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Copyright: © 2013 The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Since announcing on October 6 2004 that it had signed Howard Stern to a five-year deal Sirius Satellite Radio has added approximately 2.7 million subscribers and become a household name in the satellite radio world. The tab: Close to $700 million. Is Stern worth it? Can the popular and raunchy talk show host catapult Sirius ahead of rival XM Satellite Radio or are there other issues to consider such as the threat of new technologies the need to provide good content and the continuing popularity of conventional radio? Wharton faculty and others debate the different strategies of Sirius and XM and the challenges that both face.
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Carl Icahn’s battle for Time Warner has just intensified. Icahn the corporate takeover specialist attempting to win control of the media giant held a press conference yesterday to announce a plan to break Time Warner into four separate companies and buy back $20 billion in stock -- all part of his crusade to oust management for the benefit of shareholders. His press conference followed a speech last week at the 2006 Wharton Economic Summit in which he denied that he is an ”imperial shareholder” out to rip companies apart for quick gains. Icahn was responding to remarks made earlier at the Summit by corporate lawyer Martin Lipton who argued that a new breed of aggressive shareholder is pressuring companies to produce short-term gains at the expense of long-term growth.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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China’s securities industry is just one of the sectors moving ahead at a dizzying pace as the country readies itself for full entry into the World Trade Organization this year according to participants in the recent Wharton Global Business Forum’s Asia Conference. Not surprisingly China dominated discussion at the conference with many speakers noting the speed with which the country is advancing. But growth is not just confined to China. The 21st century said one panelist will be the ”Asian century ” powered by among other things a highly educated and motivated population and increased travel and tourism.
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When the door to a TLA Entertainment video store swings open the primary question facing most consumers shuffling inside is relatively simple: ”What movie will I take home tonight?” But to Wharton marketing professor Jehoshua Eliashberg and Wharton doctoral candidate George Knox the key question surrounding the burgeoning $12 billion home-video market goes at least one step further: Which consumers will rent their movie of choice tonight and which consumers will buy? In a study entitled ”The Consumer’s Rent vs. Buy Decision: The Case of Home-Video ” Eliashberg and Knox present a new model that they say accurately predicts the consumer’s decision to rent or buy a particular movie at a video store.
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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.
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