Companies seek local influencers to pitch products. Even though most influencers amass geographically dispersed followings on social media, companies are willing to funnel billions of sponsorship dollars to multiple influencers located in different geographic areas, effectively creating sponsorships that span cities, countries, and in some cases even, the globe. The desire to work with local influencers has spawned advertising agencies that specialize in connecting companies with influencers and may soon redefine the influencer economy.

This trend has merit, our research team finds. In a new Journal of Marketing study, we show a positive link between online influence and how geographically close an influencer’s followers are located. The nearer a follower is geographically to someone who posts an online recommendation, the more likely she is to follow that recommendation.

To investigate whether geographical distance still matters when word of mouth is disseminated online, our research team examined thousands of actual purchases made on Twitter. We found the likelihood that people who saw a Tweet mentioning someone they follow bought a product would subsequently also buy the product increases the closer they reside to the purchaser. Not only were followers significantly associated with a higher likelihood to heed an influencer’s recommendation the closer they physically resided to the influencer, the more quickly they were to do so, too.

We find that this role of geographic proximity in the effectiveness of online influence occurs across several known retailers and for different types of products, including video game consoles, electronics and sports equipment, gift cards, jewelry, and handbags. We show the results hold even when using different ways to statistically measure the effects, including state-of-the-art machine learning and deep learning techniques on millions of Twitter messages.

We posit that this role of geographic proximity may be due to an invisible connection between people that is rooted in the commonality of place. This invisible link can lead people to identify more closely with someone who is located nearby, even if they do not personally know that person. The result is that people are more likely to follow someone’s online recommendation when they live closer to them. These online recommendations can take any form, from a movie review to a restaurant rating to a product pitch.

What makes these findings surprising is that experts predicted the opposite effect when the internet first became widely adopted. Experts declared the death of distance. In theory, this makes sense: people don’t need to meet in person to share their opinions, reviews, and purchases when they can do so electronically. What the experts who envisioned the end of geography may have overlooked, however, is how people decide whose online opinion to trust. This is where cues that indicate a person’s identity, such as where that person lives in the real world, come into play.

We may be more likely to trust the online opinion from someone who lives in the same city as us than from someone who lives farther away, simply because we have location in common. Known as the social identity theory, this process explains how individuals form perceptions of belonging to and relating to a community. Who we identify with can affect the degree to which we are influenced, even when this influence occurs online.

Our findings imply that technology and electronic communications do not completely overcome the forces that govern influence in the real world. Geographical proximity still matters, even in the digital space. The findings also suggest that information and cues about an individual’s identity online, such as where he/she lives, may affect his/her influence on others through the extent to which others feel they can relate to him/her.

These findings on how spatial proximity may still be a tie that binds even in an online world affirm what some companies have long suspected. Local influencers may have a leg up in the influence game and are worth their weight in location. For these reasons, companies may want to work with influencers who have more proximal connections to increase the persuasiveness of their online advertising, product recommendation, and referral programs. Government officials and not-for-profit organizations may similarly want to partner with local ambassadors to more effectively raise awareness of—and change attitudes and behaviors towards—important social issues.

Read the full article.

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Students and professors with Emory’s Marketing Analytics Center made a mark at the 2018 American Marketing Association Winter Academic Conference in New Orleans.

Doctoral students Suh Yeon Kim and Zhe Han presented their research at the conference.

Kim discussed her research on competition and star power in which she looks at the consumer demand effects of star power. Investigating the generation process of star power, she found competition increases star power, which in turn can drive market demand.

Han presented research on gamification, which is the use of game-design elements and principles in nongame contexts to boost customer engagement. His research draws on the loyalty program literature to explain how consumer success in gamification programs is usually probabilistic.

Han teamed up with Associate Professor of Marketing Mike Lewis and Assistant Professor of Marketing Michelle Andrews for the gamification research paper and were all awarded a best track paper award for their work by the American Marketing Association.

Lewis, Andrews and Assistant Professor of Marketing Inyoung Chae also presented at the conference.

Lewis participated in a symposium geared toward helping doctoral students. He discussed how to generate ideas into projects and how to know whether an idea makes a contribution to the field.

Andrews discussed mobile ad bidding and how price information in search ads affects ad performance.

In Andrews’ mobile session on the effectiveness of search ads on mobile devices, she discussed the pivotal role of device migration in online purchases. For example, consumers often start their shopping journey on a smartphone before moving to a desktop. Because of this, she investigates the effect of search ads on mobile devices.

Andrews’ research on search ads involves field experiments with a European e-retailer and suggests that including product price in ads drives ad performance by decreasing clicks but increasing conversions.

Chae’s research focused on how user-generated content, such as consumer reviews, social media content and blogs, affects website traffic. Chae has done extensive research on how powerful user-generated content can increase sales, perception and online traffic.

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For analytical sleuths like Michael Lewis, associate professor of marketing, and Michelle Andrews, assistant professor of marketing, the impact of branding is everywhere, from major league teams to politics.

In a recent conversation, the duo discussed academics, sports, and the future of marketing.

EB: Analytics is a hot topic and Goizueta even has a new master’s in business analytics program. Has analytics replaced old-fashioned marketing techniques like focus groups?

Andrews: There is a difference between attitude and behavior. A focus group is about intent or how people feel, but analytics really captures behavior. Are you physically present? Did you actually buy tickets? This gives a better picture of what actually occurs.

Lewis: That’s a good way to look at it. Analytics is evolving. “Big data” is a buzz word that did not mean a lot seven or eight years ago. Now we are hitting a second or third generation of analytics, and the reality is companies really need to do both. Companies need to use the traditional techniques like a focus group to talk to customers and then back it up by actually seeing what’s happening in terms of the data.

EB: Speaking of analytics, tell us more about the Emory Marketing Analytics Center (MAC).

Lewis: In the past, Emory MAC has put on conferences, started to build bridges to the local business community, and offered student-level options, like applied class projects. One of the reasons Michelle joined us is to help take the analytics center to the next level. She has expertise in working with companies on field experiments, which is a great addition to our services.

EB: Michelle, would you talk a little bit about field experiments with companies and what they entail?

Andrews: A lot of begging. I say that honestly. We are interested in publishing insights we gather in the field. However, companies are very competitive. They are not very open to someone who they consider works only on theory. Also, they are concerned that information will be released and their competitors will find out. Since my research is in mobile marketing, I ask how firms can deliver better mobile messages. I look at factors that affect people’s likelihood of responding, such as where they are, the time of day, and what’s going on around them when they receive the message.

Lewis: Can I take this in a different direction? Michelle used the word begging to describe how academics interface with the business community, and this does happen a lot. Companies have an agenda: they are driving revenue and trying to launch new products, and the thought of exploring ideas is not top of mind for them. One of the things we really emphasize in analytics is the need to go beyond the traditional academic approach of “let’s explore this theory” to “here’s a theory that is dead-on relevant to what a company is going to do.” When we develop these partnerships with businesses, we are offering them information with immediate impact. I see our role as the long-term R&D arm for companies that partner with us.

EB: Would you give us an example?

Andrews: A recent project involved how crowds may make people more responsive to mobile ads. My colleagues and I recently approached a mobile marketing company and said, “We think that when people are in crowded situations, they tend to deal with anxiety by looking at mobile phones. If you capture people when they are in crowds, this would be a perfect time to try to send them a message.” We ran an experiment in an underground subway system of a large city that was mobile equipped, where you could actually use your cell phone while riding the subway, and found that people were more likely to respond to an incoming message from a marketer when the train was crowded than when it was not.

EB: So is companies’ ability to target mobile users the holy grail of marketing?

Andrews: I don’t think mobile is the endgame. As consumers, we have technology in our cars, we wear smartwatches and Fitbits, and many people are comfortable moving across devices throughout the day. The next step for marketers is not to have a strategy for a single device, but a strategy for the consumer.

Lewis: I will go a bit more old school. This idea that the mobile phone is something fundamentally different, I don’t buy that. When grocery stores began scanning products and adding loyalty cards, that was considered revolutionary. From there we went to e-commerce to track all the clicks. And now we have mobile. What we see over time is a continual growth in the amount of data that companies potentially have access to with customers. The real black box becomes, “How do I use this massive amount of data?”

EB: Coming back to the business school, would you talk about your teaching methods and what classes you teach?

Andrews: I teach the core, which is the first class students take if they major in marketing. It covers marketing principles, and I use cases and lectures.

Lewis: In the last couple of years, I’ve focused on teaching sports marketing classes here at Emory. The course has evolved into a guest-heavy format, so in a given semester I might bring in 10 people from the local business community who range from the president of the Atlanta Hawks, to former NFL players, to the GM of the local Atlanta professional disc team. My job becomes knitting all of these stories together to tell a big-picture story about marketing.

EB: On a personal note, when you’re not working, what are your outside interests?

Andrews: Mike, do you want to talk about your knitting hobby? Or is it crochet? I keep forgetting.

Lewis: In addition to her encyclopedic knowledge of women’s sports, Michelle is a beer lover.

Andrews: My favorite beer right now is a sour beer called Duchesse De Bourgogne.

EB: And you Mike?

Lewis: I’ve got four kids plus two Great Pyrenees dogs and two cats—that is the extent of my hobbies!

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Managing style and product design

Mobile phones look very different now than they did ten years ago. With access to all of the design patents available from the US Patent & Trademark Office (including ones from products in the telecommunications industry), Tian Heong Chan, assistant professor of information systems & operations management, and coauthors Jürgen Mihm (INSEAD) and Manuel E. Sosa (INSEAD) show how one can cluster them according to their visual similarities. The process results in an evolutionary timeline charting the successive styles of mobile phones from “clamshell” to “touchscreen slate” and everything in between. This approach creates a novel data platform from which researchers can start testing hypotheses about how product forms evolve. With the data, the authors show that there is increasing turbulence (or unpredictability in the change in product forms) across all product categories. In other words, it is much harder now than in the past to predict what the next hot style will be based on current trends. This is especially salient in non-tech categories, such as furniture and fashion. The authors conclude that companies with the capability to manage this increasing uncertainty will have a significant competitive advantage in the future. Management Science (2017)

Relational signaling and gift giving

Prior research indicates that gift givers are motivated by competing goals. Often, they will simply select an item of the recipient’s choosing. However, gift givers are also likely to select an item on their own to help show knowledge of the recipient and further define and maintain a personal connection. Morgan Ward, assistant professor of marketing, and coauthor Susan Broniarczyk (U Texas) take the research a step further by analyzing how the closeness of a relationship further impacts the gift-giving decision when a gift registry is readily available. The duo employed five separate studies with human subjects presented with various gift-giving scenarios. The paper notes, “We find that despite their stated primary intention to please recipients, close (vs. distant) givers ultimately are more likely to ignore recipients’ explicit registry preferences in favor of freely chosen gifts.” Ward and Broniarczyk conclude that divergence from the registry was not necessarily about finding a better gift. Instead, it occurred only when givers specifically received attribution for their selection. The closeness of the personal connection resulted in a “perceptual distortion of the gift options in favor of relational-signaling gifts.” Distant givers were much more likely to pick an item from the registry, selecting gifts closely aligned with recipients’ preferences. Journal of Marketing Research (2016)

The link between corporate alliances and returns

Strategic alliances are agreements between two or more firms to pursue a set of agreed upon objectives while remaining independent organizations. Alliances are formed for a number of reasons, including licensing, marketing or distribution, development or research, technology transfer or systems integration, or some combination of the above. Tarun Chordia, R. Howard Dobbs professor of finance, and coauthors Jie Cao (Chinese U of Hong Kong) and Chen Lin (U Hong Kong) find evidence of return predictability across alliance partners. If the alliance partner or partners have high (or low) returns this month, then the firm has high (or low) returns over the next two months. Using a sample of alliances over the period 1985 to 2012, the authors find that a long-short portfolio sorted on lagged one-month returns of strategic alliance partners provides a return of over 85 basis points per month. This long-short portfolio return is robust to a number of specifications, including different adjustments for risk, controlling for different proxies for cross-autocorrelations, and excluding partnerships with customer-supplier relationships, as well as controls for industry returns. They theorize, “If investors are fully aware of the impact of strategic alliances on returns and pay attention to the firm-partner links, then the stock price of a firm should quickly adjust to price changes of its partners’ stocks.” The evidence suggests that investor inattention may be the source of a firm’s underreaction to its partners’ returns. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis (2016)

Understanding the influence of mobile promotions

Michelle Andrews, assistant professor of marketing, and coauthors Jody Goehring (RetailMeNot), Sam Hui (U Houston), Joseph Pancras (U Conn), and Lance Thornswood (JCPenney) cull together divergent streams of research to provide a framework to better understand how mobile promotions influence the in-store shopping behavior of consumers. Online promotions allow merchants to reach shoppers easier and faster, enabling traditional stores to text out online discounts or highlight specific products. Merchants can also use geolocation on mobile phones to text and target shoppers once inside of their store to feature merchandise or advertise a special offer. The authors identify a number of key areas for additional research to “enable long-term, value enhancing relationships between consumers and marketers.” For instance, they note the need for a better understanding of the role of privacy concerns on personal data collection via mobile devices. Andrews and coauthors also find that a deeper investigation of such things as return on investment, loyalty programs, upselling, proximity to purchase, and global promotions are required to get a true sense of the effectiveness of mobile promotions. Journal of Interactive Marketing (2016)

Significance of pricing and product-line strategies

In new research, Ramnath Chellappa, associate professor of information systems & operations management, and coauthor Amit Mehra (U Texas) investigate the business practice of IT “versioning,” whereby a company creates different models of a product in order to charge varying prices for each one. Much research takes into account economies of scale and a company’s marginal costs—the price of making an additional unit of a product. However, Chellappa and Mehra note that companies also need to consider consumer usage costs when they decide to create various versions of the same IT product. But for IT products and services, the “costs” are not monetary. The pair note the “time commitment and physical effort” to use IT products or services. They use the example of mobile devices: “One cannot enjoy these information goods without them consuming resources such as memory and processing power.” They determine that “this consumption-related disutility” is critical to feature bundling and consumer segmentation. The researchers create a model to test the consumer cost impact, using a “digital goods firm with a unique production cost structure and agents—consumers who face resource constraints in consuming these goods.” Given the usage costs, they determine that individuals may not necessarily prefer products with more features to lower-quality items. The pair concludes “marginal cost and consumers’ usage costs have the same impact on versioning strategy.” Management Science (2017)

The impact of behavioral bias on decision-making

For business leaders, the ability to make critical decisions in a dynamic work and industry environment is essential to the success of an organization. However, Diwas KC, associate professor of information systems & operations management, and coauthors Francesca Gino (Harvard U) and Bradley R. Staats (UNC) note that behavioral traits can sometimes impact the ability to weigh new information and make a logical decision, even in the face of negative news. KC, Gino, and Staats analyze 147,000 choices made by cardiologists during a six-year period when they were presented with negative news from the FDA about drug-eluting stents used in angioplasty. The experienced cardiologists were more likely to continue using the questionable stents than their less-experienced peers, even after being informed of the problem. The role of influence also played a factor in the decision-making. They add, “Given that those who feel they are expert are less likely to react to negative news, those around them show the same tendency, thus making worse decisions than those in groups with less perceived expertise.” The seasoned cardiologists were better able to “generate counterexamples to the negative news and thus be susceptible to confirmation bias.” The authors note managers should be aware that more experience and the perception of expertise may bias decision-making. Management Science (2017)

The process behind auditor judgement

Auditors are required to use considerable judgment in their job, assessing information from a number of sources to create financial reports, critique accounting estimates, and assess a company’s internal controls over financial reporting. But an auditor’s decision-making process is not well understood. In their paper, Kathryn Kadous, professor of accounting, and coauthors Emily E. Griffith (U Wisconsin) and Donald Young 13PhD (Goizueta, Indiana U) provide a framework for researchers to better evaluate the judgment of auditors and, in turn, improve audit quality. Prior research in this area presumes that “decision makers typically engage deliberate, analytical processes to solve problems (i.e., pursue goals) that they have specifically chosen, that they limit their decision inputs to items they view as relevant, and that they have access to the details of their own cognitive processing.” The trio notes that “nonconscious goals” and “intuitive processes” are also influential in the decision-making process and in the factors driving these processes. Kadous, Griffith, and Young conclude that their framework indicates researchers approach their investigation by taking into account “conscious and nonconscious goals” and “decision makers with conflicting incentives, as well as differing capabilities.” Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory (2016)

The role of the economy on individualism

Past work has shown that as countries become wealthier, people often become more individualistic. In new research, Emily Bianchi, assistant professor of organization & management, takes the investigation a step further and finds that even subtle fluctuations in the economy are associated with changes in individualism. She finds that during good economic times, Americans are more likely to seek out ways to signal their uniqueness and individuality. For instance, during boom times, Americans tend to give their children more uncommon names and are more likely to prize autonomy and independence in child-rearing. They are also more likely to favor music featuring self-oriented lyrics. Conversely, during recessions, Americans tend to focus more on fitting in and tend to give their children more common names, listen to more relationally oriented music, and encourage their children to get along with others. Additionally, Bianchi discovered that recessions engender uncertainty, which, in turn, decreases individualism and encourages interdependence. The study results indicated that the “link between wealth and individualism is driven not only by differences in how people live, work, and learn but also by their sense of the predictability, orderliness, and certainty of the surrounding environment.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2016)

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Mobile advertising and crowded locations

As marketers look for new ways to target consumers on their smartphones, they are capitalizing on the ability to use location for mobile advertising. Today, retailers send mobile coupons and alert shoppers to sale items as they roam the aisles of the store. New research from Michelle Andrews, assistant professor of marketing, and coauthors Zheng Fang (Sichuan U), Anindya Ghose (NYU), and Xueming Luo (Temple U), investigates the impact of another type of location on mobile ad effectiveness. The authors studied real-time data from one of the world’s largest telecom providers, compiling responses to mobile advertising by 14,972 mobile phone users on crowded and noncrowded subway trains. Surprisingly, commuters in packed subway trains were twice as likely to respond to and make a purchase from a mobile ad than travelers in less crowded subway trains. The researchers write, “A plausible explanation is mobile immersion: As increased crowding invades one’s physical space, people adaptively turn inwards and become more susceptible to mobile ads.” The research indicates that “hyper-contextual mobile advertising” needs to be a bigger consideration for marketers looking to improve their mobile advertising. Marketing Science (2016)

CFOs & earnings misrepresentation

The quality of a company’s earnings is determined by controllable factors, such as internal controls and corporate governance, and noncontrollable factors, such as industry and economic conditions. But CFOs also have considerable influence over the communication and presentation of those earnings. In a new research study, Ilia Dichev, Goizueta Foundation Chair, professor of accounting, and coauthors John Graham (Duke U), Campbell R. Harvey (Duke U), and Shiva Rajgopal (Columbia U) note that discretion in accounting methods allows CFOs to misrepresent earnings. CFOs are motivated to misrepresent earnings in order to increase stock price and meet earnings targets, as well as boost their own compensation and career profile. The authors conducted a survey of 375 CFOs to explore their definition of earnings quality and ways to determine earnings misrepresentation. The authors concluded that “in any given period, a remarkable 20% of companies intentionally distort earnings, even while adhering to GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles).” The study found a number of red flags for earnings misrepresentation, including “a lack of correspondence between GAAP earnings and cash flows from operations, and unexplained deviations from peer and industry norms.” Financial Analysts Journal (2016)

Team leader experience in improvement teams

According to research from George Easton and Eve Rosenzweig, both associate professors of information systems & operations management, a team leader’s social capital and experience leading projects of the same type are factors in the effectiveness of an improvement team. By using six years of six sigma improvement project data from a Fortune 500 consumer products manufacturer, the researchers reached a rather surprising finding regarding a team leader’s social capital. Improvement teams do not appear to benefit from the leader’s experience working with the current team members on prior projects. What matters instead is the team leader’s experience working with a variety of people on prior improvement projects. The researchers suggest that the experience of dealing with many different individuals allows improvement team leaders to better identify suitable people to join their teams. Such a variety of experience also likely makes team leaders more politically astute when determining projects to pursue. In addition, the professors found that a team leader’s experience with the same type of project is important during the early stages of a six sigma implementation. The importance of this kind of experience declines as the system becomes more mature. The professors suggest that in a mature six sigma deployment, the organization’s cumulative body of documented learnings may well substitute for a team leader’s own prior experience leading a particular project type. Journal of Operations Management (2015)

Accounting data and volatility predictions

Generally speaking, financial research has studied how past equities and options volatility can help to predict future volatility in the markets. However, new research from Suhas Sridharan, assistant professor of accounting, investigates the impact of supplementing past volatility data with actual financial statement information to forecast future realized volatility. Sridharan used a large sample of 47,398 quarterly observations from 3,078 firms taken from 1996 to 2012. Her results indicate that incorporating accounting-based information, such as “standard deviation of the earnings yield, standard deviation of the change in premium of market value over book value, and the covariance of the two,” into forecasting models lowers forecast errors compared to models based solely on past realized volatility. She finds, “Equity returns volatility is significantly positively related to the earnings yield volatility and the volatility of the change in market to book premium. Volatility is significantly negatively related to the covariance of the earnings yield and change in market to book premium.” Sridharan also discovered that using accounting-based fundamental information in trading strategy could help to predict option returns. The Accounting Review (2015)

The impact of corporate vs. independent  foundations

Debate continues as to whether corporate or independent foundations are more impactful, despite the shared interest in supporting charitable services. In research from Justin Koushyar, doctoral candidate in organization and management (2017), Wesley Longhofer, assistant professor of organization and management, and Peter Roberts, professor of organization and management, the trio determines that the answer is mixed. They used data from a matched random sample of corporate and independent foundations that operated across the United States in 2005 and 2009. With deeper pockets, corporate foundations were able to raise more funds than their nonprofit counterparts. Company sponsorship of a philanthropic foundation also meant that they could operate with lower overhead. However, Koushyar, Longhofer, and Roberts found that corporate foundations are “more dispersed and less relational, and they tend to be governed by more ephemeral groups of officers and trustees.” Simply put, corporate foundations have fewer longterm attachments to the charitable organizations they support. Additionally, “market-based motivations” may influence how they give. Corporate foundations do tend to provide smaller individual grant amounts than independent foundations. These “stakeholder effects” are even more dramatic for the foundations linked to larger publicly traded companies. Sociological Science (2015)

Misreporting in securitized loans

Nonagency mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) and collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) derived from MBSs and their role in the recent financial and housing crisis remain a subject of discussion. An MBS is an asset-backed security secured by a mortgage or grouping of mortgages. Non-agency MBSs are not guaranteed by any government-sponsored organization, such as Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae, or the federal government. According to research from Gonzalo Maturana, assistant professor of finance, and John Griffin (U of Texas), the complexity of these structured products made it difficult to learn the true value of the underlying assets. They analyzed “apparent fraud among securitized nonagency loans, looking at unreported second liens, owner occupancy misreporting, and appraisal overstatements.” The study data comes from Lewtan’s ABSNet Loan and HomeVal data sets, along with DataQuick’s Assessor and History files, for the time period between January 2002 and December 2011. The researchers discovered that “48% of loans exhibited at least one indicator of misrepresentation.” The level of misreporting was similar for low- and full-documentation loans. Also, loans with a misreporting were 51% more likely to be delinquent. Maturan and Griffin’s research points to apparent fraud by loan originators and MBS underwriters, and it also suggest that MBS underwriting banks were aware of some of the MBS representations at issuance. The Review of Financial Studies (2016)

Risk and returns for private equity and venture capital funds

The early success of some well-known private equity and venture capital funds has led to their rapid growth. According to research from Narasimhan Jegadeesh, the Dean’s Distinguished Chair in Finance, Roman Kraussl (U of Luxembourg), and Joshua M. Pollet (U of Illinois), investors should carefully evaluate the future risk and return potential of this asset class and avoid investing primarily because of past successes. Some private equity indices compiled by the industry suggest that these funds offer bigger returns than the public equity market, but prior academic studies offer mixed evidence on performance. Jegadeesh and his coauthors devised a new approach to determine the actual risk and returns by using market prices of funds that primarily invest in unlisted PE and VC funds listed on several European stock exchanges. This approach has a distinct advantage because it uses publicly available market prices rather than self-reported data, which were previously used in other academic studies. Their findings indicate that unlisted PE and VC funds as an asset class are unlikely to yield extraordinary returns as suggested by some self-reported data. They may even yield about the same return as the stock market but are illiquid. The Review of Financial Studies (2015)

The role of social networks and information  on creativity

Much of the research devoted to creativity in organizations delves into social networks and their impact on employee creativity. However, research from Jill Perry-Smith, associate professor of organization and management, investigates how types of knowledge factor into creativity in an organization. Perry-Smith conducted her research in a laboratory setting, analyzing the results of two distinct studies of undergraduate participants. The studies reference two types of knowledge content—information (facts or data) and frames (interpretations or impressions). She found that participants receiving nonredundant or unique information were significantly less creative compared to participants receiving nonredundant framing. Her research also suggests that content received from individuals with less of an emotional connection to one another—the so-called “weak tie”—boosts creativity regardless of the type of knowledge received. Strong ties to an individual aids creativity only when different frames are received. Even when team members in an organization seem to reject information from a minority opinion holder, it forces the other team members to delve more deeply into their own opinions, look at alternatives, and consequently, be more creative. Journal of Applied Psychology (2014)

Misreporting in securitized loans

Nonagency mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) and collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) derived from MBSs and their role in the recent financial and housing crisis remain a subject of discussion. An MBS is an asset-backed security secured by a mortgage or grouping of mortgages. Non-agency MBSs are not guaranteed by any government-sponsored organization, such as Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae, or the federal government. According to research from Gonzalo Maturana, assistant professor of finance, and John Griffin (U of Texas), the complexity of these structured products made it difficult to learn the true value of the underlying assets. They analyzed “apparent fraud among securitized nonagency loans, looking at unreported second liens, owner occupancy misreporting, and appraisal overstatements.” The study data comes from Lewtan’s ABSNet Loan and HomeVal data sets, along with DataQuick’s Assessor and History files, for the time period between January 2002 and December 2011. The researchers discovered that “48% of loans exhibited at least one indicator of misrepresentation.” The level of misreporting was similar for low- and full-documentation loans. Also, loans with a misreporting were 51% more likely to be delinquent. Maturan and Griffin’s research points to apparent fraud by loan originators and MBS underwriters, and it also suggest that MBS underwriting banks were aware of some of the MBS representations at issuance. The Review of Financial Studies (2016)

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In addition, the conference featured panel discussions on topics related to this year’s theme, “What Unites Us is Greater than What Separates Us,” and a digital update from speaker James Andrews, entrepreneur and former vice president of Ketchum Digital.

February also saw the return of the Undergraduate Business School Leadership Conference, which hosted student leaders from 23 top-tier business schoolsfrom points across the United States and as far as Spain, Mexico, Germany, and the United Arab Emirates. The keynote was given by Rick Gilkey, professor in the practice of organization & management and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory’s School of Medicine. Gilkey spoke about the importance of self-awareness and cognitive and emotional intelligence in business leaders. Students also participated in an interactive session on crisis management, led by Dean Erika James and Ken Keen, associate dean of Goizueta’s leader development program and a retired lieutenant general.

In March, Goizueta hosted The Science & Art of Sports Business: An Emory Goizueta Business Analytics Forum. Faculty members served as moderators for panelists from an illustrious list of companies, including the Atlanta Braves, Atlanta Hawks, The Coca-Cola Co., Experience, Turner Sports, NBA Digital, and more. Panels and presentations were focused on sponsorship, customer engagement, and the ever-expanding arena of eSports.

The 6th annual EmoryMAC Conference also took place in March, giving students, faculty, and marketing professionals the opportunity to learn about topics such as mobile marketing, loyalty analytics, and unstructured data analysis. Presenters included Goizueta faculty and speakers from Chick-fil-A, SAS, Converge, and Equifax. Trevis Litherland, principal data scientist for Equifax, discussed how he uses a wide variety of data and patterns to aid the company in creating credit scores. Goizueta professors Michelle Andrews, assistant professor of marketing, and Mike Lewis, associate professor of marketing, presented insights gained from field experiments and talked about why companies might want to use field data instead of just focus groups. Lewis pointed out that existing data from focus groups and other sources can sometimes create assumptions that may not be true. “I think it’s very important that once in a while we check ourselves and say, ‘Let’s do these field experiments, let’s generate new data, let’s treat marketing as a learning organization,’” he said.

The Goizueta Marketing Strategy Consultancy (GMSC) marked its 25th year in March. At an event celebrating the anniversary, GMSC faculty advisor Reshma Shah, associate professor in the practice of marketing, was honored for her 20 years of leadership. What began as a marketing competition has evolved into a cornerstone of Goizueta’s experiential learning program. Sanibh Aryan 16MBA says GMSC students get to tackle “real-world problems and provide solutions to the world’s biggest firms while being supported by the school and the faculty in our endeavors.” Aryan says the experience includes the highs and lows of teamwork and great satisfaction when the client is happy with the results.

“GMSC was by far the most beneficial class I took at Goizueta,” adds Brian Berkowitz 16MBA. “A real-world, multi-month engagement, the GMSC process furthered my leadership development, improved my client relationship skills, and made me ready for day one of my consulting internship.”

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By the time she says good morning to her husband, Parker has already placed an order with a credit card and information she has on file, RSVPd to attend a business event, and added it to her calendar. After scanning the news headlines and her Instagram feed, opening a weather app to view the forecast, and making a quick bank transfer, she’s almost ready to get out of bed.

In minutes, Parker has packed in more daily tasks than previous generations may have done in weeks. She’s also transferred personal information to innumerable websites, a daily routine that could expose her to internet thieves. Are her actions misguided, or are the conveniences provided by technology too beneficial to pass up?

*Composite character

Race to adoption

Technology has become an integral part of everyday life. From morning exercise monitored by Fitbits to a ride to work courtesy of Uber, staying plugged in has become second nature for  billions of global users.

Recent research indicates nearly 3.5 billion people now use the Internet, up from 394 million just ten years ago. This rapid surge in use began in 1995, when businesses bet on the Internet and the first tech IPOs brought new products and services to an audience growing in awareness and willingness to engage.

What followed was an “explosion of adoption  and consumer-driven content,” says Benn Konsynski, George S. Craft Distinguished  University Professor of Information Systems & Operations Management at Goizueta. “Consumers came online and were not just shopping but also adding content.”

The shakeout from the 2000 Internet bubble left strong players like Microsoft and Amazon poised for expansion. Equally important, these surviving companies identified the elements needed to remain viable in a new business environment.

“What we learned from the market is that high valuations are in the context players, not content players. Netscape didn’t own much information, Google doesn’t create information. Craigslist, Amazon, and eBay don’t create much content,” explains Konsynski. “Instead, all of these players are creating high value by letting others create information. It’s what we call democratic production. Those that are able to exploit that high velocity, high volume of content creation are the ones that win.”

The evolution of smartphone applications has made it even faster and more convenient to conduct business, research, and shop online. Indeed, online sales, increasing through mobile apps, are making up a large chunk of the retail figures. According to Shop.org’s State of Retailing Online study, store-based retailers saw a 135 percent growth in sales on smartphones and an 86 percent boost in sales via tablets year to year.

“People want a seamless experience. Many of the in-store expectations are the same online: People want the right assortment, on-shelf availability, and good value,” says Jessica Cheng 07BBA, shopper insights manager at Procter & Gamble. “Shoppers used to associate online shopping with better prices, but that’s not necessarily the case now. People value other things more, such as convenience, free shipping, and exclusive offerings.”

Done correctly, a business’s online offerings should “supplement brick-and-mortar shopping. Programs such as subscription and customizable bundles give shoppers more control and freedom to shop for what they want, when they want it,” Cheng says. “We expect that such programs will make shopping more enjoyable for consumers and build greater brand and retailer loyalties.”

Consumers also thrive on the ability to build their online credibility by offering opinions, whether it’s blogging on a topic or critiquing a product on Amazon. The power to influence fellow users makes the strength of social media beneficial for commerce. And for many users, the personal recognition is equally valuable.

Take the current explosion of restaurant and fan  reviews. Rhett Marlow 02WEMBA is tapping into this obsession with e-commerce brand and app foomanchew.com, a company that offers delivery  of high-quality Asian cuisine, which they have  established through extensive health-grade  research. Marlow, who cofounded foomanchew  and another technology-based company, believes coupling a trend with the assurance of a high-quality product is a recipe for success. It serves our appetite for convenience in two ways: reliable information and food delivery.

“For the customer using our app, the research is already complete,” Marlow says. “They are guaranteed a quality Asian food experience.”

Specialty apps like these are on the rise, and convenience tops the list of reasons. Statista, an online statistics company, reports that as of July 2015 more than 1.6 million apps were available for Android users, while Apple’s App Store offered 1.5 million. These apps cover every imaginable pursuit, from tracking personal fitness to monitoring fashion trends and shopping. But internet usage doesn’t stop there. For many people, unwinding with technology is just as vital a pursuit as working.

The binge mentality

Alex Slinin 05MBA, director of internet product development and management at Cox Communications, notes: “More than ever, consumers rely on the Internet for their communication and entertainment needs. The average US household has more than six devices connected to the Internet that they use for social networking, streaming video or music, gaming, web surfing, emailing, uploading photos, video chatting, and more. As a result, we are seeing internet data usage continue to double every
two years.”

For some consumers, the convenience and freedom of being able to tap into games or media whenever they please can be addicting. Gamers have been known to play 10 or even 24 hours straight, often leading to exhaustion or worse. For media viewers, there is the freedom to watch one episode of a program or devour an entire series in one sitting.

“The Internet has become a fundamental and constant thread throughout our lives, both in and out of the home,” Slinin observes. “For example, over the course of any given Saturday evening, about 90 percent of households have at least one device online.” Consumption, too, has changed, Slinin says. “During weekday evenings, video streaming of TV shows, movies, and other video clips comprises about 75 percent of all internet traffic.”

In new research, David Schweidel, Caldwell Research Fellow and associate professor of marketing, and coauthor Wendy Moe (University of Maryland), used data provided by Hulu, a streaming TV subscription service, to understand today’s protracted consumption of media—or binge—tendency. They found that “the more you watch a program, the more likely you will continue to keep watching that same program and to keep the viewing session going,” notes Schweidel.

This is not unlike what researchers describe as “flow,” a person’s ability to become so engaged in websites and online experiences that they lose track of time and what’s happening in the outside world. “With binge watching, a similar pattern to flow seems to occur. I am immersing myself in this experience,” Schweidel says. “Consider what Netflix did with its original series House of Cards, the political drama. They decided to offer the entire season at once. When Netflix announced the date that House of Cards would be available, people set aside that weekend to watch the entire series. Technology has enabled us to consume media whenever we want. I can say, ‘OK, I have Hulu, Netflix, and a DVR, and if I want to, I can watch one episode at a time, or I can decide to blow off the day and just watch TV.’”

There’s also a downside for businesses. According to Schweidel, this binge mentality is not great for a company’s bottom line. “From a business standpoint, the more you binge watch the less responsive you become to advertising,” he says. “This is not necessarily good for marketers.”

Clearly business benefits from consumers’ ability to engage with products, companies, and services at a moment’s notice and for as long as we desire. This flexibility has changed the way consumers schedule their time and resources. Email is checked incessantly, television is provided on demand, and smartphones are seen as an appendage that keeps us plugged in at all times. For some, this means overindulging in technology to the detriment of other, more valuable activities. Are the consequences of our internet addiction enough to curb the desire for more access and the subsequent privacy risks, or is the habit too appealing to stop?

It’s noon, and Parker is starving. But with meetings booked back to back and an overflowing inbox, leaving her building is out of the question. With smartphone in hand, she opens an app and places her lunch order for delivery. She walks downstairs to the coffee bar in the lobby and orders a latte, paying via another app that rewards her for frequent visits.

While she’s waiting for lunch back in her office, Parker scans her mortgage statement online, makes an additional principal payment, then logs out to instant message her husband about dinner plans. Lunch arrives, and she takes a seat while scanning the day’s top news and videos, all before returning to the chaos of her day. 

Though some individuals are hesitant to virtually engage, for most people, technology has become a norm. “Habit-forming technology is already here, and it is being used to mold our lives,” says Nir Eyal 01C, author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. “A habit is at work when users feel a tad bored and instantly open Twitter. They feel a pang of loneliness, and before rational thought occurs, they are scrolling through their Facebook feeds. A question comes to mind, and before searching their brains, they query Google.”

Eyal describes this consumer truth as “the urge you likely feel throughout your day but hardly notice.” He contends that in engineering these habits, “companies increasingly find their economic value is a function of the strength of the habits they create.”

In his extensive research on how individuals use technology, Eyal recognizes that “habits keep users loyal.” Behavior, he acknowledges, can be shaped through promise of variable rewards. “The fact that we have greater access to the Web through our various connected devices—smartphones and tablets, televisions, game consoles, and wearable technology—gives companies far greater ability to affect our behavior,” he says.

Konsynski agrees: “We are moving to the algorithmic enterprise, with decisions driven by adopted algorithms more so than scripted decisions or human intervention. For better or worse, we are surrendering decision rights to systems that we trust to engage with volumes and velocities that humans can only poorly address.”

Willing to pay the price

Even if companies are profiting from our internet habits, the ability to get what we want, when we want it may prove an elixir so strong that we are willing to accept the consequences.

“Whether we’re sharing information consciously or not, we are making that decision,” says Schweidel, who wrote Profiting from the Data Economy. “It’s a trade: Facebook gives us a social network, a way to stay in touch with people, and we derive some value from that. What am I willing to give up in value? I’m willing to give up a lot of information about me.”

For companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google that are built on advertising platforms, user information is culled and shared with advertisers as a means to pay the bills. From the contents of the “free” Gmail account, the ethnicity of the photos uploaded to Facebook, or the items searched, products can be tailored to an individual, thereby making personal data an attractive cache to advertisers.

“Consumers care about access and convenience. Yes, there is an end user license agreement that goes along with apps—or the terms of service—and we are agreeing to these things. Now, whether or not we’ve actually read these documentations? That’s another story,” says Schweidel. “Technically, if you are using platforms like Twitter, Google, or Facebook, you have agreed to the terms of service, and in those agreements, you are granting your permission. There have been criticisms that those terms of service are so dense and long that no one ever reads them. But from a legal standpoint, the company is clear: You have clicked, and you have agreed. But are people fully aware of what they are agreeing to? Probably not.”

A call for more transparency is under way, as media attention highlights questionable collection of data that goes beyond the intended usage, like the 2014 discovery of a popular flashlight app that was gathering more personal data than necessary. Last year, the Obama administration released two reports around internet privacy and data, urging organizations to be more upfront with what and how data is being used.

As long as there are opportunities to gather behavioral data, the collecting of information won’t stop any time soon. “The best companies are able to use this data in a positive way to delight their customers,” says  Kelley Quinn Coram 15EvMBA, campaign manager for BrightWave, a leading email marketing agency. “We’ve all had an experience where we felt our data was misused. Think of that email list you somehow got on and can’t seem to unsubscribe from. It is a fine line that digital marketers deal with every day and is an ever-changing target. As marketers, we are trusted with our customer’s information and have to be good stewards of their data if we hope to keep them as a customer.”

Then there are digital ads that follow one’s activity around the Web. Called retargeting, the cookie or trail left by every search or visit to a website allows an advertiser to follow you and remind you of the item originally viewed. This is especially beneficial to retailers who, armed with the knowledge of what consumers are thinking of purchasing, can target reminders and coupons to convert that thinking into a sale.

Alok Deshpande 99BBA, president of SmartPath, a financial wellness company that helps reduce absenteeism, turnover, and financial stress for employees, explained retargeting to students as they strive to control spending. Using himself as an example, Deshpande told of researching the cost of a cruise for his family.

“Companies can figure out what you want to buy and then send online ads to you over and over,” Deshpande says. “Now there is nothing wrong with this, but you just need to be aware of this practice and really stay true to what you can afford.”

While computer users will notice this retargeting practice more readily, it may be less apparent on cell phones. “You may not notice retargeting as much on your mobile device because cookies have to be enabled on your device,” explains Michelle Andrews, assistant professor of marketing at Goizueta. “It may help consumers who are concerned about security to note that cookie data is anonymous and does not contain personally identifiable information. Because mobiles are considered more personal devices than desktops or tablets, though, it’s possible consumers will still be more concerned about mobile retargeting.”

Equally concerning, Andrews contends, is the common practice of using Facebook or Google log-in credentials to access other websites. “Sites that allow you to log in using Facebook often do so because they buy ad space on Facebook and want to deliver more targeted ads based on browsing information,” Andrews says. “Consumers have greater reason to be concerned about their privacy in this instance because logging into other sites via Facebook allows that site to request information about you from Facebook. Thus, the site can accumulate more information about you when you log in with Facebook than if you choose to log in with an entirely new or site-specific account.”

Convenience > risk

Clearly, with so many sites requiring passwords, using a shortcut like a Facebook log-in can make it easier to navigate the Web. But consumers are likely unaware of the rights to information they willingly click away when accessing content online. In other words, internet usage creates a push-pull effect of information, with companies wanting information about consumers and individuals wanting privacy along with online convenience. Add to this the hackers out to steal personal data stored by companies, and it’s enough to give one pause.

Or is it?

According to Ryan Hamilton, associate professor of marketing, consumers often underestimate the risks involved. Though each person will weigh risk and convenience differently, Hamilton says these judgments can be impacted by a mental shortcut called the “availability heuristic.”

“Consumers often estimate the likelihood of something by considering the ease with which they can bring instances of that thing to mind,” he says. “For example, when a person is trying to determine how likely they are to be seriously inconvenienced by fraud, they are likely to think of how many people they know who have had their lives seriously disrupted by fraud. Although most of us know people who have had some fraudulent charges on their credit cards, these are usually minor inconveniences. The person makes a phone call, and they are issued a new card. Cases where fraud has caused serious or lasting problems are much harder to bring to mind. So we estimate—accurately or not—that serious fraud is rare.”

In other words, people tend to think that serious internet crime won’t happen to them. While consumers may dismiss such a threat, companies that collect personal data need to be vigilant.

According to a report by the Ponemon Institute, which does independent research on privacy, data protection, and information security policy, 43 percent of companies surveyed in 2014 experienced a data breach. Well-publicized breaches last year included eBay, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Neiman Marcus.

“If companies fail to follow basic industry practices of ensuring their data is secure—due diligence—then they face liability for data breaches,” says Allison Burdette, assistant professor in the practice of business law. “In fact, failure to exercise due diligence can mean that the company’s insurance policies will not cover the damages.”

This shift in liability from consumers to merchant allowed the rapid expansion of e-commerce, but it has increased the cost to companies.

“The threat of a data breach is a huge liability, and firms have started adding chief privacy officers and taking other measures to adequately protect their consumers’ data,” says Ramnath Chellappa, associate professor of information systems & operations management. “The alternative is to not store any consumer data, which obviously prevents companies from pursuing strategies that use the data. Another option for firms is to store modified forms of the data, which basically anonymizes the information to the merchant by storing larger profiles of customers as opposed to personal identifying information. For example, if you swipe your card at a counter at Target, why do they need to store your credit card number? That’s a onetime transaction so maybe don’t store it at all. Essentially, if you are storing consumer information, it’s your job to protect it. That’s the law.”

According to Gerry Baron 13WEMBA, economics often drive what companies do and don’t do regarding information security. Baron, chief marketing officer for Cirrity, a leading, channel-only secure cloud solutions provider, knows about helping businesses secure their data.

“Businesses are motivated to generate profits, and to the extent that they believe there are legal ramifications, industry regulations, or market drivers to invest in information security, they’re likely to take a minimalist approach,” he says. That can be particularly problematic, given that the cost per data breach is on the rise. Baron notes companies have to be ever vigilant when it comes to cyberhacking, and that means continuous monitoring to evaluate the business’s security posture in light of evolving threats and compliance requirements.

Cyberprotection is a two-way street

Even as many firms strive to prevent hackers from accessing data, consumers can be proactive by choosing awareness to circumvent the malaise that results from mindlessly checking email, sharing life updates on social media, or downloading the latest app. New challenges will arise as The Internet of Things (IoT), grows and more devices can connect or tap into the Internet. Thus, additional opportunities to monitor and capture consumer habits, locations, and activities emerge.

“Whether it is watches or refrigerators, pretty much anything that can have a chip attached to itself and an address assigned to it can communicate with other devices and send data,” Chellappa says. “The tech industry is rife with speculation that Apple is getting into the automotive business—after all, you can think about an automobile as a collection of computing and communication mechanisms on four wheels. The same goes with devices for the home, whether they ostensibly are meant to keep track of the temperature or used for security, they are collecting all types of information. You could have a completely digitized home that automatically knows when to shut off the lights. And these are not advances that will happen in the future. They already exist. They are not commonplace, but they will become commonplace because the cost and standardization of technologies will allow for anything to communicate with anything.”

Data collection on consumers’ web activity will continue to reign as the driver of more products and services that bring convenience. However, it comes with a price. Since data can never truly be deleted, awareness will be the strongest deterrent to protecting personal information. Yet this has to go hand in hand with companies protecting the data they collect.

Baron admits it’s a struggle, especially with the new app economy. “It’s so easy to create a new app, and in a few minutes, there will be a ton of people using it,” he adds. Security is often an afterthought on the part of the app developer and the user.

Technology is continuously evolving, of course, and our thirst for and ease with technology means we are always going to be connected. “At the end of the day, it’s a delicate balancing act between convenience and security, whether it’s for the individual surfing the Web or for the company producing the consumer-facing technology,” says Jackie Breiter 01WEMBA, chief operations and information officer at Goizueta.

Consumers need to be especially aware of their online behavior and take an active part in protecting personal information whenever they can.

“Budgets determine the scope of data protection, and some companies will be better at it than others,” Breiter warns. “That puts the onus on consumers to determine their level of comfort when they choose to offer up information online.”

Parker has finished her office work for the day and returns home to make dinner from an online recipe. While she and her family eat, they catch up on a few episodes on Hulu. Later, after a Skype call to grandma and kids’ homework submitted via Google Classroom, she and her husband tuck their children in for the night.

With a fresh mug of tea at her side, she updates her Facebook page and uploads a gallery of the kids’ latest antics. Although she may include every point of information when she blogs about her latest DIY conquest, Parker doesn’t tag her children’s images. Without fully questioning why, Parker and her husband both understand some things are better left unshared on the Internet—just in case.

– By Michelle Valigursky and Nicole Golston

Related Content

• Cyber security prevention just as important as response
• Data breaches harm store brand, reputation
• The Inconvenient Truth about the Convenience of Technology

The post The Inconvenient Truth about the Convenience of Technology appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

Goizueta Business School welcomed many new faculty members in the Fall 2015 including:

Suhas Sridharan
Assistant Professor of Accounting, Tenure Track

Suhas Sridharan completed her Ph.D. in business administration at Stanford University in 2013.  Prior to joining the faculty at Emory University in 2015, Sridharan held a position as an assistant professor at UCLA Anderson School of Management.  Sridharan’s primary research focus is on valuation in equity and options markets with a particular focus on how investors use corporate disclosures in their asset allocation decisions. Her research has been published in The Accounting Review.

Karen Ton
Assistant Professor of Accounting

Karen Ton completed her Ph.D. in Accounting at University of Southern California’s Leventhal School of Accounting in 2015.  Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2015, Ton held positions at USC and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.  Ton’s primary research focus is related to financial accounting, auditing, and corporate restructuring.

Gonzalo Maturana Falcone
Assistant Professor of Finance,

Gonzalo Maturana completed his Ph.D. in Finance at The University of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business in 2015. Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2015, Maturana held positions at the University of Chile and IM Trust, a Chilean investment bank.  Maturana’s primary research focus is in corporate finance, securitization, and real estate.  His recent research has been published in the Journal of Finance.

Michelle Andrews
Assistant Professor of Marketing

Michelle Andrews completed her Ph.D. in Marketing at Temple University in 2015. Andrews’ primary research focus is on mobile technologies and consumer insights. Her articles have been published in a number of leading journals including Marketing Science, Management Science, the Journal of Marketing, Strategic Management Journal, and Harvard Business Review.

Usha Rackliffe
Assistant Professor in the Practice of Accounting

Usha Rackliffe completed her J.D. at Georgia State University, College of Law in 1998.  Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2015, Rackliffe held a full time faculty position at Georgia State University and has served as Chief Financial Officer for the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia.  She has been published in the Journal of Accounting Education.  She is a CPA and member of the bar.

Robert Lippert
Associate Professor in the Practice of Organization and Management

Robert Lippert completed his Ph.D. in Finance and Economics at the University of South Carolina, Moore School of Business in 1992. Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2015, Lippert held faculty positions at USC, Georgia State University and Rutgers University.  In addition to his career in academia, Lippert has served as CFO of a public company, a strategic consultant and executive development leader with Fortune 500 companies, and an executive education leader with Universities such as Duke, Emory and UCLA.  Lippert’s research focuses on the intersection of corporate strategy and finance. His articles have been published in a number of leading journals including Business and Economic Review, the Journal of Financial and Strategic Decision Making, and Financial Management. He is also the coauthor of two books.

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