Consequences of Marketing Asset Accountability—A Natural Experiment
利用澳大利亚会计制度变更的自然实验，研究营销资产问责制如何影响企业的营销效率、资本成本和股价信息含量，发现其提升长期效率、降低权益成本并改善股价信息性，但对短期效率和债务成本影响不显著。
Marketing scholars have extensively studied marketing's effect on firm value and have developed metrics and dashboards to help establish marketing accountability. However, empirical evidence of marketing accountability's specific outcomes is scarce and mainly derived from surveys. It also lacks consideration of outcomes beyond the marketing function's standing in the firm, thus overlooking possible downsides and outcomes with regard to external stakeholders such as investors. Using a natural experiment—Australia's change from a nonrestrictive to a restrictive accounting regime—this study investigates how accountability for the financial value of marketing assets (marketing asset accountability) affects a firm's marketing management focus on short-term vis-à-vis long-term marketing efficiency, its cost of capital, and the degree to which its stock price reflects actual future performance (i.e., stock price informativeness). The results show that marketing asset accountability improves long-term marketing efficiency, reduces cost of equity, and improves stock price informativeness, but does not consistently affect short-term marketing efficiency and cost of debt. Moreover, although marketing-intensive firms are commonly assumed to benefit most from marketing asset accountability, this is not the case. These results have implications for researchers, managers, and public policy decision makers.