The objective of this dissertation is to provide insights on key actors who affect the link between marketing and firm value. The first essay examines financial analysts who provide earnings estimates about firms, thereby connecting firm and the stock market. The author uncovers whether and how financial analysts link market-based assets (e.g., brand equity) to a firm's cash flows, drivers of firm value. The author predicts market-based assets affect a firm's cash flow level, volatility, and acceleration through two marketing strategies, the ability to charge price premiums and penetrate new product markets. Hypotheses are tested using data from surveys of 220 North America based financial analysts. Based on analysts' feedback, brand and channel equity affect a firm's ability to penetrate new product markets, and brand equity also affects a firm's ability to charge price premiums. The ability to charge price premiums increases cash flows level while the ability to penetrate new product markets enhances cash flow level and acceleration of cash flows. Finally, channel equity directly lowers cash flow volatility and market intelligence enhances cash flow level. The findings offer evidence that analysts connect a firm's market-based assets to the generation of its cash flows. This has important implications for managers who maintain communications with the financial analyst community. In the second essay, the author examines the impact of a firm's shareholders and board of directors on the marketing-firm value link. The author hypothesizes that a firm's shareholders and board of directors affect how its advertising and R&D dollars are spent and also affect stock market participants' perceptions of this spending, thereby affecting its firm value. Hypotheses are tested using data on 575 publicly listed firms in the United States. The findings indicate that higher shareholder governance and higher marketing spending (both advertising and R&D spending) increase firm value. However, somewhat interestingly, higher board governance and higher advertising spending decrease firm value. These results highlight the importance of considering corporate governance when analyzing the marketing-shareholder value link and offer yet another important reason for the marketing function to have a voice in the firm's boardroom. / text

The accountability of marketing investments continues to be a key area of concern for researchers and practitioners (MSI Research Priorities, 2008). In particular, market-based assets, specifically customer relationships, and their potential impact on firm performance are a significant source of interest. Though research in this area continues to grow, little is understood about how investments in human capital and the acquisition of alliance partners through factor markets relate to customer relationship management and the impact of customer relationships on performance. This dissertation presents two studies which, together, investigate how investments in market-based assets influence on abnormal stock returns. In the first study, the resource-based view of the firm (Barney 1991) is used to posit several hypotheses related to investments in human capital. The hypotheses are tested using ten years of data from the U.S. airline industry and analyzed using a mixed-effects methodology. Results indicate that investments in customer service personnel impact abnormal stock returns through their impact on customer relationships. Moreover, these investments tend to have decreasing returns in terms of their impact on customer relationships, and the relative strength of this relationship is shown to be contingent upon a firm's service delivery capabilities, advertising expenditures, and operating focus. This study helps clarify how market-based assets are managed, how investments in specific resources used to manage them relate to stock returns, and why the same dollar invested in human capital by different firms can lead to different levels of returns. The second study also takes a resource-based view of the firm and the management of market-based assets. From this perspective, alliances are considered as external resources acquired in strategic factor markets (Barney 1986) for the purpose of complimenting a focal firm's strategy and performance. This study investigates the long-term impact of alternative types of alliances and the potential impact of alliance partners' customer relationship management capabilities on a focal firms' performance. Just as in study one, ten years of U.S. airline data are used, and a mixed-effects methodology is implemented to test hypotheses. Results indicate that the direct benefits of horizontal marketing alliances tend to be positive, but dependent upon the extensiveness of the alliance. Furthermore, it is revealed that the impact of a partner's customer relationship management capabilities on a focal firm's performance is contingent upon whether the partner's capabilities are similar or dissimilar relative to the focal firm. In short, results indicate that when differences exist, the positive impact of a focal firm's customer relationship management capabilities can be reduced to almost zero if that firm allies with a less competent partner. Taken together, these studies tend to suggest that firms which learn to successfully manage investments in customer relationships may risk nullifying expected positive returns if they simultaneously select alliance partners which are less successful at managing such investments. Similarly, firms which are not able to improve their own management of customer relationships can potentially limit the potential negative consequences by allying with more able firms. In all, this dissertation helps address the accountability issue for marketers.

Submitted by Cristiane Oliveira (cristiane.oliveira@fgv.br) on 2011-06-03T15:32:55Z No. of bitstreams: 1 66080100256.pdf: 1176091 bytes, checksum: fcc0a2692cf5fd1eb1a05eb610c446c2 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Vera Lúcia Mourão(vera.mourao@fgv.br) on 2011-06-03T16:43:34Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 66080100256.pdf: 1176091 bytes, checksum: fcc0a2692cf5fd1eb1a05eb610c446c2 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Vera Lúcia Mourão(vera.mourao@fgv.br) on 2011-06-03T16:57:44Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 66080100256.pdf: 1176091 bytes, checksum: fcc0a2692cf5fd1eb1a05eb610c446c2 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2011-06-03T17:04:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 66080100256.pdf: 1176091 bytes, checksum: fcc0a2692cf5fd1eb1a05eb610c446c2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-01-14 / After the deep financial crisis in 2008, there has been an increasing questioning of the Firm’s objectives and its relationship with the financial markets. There is a paradox between the current practice of maximizing financial short-term performance of organizations, demanded by financial agents to corporate executives, and the financial concept of valuation of the Firm, which considers Firm value as the present value of discounted future cash flows. Therefore, according to the maximizing value proposition the Firm's objective is to increase its long-term total value (Jensen, 2000). The primary function of marketing strategies, innovations (R&D investments) included, is to generate both growth and consistent long-term business, i.e. the expansion of intangible assets to generate tangible assets. Based on the conceptual framework of Market-based Assets (Srivastava, Shervani and Fahey 1998), this paper seeks to contribute to the subject by proposing simple metrics, the adjusted performance indexes of retail sector, the Customer Average Ticket (TMC) and the Customer Average Ticket Earnings (LTMC). These metrics could relate investments in marketing to the value of the Firm (shareholder value) through the variation in quality of the company's customer base, which is the source of revenue generation and part of the intangible assets. For empirical tests, this study used data from the following publicly companies listed in Bovespa (São Paulo Stock Exchange): Sadia and Perdigao, belonging to the food processing sector, in the period of 1999 to 2010, and also the air line companies TAM and Gol in the period of 2004 to 2010. The tests were inconclusive, due to certain data limitations, not allowing proving or ruling out the tested hypotheses. But the logical line and simplicity of the method should be explored by future studies. If the method could be confirmed and proven, it would provide all agents (marketing executives, CEOs and CFOs, market analysts and investors) with a simple and objective tool for analysis and way of communication about the value creation of Marketbased Assets (intangible assets) that impact the total Firm value. / Após a profunda crise financeira de 2008, houve um aumento do questionamento sobre os objetivos da Firma e a sua relação com os mercados financeiros. Existe um paradoxo entre a prática corrente de maximização da performance financeira de curto-prazo da organização, demandada pelos agentes financeiros aos executivos das empresas, e o próprio conceito financeiro de valoração da Firma., que considera como valor da Firma o valor presente dos fluxos de caixa futuros descontados. Portanto, segundo a proposição de maximização de valor, o objetivo da Firma é aumentar o seu valor total de longo prazo (JENSEN, 2000). É função primordial das estratégias de marketing, aí incluídos os investimentos em inovação (P&D), o objetivo de gerar crescimento e consistência de longo prazo do negócio, isto é, a ampliação dos ativos intangíveis para gerar ativos tangíveis. Norteado pela estrutura conceitual de Ativos base Mercado (SRIVASTAVA; SHERVANI; FAHEY, 1998), o presente trabalho busca contribuir para o tema, com uma proposição de métricas simples, adaptadas de índices de desempenho do setor varejo, o Ticket Médio Cliente (TMC) e o Lucro Ticket Médio Cliente (LTMC), que possam relacionar os investimentos em marketing e o valor da Firma através da variação da qualidade da base de clientes da empresa, que é a fonte de geração de receitas e parte dos ativos intangíveis. O estudo utilizou para os testes empíricos dados das seguintes empresas, com ações negociadas na Bovespa: Sadia e Perdigão, pertencentes ao setor de alimentos processados, de 1999 a 2010, e também as companhias aéreas TAM e Gol no período de 2004 a 2010. Os testes não foram conclusivos, devido a determinadas limitações dos dados, não permitindo provar ou descartar as hipóteses testadas. Porém a linha lógica e a simplicidade do método deveriam ser exploradas por estudos futuros, pois se confirmado e provado, forneceria uma ferramenta simples e objetiva de análise e comunicação por parte de todos os agentes envolvidos (executivos de marketing, diretores financeiros e presidentes, analistas de mercado e investidores), com relação à criação de valor de Ativos base Mercado (ativos intangíveis) que impactam o valor da Firma.