changes and current debt changes are inconsistent with the prediction of Shyam-Sunder and Myers (1999). However, similar to Son and Lee (2015), non-current debt changes are consistent with the pecking order prediction, in the case of excluding the mid-level debt capacity firms. This contrast allows us to infer that industry characteristics significantly affect the validity of the pecking order prediction. Further studies are needed to analyze the economics behind this phenomenon, which is beyond the scope of our paper. In addition, the estimation bias potentially matters regarding the firm-level debt capacity calculation. We also reserve this topic for future research.