Distributors, across sectors and countries, are faced by the threat of disintermediation. In many industries, horizontal consolidation and advances in information technology have made it easier for manufacturers to bypass distributors and do business directly with consumers. Distributors have...

Organizational research frequently involves seeking judgmental data from multiple informants within organizations. Researchers are often faced with determining how many informants to survey, who those informants should be and (if more than one) how best to aggregate responses when disagreement...

Drawing on agency theory and transaction cost analysis, this study investigates the impact of refranchising and buybacks of downstream retail units by franchising firms on shareholder value (i.e., stock returns). It further evaluates the contingency role of firm and industry factors in shaping...

Drawing on theories of new product adoption and inter-temporal choice, we show in cross-sectional and longitudinal investigations (Study 1) that when people consider adopting a new product in the distant future, they are more concerned about performance and symbolic benefit uncertainties. In...

The emotional state of many expecting parents shifts from unbridled joy to anxiety as the reality of learning to care for a newborn and forsaking their current lifestyle sinks in. Similarly, consumers have different concerns when they first hear about a new product compared to the time when they...

The motivation for this paper arises from the importance of stakeholder communications for firms and the rapid emergence of social media networks as a means of such communications. Our purpose is to understand the early adoption and use of social media networks for such communications by firms...