Consolidating Product Lines via Mergers and Acquisitions: Evidence From the USPTO Trademark Data
利用1983-2016年商标数据，研究发现面临更大产品市场竞争的公司更可能成为收购方，且收购后通过终止更多现有产品线、开发更少新产品线来整合产品，实现成本效率。
Abstract Using a new trademark-based product market competition measure and a novel trademark-merger data set over the period 1983–2016, we show that companies facing greater product market competition are more likely to be acquirers. We further show that postmerger, compared to their nonacquiring peers, acquirers consolidate their product offerings by discontinuing more existing product lines and developing fewer new product lines. Using a quasi-experiment based on bids withdrawn due to exogenous reasons helps us establish the causal effect of deal completion on product-market consolidation. We conclude that acquisitions create product market synergies by cutting overlapping product offerings to achieve cost efficiency.