Knowledge at Wharton

The emergence of China and India figured prominently at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos last month. In India’s case however another factor also was at work. Determined not to be overshadowed Indian business and government leaders spent some two years and $4 million planning an elaborate branding campaign to ensure that the ”India story” got prominent play and did not get lost amid the chatter at Davos. How does a country go about building its brand though such PR campaigns? And how can outcomes be measured to see if the campaign worked? Wharton professors who were at Davos and Indian business and government leaders say that while India’s campaign at the summit was impressive the country will now have to walk the talk on infrastructure investments and policy reforms if it wants to retain its credibility. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cell phones that do email take photos and surf the web. Cars with options ranging from built-in satellite radio to rain-sensing wiper blades. While a seemingly endless variety of new products may delight consumers it makes inventory management as dicey as predicting what a teenager will want for her birthday next year. The problem say Wharton professor Serguei Netessine and Wharton doctoral student Serguei Roumiantsev is that no one knows how to measure the quality of supply chain management using companies’ publicly available financial data. In a recent paper entitled ”Should Inventory Policy Be Lean or Responsive? Evidence for U.S. Public Companies ” the two researchers provide ”a statistical methodology that links managerial decisions related to inventory with accounting returns.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos last month the extraordinary optimism of Asian -- especially Chinese and Indian -- leaders held center stage. For Michael Useem director of Wharton’s Center for Leadership and Change it all felt very déjà vu: In the late 1990s a similarly exuberant spirit surrounded American business leaders. But the hubris of unbounded optimism can be dangerous warns Useem who spoke in three Forum sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The disclosure that author James Frey lied in his best-selling book A Million Little Pieces and the furor that followed raise numerous questions about truth in advertising trust between sellers and buyers brand image and reputation as well as two themes that Frey himself focused on in his now-discredited memoir of recovery from substance abuse -- suffering and redemption. How widespread is deception when is stretching the truth acceptable how jaded are consumers towards the claims made by advertisers and how credible was Oprah’s response to the Frey incident? Wharton experts offer their views on truth and fiction. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Apple’s iPod again ruled beneath the Christmas tree in 2005 after the latest model of the iconic music player was outfitted with a video screen. And as the new year begins a long-anticipated era of convergence in consumer technology products draws closer according to Wharton faculty and technology analysts. Meanwhile cell phones that play video e-mail delivered to handheld computers telephone conversations over the PC -- and hundreds of other glimpses into Christmas future -- were on display at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week where the stepped-up presence of digital giants including Microsoft Google Yahoo and Intel signaled their ever-increasing interest in expanding from the office into consumers’ living rooms. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Compensation for American CEOs has soared over the past decade far exceeding inflation and wage gains of ordinary workers -- and leading critics to charge that self-serving insiders have tilted the playing field at shareholders’ expense. In response the Securities and Exchange Commission on January 17 took the first step toward adopting rules to better show shareholders how much their top executives and directors are paid. Will that drive executive pay down? Probably not say several Wharton professors arguing that executive pay is not necessarily as excessive as the most extreme cases suggest. Still they agree that more complete disclosure would improve the system. As one expert puts it: ”When people are forced to undress in public they pay attention to their figures.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Walt Disney announced yesterday that it is acquiring Pixar the animated film studio that has made such hits as The Incredibles Finding Nemo and Toy Story. As part of the $7.4 billion deal Pixar’s founder Steve Jobs will become a Disney board member and also its biggest shareholder. In an audio-only interview Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader speaks with Mukul Pandya editor-in-chief of Knowledge at Wharton and Robbie Shell editorial director about the implications of this deal not just for the two companies involved but for the whole media and entertainment industry. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Big media players are accustomed to watching the ratings for the most popular music video and book content but perhaps they should pay more attention to how consumers feel about three letters at the bottom of most charts -- DRM which stands for digital rights management. Broadly defined DRM encompasses multiple technologies that control the use of software music movies or any other piece of digital content. But media companies are risking a consumer backlash by deploying overzealous systems with draconian restrictions say experts at Wharton who also question whether DRM is worth the effort whether it will survive and what the best approach is for balancing the rights of consumers with the rights of content creators. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

IBM. Verizon. Sears. Hewlett-Packard. Motorola. The list of corporations that have put a halt to guaranteed pension plans comes as a jolt to Baby Boom employees entering what they thought would be their peak pension-building years. At the same time new accounting rules and Congressional legislation are being drafted to close the U.S. pension-funding gap now estimated at $450 billion. While some proposals under discussion could make it easier for companies to discontinue defined-benefit plans others would create incentives to support defined-contribution programs such as 401(k) plans according to Wharton faculty and pension experts. Amid all this flux they add one thing seems certain: Pension plans have become risky business. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Would you like to go on an Internet auction site and know how much to bid for a certain item -- and also know that you didn’t overpay for that item? How about when you sell an item in an online auction: Would you like to know what price to set that ensures you don’t leave money on the online table? Wharton marketing and statistics professor Eric T. Bradlow can’t provide specific answers. But he does offer guidance on the behavior of potential buyers in a new study entitled ”An Integrated Model for Bidding Behavior in Internet Auctions: Whether Who When and How Much ” recently published in the Journal of Marketing Research. Bradlow co-authored the study with Cornell marketing professor Young-Hoon Park. ”To the best of our knowledge this is the first attempt to model formally the behavioral aspects of bidding behavior for the entire sequence of bids in Internet auctions ” the authors write. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.