Knowledge at Wharton

As baby boomers retire and start spending their nest eggs they will need new financial products to make their money last according to speakers at a recent Wharton Impact Conference titled ”Managing Retirement Payouts: Positioning Investing and Spending Assets.” The conference explored emerging patterns in spending during retirement and debated new ideas to help retirees manage their finances after leaving the workforce. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Think of them as the ”walking dead ” a type of customer who currently maintains service with a particular company but whose next action will most likely be to discontinue that relationship according to a new study that examines how the customers of a telecommunications firm acquire and discard services over time. The paper -- ”Modeling the Evolution of Customers’ Service Portfolios ” by Wharton marketing professors Peter Fader and Eric Bradlow and a former Wharton PhD student -- focuses in part on whether it is possible to predict future purchasing patterns by looking at past buying behavior. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It seemed only right that James Watson who co-discovered the structure of DNA with Francis Crick and Rosalind Franklin was the first to receive a DVD holding the sequence of his own DNA produced by 454 Life Sciences a division of the Swiss drug giant Roche and academic researchers. While DNA mapping technology under development at Roche and other companies has the potential to bring the long-awaited era of personalized medicine closer there are enormous ethical legal and investment hurdles to building successful business models based on decoding an individual’s DNA according to Wharton faculty and executives in the industry. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In April Rupert Murdoch made a $5 billion offer to buy Dow Jones and Co. which publishes the Wall Street Journal and also owns Dow Jones Newswires and Marketwatch.com. The Bancroft family majority owners of Dow Jones initially rejected the offer but came back several weeks ago to say it would consider it along with offers from any other groups. Murdoch’s move has dismayed some Journal staffers who worry that the paper’s editorial quality and objectivity will suffer. Murdoch though seems to have more in mind for this acquisition than just getting control of the Journal. Knowledge at Wharton has asked Wharton management professor Larry Hrebiniak and Joseph Turow professor of communication at the Annenberg School for their thoughts on this possible deal. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Earlier this month Cerberus Capital Management bought 80.1% of Chrysler Group from German auto maker Daimler-Chrysler effectively ending a nine-year marriage between the two that never quite worked out. The expectations created by this acquisition are huge and revolve in part around Cerberus’s ability to make a deal with the United Auto Workers union that would include restructuring billions of dollars of retirement and health-care benefits -- a burden that both Ford and GM -- but not Toyota -- also carry. We asked Wharton management professor John Paul MacDuffie co-director of the International Motor Vehicle Program to give his views about Chrysler Cerberus high gas prices and other auto-related issues. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dana Gioia (pronounced Joy-a) claims to be the only person in history who went to business school to be a poet. Having earned a degree from Stanford’s graduate school of business he worked 15 years in corporate life eventually becoming vice president of General Foods. In 1991 Gioia wrote an influential collection of essays titled ”Can Poetry Matter?” in which he explored among other themes the nexus between business and poetry. Since 2002 he has been chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts where he has overseen programs aimed at making Shakespeare and poetry recitation more popular in the U.S. Gioia who is a speaker at the Wharton Leadership Conference in Philadelphia on June 7 talked about these ideas with management professor Michael Useem and Knowledge at Wharton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

According to estimates micro and small businesses contribute almost 50% of South Africa’s total employment and 30% of its gross domestic product. Until recently however the impact of poor health and in particular HIV/AIDS on these enterprises -- ranging in size from single owner-workers to companies with 100 employees -- has been largely overlooked by researchers. A new study by Li-Wei Chao from the University of Pennsylvania’s Population Studies Center Mark V. Pauly Wharton professor of health care systems and others examines how owner health determines the fate of small businesses in South Africa and impacts the larger economy as well. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

”The U.S. pursues securities law violations with a regulatory intensity unmatched elsewhere in the world ” according to John C. Coffee Jr. director of the Center on Corporate Governance at Columbia University Law School. At a recent Wharton Impact Conference on international corporate governance Coffee said that although securities law enforcement can lower the cost of capital it may deter some foreign firms from cross-listing in U.S. markets. Still he argues strong enforcement is critical for creating good governance and adding value to corporations and investors stand to gain from it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Microsoft buys aQuantive; Google acquires DoubleClick for $3.1 billion; Yahoo purchases the 80% of Right Media it doesn’t already own and ad firm WPP gets 24/7 Real Media for $649 million. And that’s just in the last six weeks. The common thread: All the takeover targets are online advertising companies. The race to consolidate the online advertising industry is heating up at the same time that advertisers are demanding more return on their marketing dollars. Wharton professors and others analyze how this will play out for tech companies ad companies and consumers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Some shoppers just can’t help themselves and buy mostly on impulse without regard to price. Others are die-hard bargain hunters who only open their wallets for a discount. Then there are the strategic consumers who are willing to buy full-price sometimes but at other times they will wait for a bargain. According to new research by Gérard P. Cachon professor of operations and information management at Wharton and doctoral student Robert Swinney it’s these customers that retailers need to focus on in order to reap the full benefits of lean retail inventory management and variable pricing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.