본 연구는 미국기업 CEO의 고용 안정 수준과 장기적 인센티브 보상이 사회적책임(CSR) 투자에 미치는 영향에 관해 실증분석하였다. 기존 연구들에서 기업의 사회적책임 투자와 재무성과 간의 관 계에 대한 분석은 지속적으로 진행되어 왔으며 최근 CSR에 대한 투자가 적어도 장기적으로는 기 업의 재무성과를 개선시킨다는 주장이 우세하다. 하지만 이러한 결과에도 불구하고 여전히 많은 경 영자들은 CSR에 대한 투자를 불필요한 비용으로 간주하며 CSR에 대한 투자를 하지 않고 있다. 이는 경영자의 임기와 경제적 보상이 일반적으로 단기 재무 성과에 따라 평가되기 때문이라고 할 수 있다. 본 연구는 이러한 대리인문제에 대한 해결책으로 장기 스톡옵션과 경영권 보호 조항을 제 시하고 기업의 CSR 투자에 대한 효과를 분석하였다. 실증분석 결과, 더 많은 경영권 방어 조항이 존재하거나 더 많은 장기 인센티브(스톡옵션)를 지급하는 기업이 더 많은 CSR 투자를 하는 것으 로 나타났다. 또한, 그 효과는 경제 상황과 기업의 재무상태에 따라 상이한 것을 확인하였다. 이러 한 결과는 기업의 CSR 활동과 관련하여 경영진의 금전적 보상과 경영권 보장의 중요성을 나타내 며, 경제·재무 상황에 따라 기업의 CSR 투자가 상이함을 보여준다.
This paper considers the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game in which there exists a dilemma that the best response is that both players are to confess, but doing not confess can give a higher gain to the both players in a social perspective. To resolve such a dilemma in the game, an incentive model to encourage to confess and a penalty model for being imposed when not confessing are introduced, respectively. Then, the conditions are characterized under which incentive or penalty involved in the game’s payoffs can make the game rational without a dilemma on both the personal and social perspectives, by taking the payoff values as variables with the incentive and penalty factors. Furthermore, it turns out that the resulting values of incentive and penalty are inversely proportional to each other, and thus, obtaining one of these amounts can provide the other. Simple examples are shown to interpret the theoretical verifications of our models, and randomly generated data based simulation results investigate the tendency of incentive and penalty and the resulting game values for a variety of instances. These results can provide a framework on resolving the dilemma by artificially putting incentive or penalty, although it is careful to apply more generalized real world games.
Introduction
User-generated online reviews have become an essential part of consumer decisionmaking process (Mayzlin, Dover, & Chevalier, 2014) affecting product attitudes (Schlosser, 2005), purchase intentions (Ba & Pavlou, 2002), sales (Babić Rosario, Sotgiu, De Vlack, & Bijmolt, 2016), as well as price and quantity of transactions (Berger, Sorensen, & Rasmussen, 2010). For instance, 58% of consumers prefer sites with peer reviews, and nearly all consumers (98%) reported reading peer review before making purchases online (eMarketer, 2010). Given the reach and influence of user-generated content (UGC), it is unsurprising that companies offer numerous incentives such as coupons, rebates, free samples, and monetary payments to encourage user-generated online reviews. In 2012, Tesco, a British multinational grocery and general merchandise retailer, ran a “Share & Earn” scheme where the retailer gave loyalty points to Facebook fans sharing products. Since such reviewers are more like friends than random strangers, how does the review source and incentives affect reviewer trustworthiness and purchase intentions? Would these effects differ across individualistic and collectivistic cultures? Our research examines the cross-cultural differences in the effects of review source and incentives on reviewer trustworthiness and purchase intentions between Americans and Taiwanese.
Review Source and Trustworthiness
Extant research has shown that reviews from friends are usually more persuasive than reviews from strangers (Huang, Zhang, Liu, & Liang, 2014). Dubois et al. (2016) revealed that high levels of interpersonal closeness increased the negativity of reviews shared, whereas low levels of interpersonal closeness increased the positivity of reviews shared. Correspondingly, individuals tend to perceive friendly review sources as being more trustworthy and honest (Ben-Ner & Halldorsson, 2010). The circulation for UGC online reviews on social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram could also make the review source appear like a friend. Since user-generated online reviews appear on the user’s own profile page as well as newsfeeds of each friend connected to that user (Chatterjee, 2011), individuals could easily perceive review sources as friendly and trustworthy. Given that online trust often increases purchase intention (Bart, Shankar, Urban, & Sultan, 2005), we posit that reviews from friends increase reviewer trustworthiness, which, in turn, increase purchase intentions.
Incentives
While online reviews from friends could be deemed as more trustworthy, incentives could muddy the waters. Sterling (2013) showed that over 40% of consumers in a survey reported some level of doubt in the credibility of UGC, fueled by reports of firms posting “fake” positive reviews, deleting negative reviews, or manipulating consumers into making positive statements that might not be a true representation of their options (Mayzlin et al., 2014). Given the level of distrust, the Federal Trade Commission sent out more than 90 letters reminding influencers and marketers that they required to clearly and conspicuously disclose their relationships with brands when promoting or endorsing products on social media (FTC, 2017). Relatedly, in 2012, the UK Advertising Standards Authority ruled that travel website TripAdvisor must cease claiming that it offers “honest, real, or trusted” reviews from “real travelers” since they are unable to assure consumers that all review content was genuine. Even when incentives are disclosed, incentivized reviews are often viewed with suspicion and are discounted as a means of correcting for presumed reviewer bias, even if the reviewer was not biased by the incentive (Du Plessis, Stephen, Bart, & Gonclaves, 2016). Taken together, we argue that incentivized reviews will decrease reviewer trustworthiness, and consequently, purchase intentions.
Cultural Differences
Existing work on the effects of review source and incentives have, at least implicitly, assumed that its effects hold globally and failed to consider individual or cultural moderating factors. In particular, individualistic and collectivistic cultures differ in their perceptions of trust violations: collectivists tend to become less trusting after experiencing a violation from in-group rather than out-group members; individualists’ trust levels are less affected by violations from in-group members (Fulmer, Gelfand, 2010; van Hoorn, 2015). In the context of our research, incentivized reviews could be regarded as trust violation, where reviewers no longer act altruistically to provide honest reviews. Thus, we posit that incentives could moderate the effects that reviews from friends have on perceived trustworthiness, and consequently, purchase intention in collective cultures (i.e. Taiwanese participants). In contrast, we expect to replicate the results of previous research where reviews from friends increases reviewer trustworthiness and purchase intentions; while incentivized reviews decreases reviewer trustworthiness and purchase intentions. Formally, we hypothesize that:
Hypothesis 1a (H1a): Reviews from friends will be considered as more trustworthy than review from strangers amongst American participants.
Hypothesis 1b (H1b): American participants will be more likely to purchase products reviewed by friends than strangers.
Hypothesis 2a (H2a): Amongst American participants, reviewers providing incentivized reviews will be perceived as less trustworthy than reviewers providing non-incentivized reviews.
Hypothesis 2b (H2b): American participants will be less likely to purchase products from incentivized reviews than non-incentivized reviews.
Hypothesis 3a (H3a): Amongst Taiwanese participants, when reviews are not incentivized, reviews from friends will be considered more trustworthy than reviews from strangers. The effect will be attenuated when reviews are incentivized.
Hypothesis 3b (H3b): Taiwanese participants will be more willing to purchase products reviewed by friends than strangers when the reviews are not incentivized. The effect will be attenuated when reviews are incentivized.
Method
Participants and Design
Three hundred and sixteen participants (50% female, 18-85 years old) were recruited on Qualtrics for nominal payment. Half of the participants were American and completed the survey in English while the rest were Taiwanese and completed the survey in Mandarin. A 2 (review source: stranger vs. friend) x 2 (incentive: no incentive vs. incentivized review) x 2 (nationality: USA vs. Taiwan) mixed design was adopted with source and incentive manipulated within-subject and nationality manipulated between-subjects.
Procedure
All participants were instructed to assume that they were travelling to London, and was searching for a hotel to stay for a couple of days. They were then presented with four hotel reviews. Both source and incentive were manipulated within-subjects. Source of the reviews was either a friend or a stranger. Reviews were either not incentivized or incentivized where the reviewer was given discount on their stay for leaving a review. To prevent order effects, the reviews were presented in random order. All reviews were 4 out 5 stars reviews, were generally positive, and were dated at a similar time.
Measures
After every review, participants indicated purchase intention on two items (e.g. “After reading this review, I feel like booking this hotel.”; “If there is a chance, I will book this hotel.”) on a 7-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree)(Kim, Park, & Lee, 2013). Participants also rated how much they trusted the reviewer on a 7-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree) on three items (e.g. “I trust this reviewer to choose a hotel for me.”; “I have confidence in this reviewer.”; “I believe this reviewer is being honest.”) (Smith, Menon, & Sivakumar, 2005). Individualism/collectivism as well as uncertainty avoidance was assessed using a 3-item measure (e.g. “Individuals should stick with the group even through difficulties.”; “It’s important to closely follow instruction and procedures.”) (Yoo, Donthu, & Lenartowicz, 2011) with a 7-point Likert scale (1= strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree)
Results
Outliers were removed using Stem and Leaf plots, leaving 295 participants, 148 Taiwanese participants and 149 American participants (50% female, 18 to 85 years old). Contrary to previous research (Hofstede Insights, 2018), American participants (M = 6.07, SD = 0.96) scored significantly higher on the uncertainty avoidance scale than their Taiwanese counterparts (M = 5.56, SD = 1.01). In addition, American participants (M = 5.00, SD = 1.35) did not score significantly higher on the individualism/collectivism scale than their Taiwanese counterparts (M = 5.08, SD = 1.23). As predicted in Hypothesis 1a, a 2 (review source: stranger vs. friend) x 2 (incentive: no incentive vs. incentivized review) on reviewer trustworthiness revealed a significant main effect of review source, F(1, 146) = 25.34, p =.00, where friends (M = 5.34, SD = 1.19) were significantly more trustworthy than strangers (M = 4.97, SD =1.24) amongst USA participants. In line with H2a, there was also a significant main effect of incentive, where non-incentivized reviews (M = 5.24, SD = 1.21) were considered more trustworthy than incentivized reviews (M = 5.07, SD = 1.22), F(1,146)=6.43, p =.01. There was no significant interaction effect, F <1. Amongst the Taiwanese participants, a 2 (review source: stranger vs. friend) x 2 (incentive: no incentive vs. incentivized review) on reviewer trustworthiness revealed a significant main effect of review source, F(1, 147) = 13.02, p =.00, and incentive, F(1,147)=6.43, p =.01, qualified by the predicted interaction, F(1,147)=3.77, p =.05. Consistent with our predictions (H3a), when reviews were not incentivized, friends (M = 5.41, SD = 1.08) were significantly more trustworthy than strangers (M = 5.15, SD = 1.10), F(1,147)=15.63, p=.00. However, when reviewers were incentivized, friends (M = 5.20, SD = 1.05) were just as trustworthy as strangers (M = 5.09, SD = 1.15, F(1,147) = 1.85, p =.18. As predicted (H1b), amongst USA participants, a 2 (review source: stranger vs. friend) x 2 (incentive: no incentive vs. incentivized review) on purchase intention revealed a significant main effect of review source, F(1, 146) = 4.46, p =.04, where reviews from friends (M = 5.40, SD = 1.20) elicited higher purchase intentions than reviews from strangers (M = 5.27, SD =1.20). Contrary to Hypothesis 2b, there was no main effect of incentive, F(1,146) = 1.34, p =.25, nor interaction, F<1. Amongst Taiwanese participants, a 2 (review source: stranger vs. friend) x 2 (incentive: no incentive vs. incentivized review) on purchase intention revealed a significant main effect of incentive where non-incentivized reviews (M = 5.49, SD = 0.94) elicited greater purchase intentions than incentivized reviews (M = 5.39, SD = 0.98), F(1,147) =3.74, p=.06. There was no main effect of source, F(1,147)= 2.31, p = .13 nor an interaction effect, F(1,147) = 1.81, p =.18. In line with our hypothesis (H3b), planned contrasts revealed that when reviews are not incentivized, friends (M = 5.55, SD = 0.96) elicited significantly higher purchase intention than strangers (M = 5.42, SD = 0.95), F(1,147) = 5.73, p =.01. In contrast, when reviews were incentivized, friends (M = 5.40, SD = 0.94) elicited as much purchase intention as strangers (M = 5.38, SD = 1.02), F<1.
Discussion
Given the ever-important role of user-generated online reviews in consumer decisionmaking, it is necessary to understand how review sources and incentives affects perceptions of trust and purchase intentions, especially across cultures. Our study demonstrates how review sources and incentives affect reviewer trustworthiness and purchase intentions differently across individualistic versus collectivistic cultures. Specifically, review source and incentives affect reviewer trustworthiness independently in Americans. Friends are considered more trustworthy than strangers, and non-incentivized reviews are considered more trustworthy than incentivized reviews. In contrast, the effect of review source on reviewer trustworthiness is moderated by incentive in Taiwanese participants. In particular, friends are considered more trustworthy than stranger only when reviews are not incentivized. When reviews are incentivized, trust seems to be violated, and friends are regarded as just as trustworthy as random strangers. Our contributions to the UGC literature are twofold. To date, research on UGC have largely ignored the role of culture and nationality (as well as individual differences, more broadly) can play. This potentially concerning since the proliferation of UGC are not limited to a Western sample. Our work highlights how culture can complicate findings in the UGC literature, and suggests a need to better consider the role culture plays. In addition, our research specifies the specific mechanism through which culture might influence the effect of review source and incentives affect purchase intention, trustworthiness. Additional studies will be conducted to examine how and why incentives are deemed as trust violations and reduce purchase intentions when accepted by friendly reviewers in collectivist cultures. Moreover, we will attempt to detangle trust in the reviewer versus review.
Introduction A market orientation is a fundamental concept of strategic marketing that reflects a thorough understanding of both customer needs and competition (Narver & Slater, 1990; Kohli & Jaworski, 1990; Salavou et al., 2004). Market orientation as organizational culture increases firms’ interest in providing greater value for its customers, and, consequently enhances business performance (Narver & Slater, 1990). Thus, it is important to understand processes related to development and management of market-oriented culture (Zhou, Gao, Yang, & Zhou, 2005). As practitioners are encountering many difficulties in implementing market orientation in their organizations (Day, 1994; Mason & Harris, 2005), more detailed studies have been called to investigate managerial processes of deploying and developing market-oriented culture (Harris, 2000). Recent studies have found that market orientation can be enhanced by top management emphasis and reward systems (Kirca, Jayachandran, & Bearden, 2005; Kumar, Jones, Venkatesan, & Leone, 2011). However, fewer studies have specifically looked into the remuneration of the management in this setting (Ruekert, 1992), and particularly how the different parts of employee compensation, such as incentive schemes, are structured. Although our understanding of how compensation structure effects on development of market-oriented culture is limited, compensation structures have been studied extensively in finance literature (see Murphy 2012 for an extensive review). The structure of employee incentive schemes may be used to shift personnel’s myopia and risk-taking behavior (Murphy, 1999). Thus, these schemes provide a classic solution to the agency problem between shareholders and management (Jensen & Murphy, 1990) and have been predominantly postulated to be beneficial for the shareholder (Murphy, 1999). The underlying rationale is that the managers perceive risk differently from the shareholders and because of this asymmetry the managers may be hesitant to undertake projects that would be optimal for the shareholder value (Core, Guay, & Larcker, 2003). In this study, our aim is investigate how the structure of the employee incentive schemes affects to the market orientation of the firm. Given that the benefits of market orientation take time to become fully realized, the importance of top management both emphasizing and supporting a market-oriented culture is paramount (Kumar, Jones, Venkatesan, and Leone, 2011). Since developing market orientation is by its nature a long-term and risky investment (Jaworski & Kohli, 1993), and is linked to superior firm performance, we postulate the development of market orientation as an activity that stock-based compensation is meant to promote. Literature review and hypotheses development Market orientation as organizational culture is “the set of beliefs that puts the customer's interest first, while not excluding those of all other stakeholders, such as owners, managers and employees, in order to develop a long term profitable enterprise” (Deshpande Farley, & Webster, 1993, p. 27). As positive relationship between market orientation and business performance has been empirically proven (Huhtala et al., 2013; Deshpande & Webster, 1989; Narver & Slater, 1990), recent studies have focused on investigating possible antecedents of market orientation, such as reward systems (Kirca et al., 2005; Kumar et al., 2011; Sarin & Mahajan, 2001, Wei, Frankwick, & Nguyen, 2012). Studies have found that proper reward systems, such as participation based rewards, may facilitate market orientation (Sarin & Mahajan, 2001; Wei et al., 2012). Development of our hypotheses is based on the understanding that, firstly, market orientation is only acquired through risky and time-consuming projects (Jaworski & Kohli, 1993), and, secondly, stock-based incentive schemes are specifically designed to mitigate risk aversion and myopic investment choice challenges (Murphy, 1999). The benefits of a market orientation take time to realize, and especially management support is needed to instill a market-oriented culture (Kumar et al., 2011). This type of management involvement is also reflected in Jaworski and Kohli's (1993) statement that risk-averse management leads to subordinates being less likely to focus activities that increase overall market orientation. The reward and compensation system is a critical factor as it can either encourage or impede managers’ actions (Hambrick & Snow, 1989), and, therefore, has an impact on market orientation (Wei et al., 2012). We argue that stock-based incentive schemes address the challenges of developing market orientation that has been found in extant literature (see Mason & Harris, 2005). The incentives should both motivate employees to focus more on long-term value creating activities as well as encourage them to overcome their risk aversion. As the market-based incentive systems aim to promote longer-term focus and reduce risk-aversion, which are major factors causing managers’ inertia to develop market orientation. In line with incentive and reward systems literature we propose that: H1(a)/(b): An increase in (a)option/(b)stock incentive schemes' total average value per employee involved increases a firm's market orientation (and its constituent factors) Organizations should provide more bonuses and long-term incentives to high level managers, since decision-makers in the upper echelons can have impact on the organization (Wang, Venezia, & Lou, 2013; Gerhart & Milkovich, 1990; Hambrick & Mason, 1984). We argue that top managers are the priority when designing stock-based compensation and the larger the proportion of employees benefiting from an incentive scheme within a firm is, the better the relevant decision-makers and experts have been incentivized. Thus, we propose: H2(a)/(b): An increase in the proportion of employees benefiting from an (a)option/(b)stock incentive scheme increases a firm's market orientation (and its constituent factors) Data and methods The incentive scheme data was obtained from Alexander Incentives, a remuneration scheme consultancy that administers a broad database of publicly disclosed information on the remuneration and incentives of public and private companies in Finland. We use data from 2008 to 2012 comprising 67 firms. Over this period the average year specific value of an option based incentive scheme was 4.7 million € and corresponding value of a stock based incentive scheme was 7.6 million €. On an average year, an option based scheme comprised 595 grantees and a stock based scheme comprised 317 grantees. Measurement of market orientation was conducted through survey using the questionnaire items developed by Narver and Slater (1990). The survey was conducted in the spring of 2008, 2010 and 2012. The survey was sent to all companies in Finland with more than 5 employees in the previous year resulting 1157, 1134, and 952 completed answers, respectively. The respective firm-level response rates were 16%, 10% and 9%. However, in this study, we are investigating only the companies that were publicly listed at the time of conducting the survey and who have disclosed personnel incentives. Such companies answering the survey totaled 55 firms in year 2008, 39 in 2010, and 28 in 2012. The final sample consisted of firms that responded to the survey in one or more years and from which we were able to obtain incentive scheme data. The sample comprises 122 firm-years collected from 65 unique firms (n = 122). The items measuring market orientation were evaluated with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using SPSS AMOS version 21.0. The latent variables measuring the dimensions of market orientation (customer orientation, competitor orientation, and interfunctional coordination) were included in a single second-order CFA model. Following suggested guidance for the model fit index thresholds (Bagozzi & Yi, 2012; Bentler, 1990), the second-order CFA model shows a good fit (χ2 = 58.08, df = 24, χ2/df = 2.42, RMSEA = .10, SRMR = .047, NNFI = .94, and CFI = .96). All items loaded significantly on their respective second-order (standardized loadings ranged between .90 and .95) and first-order latent constructs (standardized loadings ranged between .68 and .96), indicating convergent validities. All model maximum likelihood estimates were found to have statistically significant critical ratio values. We conclude that the tests proved the factorial validity of the second-order CFA model. Additional financial data was used to formulate control variables and was obtained from Worldscope and Datastream. We are using annual and quarterly financial statements data to control the size of the companies and the volatility of the environment. Stock market data were used to control the riskiness of the firms. We are controlling for the size of the firm with the logarithm of the total assets. To control for the environment, we are using the volatility of the quarterly revenues within a year. We also use the monthly volatility of the stock market performance to control for the investors’ perceptions of riskiness. Detailed descriptive statistics of the sample are available upon request. Results The impact of the employee stock-based incentives on the market orientation of the firm was investigated using multiple regression analysis. We used the market orientation as the dependent variable. As the independent we used the value of the incentive scheme (option and stock based) per grantee and the percentage of total employees who were grantees. Total assets, quarterly revenue volatility, and monthly stock returns volatility were control variables. The variable for market orientation significantly correlated with option scheme value (p < .10), presenting a low correlation of -.17. Quarterly sales volatility significantly correlated with monthly stock return volatility at -.21 (p < .05). Other correlations were found statistically insignificant and ranged between -.14 and .23. Table 1 reports the regression results predicting market orientation. Models 2 and 4 test Hypotheses 1(a) and 2(a). Models 3 and 4 test Hypotheses 1(b) and 2(b). All Models 1 through 4 were found statistically significant based on the F-statistic (p < .01). Hypothesis 1(a) proposed increase in option incentive scheme’s total average value per employee predicts increase in a firm's market orientation. As indicated in Model 2 and 4, there is no strong support for the hypothesis. Although the coefficient for option scheme value is significant (p < .10), the coefficient is negative instead of being positive as was hypothesized. Hypothesis 2(a) postulated the option scheme coverage to have a positive impact on the market orientation of the firm. The coefficient in both Models 2 and 4 was positive, however not significant. Thus, the Hypothesis 2(a) is clearly rejected.
Antitrust deals with the competitive consequences of conduct by firms in the market. Marketing places emphasis on understanding how firms compete from individual perspective; by studying the thinking and motivations of managers and purchase preferences of consumers. As an academic discipline marketing aims to describe and predict the performance of companies engaged in exchange to reach organizational goals (Gundlach, Phillips, & Desrochers, 2002). For antitrust, the complementary nature of marketing's constitutes in providing a basis for understanding the nature of competitive conduct and the welfare of consumers. The influence of antitrust on marketing strategy raises many concerns. There is a strand of literature investigating how the antitrust law perceives different marketing activities. Many common marketing practices are coming under greater scrutiny from regulators, antitrust lawyers and scholars. It is essential for companies to understand how that will affect competition. When considering marketing issues such as distribution policy, product line extension, enhancing the company’s positive image, they may not realize the increasing likelihood of violating antitrust laws (Bush & Gelb, 2005). Brodley (1982) analyzes how joint ventures may threaten competition by falsifying competitive incentives among joint venture participants. He describes various incentive-modifying remedies that mitigate anticompetitive risks, and then applies this presumptive approach to various types of joint ventures. Some papers analyze how antimonopoly decisions can influence management of transaction. Joskow (2002) shows the importance of the application of transaction cost economics (TCE) to antitrust legal rules and antitrust remedies specification because it may result in different legal rules comparing to cases ignoring TCE ideas. He emphasizes that antitrust legal rules must be sensitive to the information and analytical capabilities of institutions in the market, the characteristics of potential anticompetitive behavior, market structures etc. Not only the development of marketing practices challenges antitrust enforcement. Antitrust policy can impose significant and long-lasting restrictions on marketing policies of companies, including pricing decisions. One relevant for Russia example is pricing antitrust remedies under the merger deals clearance or investigations on the abuse of dominance. In order to prevent abuse in a form of excessive price antitrust authorities set ‘soft price cap’ on the domestic market price using different benchmarks including quotes in the world commodity markets, price of export contracts, price of export contracts net of transport cost and custom duties, best (lowest) price of export contract etc. This type of remedies is already applied for chemicals, electric steel, cocking coal, aluminum and other commodities. Reform of tariff regulation in Russia takes this path also: from the next year price cap for natural gas for industrial customers will be set at the level of contract price of the largest supplier Gazprom net of transport cost. We argue that this type of remedies being imposed in order to protect customers of dominant company can diminish incentives to compete, along with the restricting incentives for an efficiency-improvement. This paper investigates how soft price regulation affects companies` behavior. In many regulated industries over the world price cap as a method of price regulation replaces cost-plus pricing. It is a kind of incentive regulation introduced in order to enhance productive efficiency by strengthening sellers’ incentives for cost reduction (Laffont, 1993; Cabral & Riordan, 1989) as well as incentives for more efficient pricing. A price-cap regulation might be suggested to address the market by making it extremely difficult for the industry to use price as a marketing strategy and by reducing the available sources the industry has for spending on marketing and lobbying. However pricing under cap is not neutral for competition in the market. We argue that the impact of price cap regulation on market competition depends on the design of cap. More specifically if cap for one (regulated) market depends on the price of the supplier in other (non-regulated) market, there is sub-type of price cap regulation (known in Russian tariff regulation as ‘netback minus’) that enhance incentives to collude in non-regulated market. Traditionally impact of price caps on collusion is analyzed in the framework of focal point problem. Price ceilings might weaken competition serving as collusive focal points for pricing decisions (Schelling, 1960; Scherer & Ross, 1990). According to the Folk Theorem (Tirole, 1988) any individually rational prices can occur as a Nash equilibrium in infinitely repeated games with sufficiently high discount factor. In collusive equilibrium, companies face a coordination problem so that price ceilings may become a focal point on which companies may coordinate. It means that price ceilings may facilitate tacit collusion, increase its stability and lead to higher prices on the market. In addition, price ceilings may become a signal that if firms charge prices below that level than they would not be investigated for collusion by government authorities. Thus, it becomes less risky to maintain collusion at price level that government assess as binding. There is a strand of literature providing the empirical evidence for a collusive focal-point effect of price ceilings in different markets. Knittel and Stango (2003), studying data on state-level price ceilings on credit card charges during the 1980s, find that companies used state-level price ceilings as focal points to sustain tacit collusion. Ma (2007) investigates price ceilings in Taiwan’s flour market and argues that firms set prices above competitive levels during most of the regulation period. Moreover, all flour firms set their prices equal to ceilings. Some studies try to explain the existence of asymmetric retail price adjustments to crude oil price or wholesale price shocks by market power and possible collusion effects (Deltas, 2008; Borenstein, Cameron, & Gilbert, 1997). Sen, Clemente and Jonker (2011) evaluating the effects of price ceiling on retail gasoline prices in Eastern Canada 1999-2007 find the evidence that the enactment of such regulation is significantly correlated with higher prices. A potential explanation is that price ceilings serve as focal points stimulating firms to set higher prices. In contrast, laboratory experiments do not find a collusive focal-point effect of price ceilings. Coursey and Smith (1983) find convergence to the competitive equilibrium prices and no collusive effects of price ceilings in posted-offer markets. Despite in the design of Coursey and Smith (1983) the incentives to collude are small, Engelmann and Normann (2009) also find the evidence against the focal-point hypothesis, who study posted-offer markets with four symmetric sellers but larger incentives for collusion at the price ceiling. Finally, Engelmann and Muller (2011) results again fail to support the focal-point hypothesis. Collusion is as unlikely in markets with a price ceiling as in markets with unconstrained pricing. The possible explanation for different results in the laboratory and in the field is the lack of the focal-point effect in the field. The field results might be driven by other factors. These might include explicit collusion (which might either be triggered by the introduction of the price ceiling or might be easier to keep up in its presence) or other reasons that the empirical studies failed to control for (Engelmann & Muller, 2011). However the design of our research differs from ‘focal point’ approach. It is much closer to the literature on the multimarket contacts (Bernheim & Whinston, 1990; Spagnolo, 1999). Multimarket contacts was also analyzed in the context of multimarket rivalry (Phillips & Mason, 1996) but not from the point of view of cap design as we do. The goal of this paper is to show the mechanism by means of which the establishment of the domestic regulated prices ceiling can promote the stability of collusion and conditions at which it occurs. Intuition of the paper is the following. Under price cap which depends on price in deregulated market deviation from collusion in this market decreases profit in regulated market (in the punishment phase). In the model we think about regulated market as domestic and about completely deregulated market as world market. Under certain conditions the establishment of a price ceiling of domestic market by the principle "price would not excess of the world price" can promote the collusion stability in the world market. We argue that there is an unexpected ratio between the principle of the internal price establishment based on a world indicative and collusion incentives: the difference between the world and internal price to which the regulator aspires is higher, the negative impact of this practice on the competition is higher. Not all the versions of price cap which are based on the world market benchmark provide the same impact on the incentive to collude. Other important variables which reflect transport cost (or more generally all cost of trade). Price cup under model ‘world price plus trade (transport) cost’ provides no impact on the incentives to collude under some level of trade (transport) cost. Price cap under model ‘world price minus trade (transport) cost’ supports the collusion to the greatest extent. This paper represents an interesting focus for the marketing field. The price cap for domestic customer influences companies` incentives to collude in the world markets. Thus, marketing needs to recognize the incentives for cooperative behavior as a strategic marketing tool under soft price cap. Important implication is that pricing remedies imposed on Russian exporting companies will affect prices for the customers of their international competitors.
This paper study is to identify the effect of quality certification incentives regulations to a firm. The pur purpose of this study is to propose the right way of improvement and policy by conduct research for quality certification incentives regulations, which applied by public procurement service for office furniture. For more accuracy, this study analyze the result of questionnaire, visiting, telephone survey conducted by office furniture manufacturer those are registered in MAS (Multiple Award Schedule System)
국내 기업들이 임금 유연성을 확보하고 경쟁을 통한 종업원의 역량강화를 통한 기업성과의 향상을 기대하며 성과급제를 도입하였으나 그 도입 추세는 점차 하락하는 양상을 보이고 있다. 성과급제가 기업성과에 미치는 영향에 대한 연구는 국내외에서 이루어졌다. 그러나 기업 마다 성과급을 구성할 때 그 적용 수준이 다르다는 점에서 성과급 적용 수준에 따라 차별적인 효과에 대한 연구는 아직 드물다. 특히 한국의 집단주의 문화를 고려할 때 집단 성과급과 개인 성과급이 기업성과에 미치는 영향에 차이가 있을 것으로 예상된다. 본 연구는 성과급을 개인, 팀, 사업부, 전사의 네 가지 지급수준으로 구분하여 각 성과급 적용 수준이 기업성과에 미치는 차별적인 영향을 분석하였다. 실증분석 결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 차등지급 성과급시행여부는 종업원 1인당 부가가치, 매출액 성장율, ROA의 기업성과에 모두 긍정적인 영향을 주었다. 둘째, 차등지급성과급의 비중이 높을수록 매출액 증가율과 ROA는 높아졌으나 종업원 1인당 부가 가치에는 유의미한 관계가 나타나지 않았다. 셋째, 집단성과급비율이 높을수록 매출액 증가율과 ROA가 높아졌다. 넷째, 성과급수준에 따라서는 사업부성과급비율은 매출액 증가율에 긍정적인 영향을 미쳤으며 전사성과급비율은 제한적으로 정(+)의 관계에 있었다. ROA는 전사성과급비율과 유의한 정(+)의 관계에 있었으며 종업원 1인당 부가가치는 성과급수준에 따른 차이가 없었다. 이러한 분석 결과는 집단성과급비율이 기업성과를 향상시키는 요인이라는 점에서 한국의 집단주의 성향이 고려되어야 함을 보여준다. 또한 기업은 목표로 하는 기업 성과 지표에 따라 적용 수준에 따른 성과급비율을 차별적으로 구성해야 한다는 시사점을 제시한다.
Agricultural corporations have been introduced to increase the productivity of farming via entrepreneurial farm management. There are two main subgroups of agricultural corporations. One is composed of farming association corporations and the other consists of agricultural corporation companies. Major tax incentives for agricultural corporations are as follows:
1. Exemption of corporate income tax.
2. Exemption of capital gains tax for farmland investment.
3. Reduction and exemption of dividend income tax for investors.