Value Appropriation and Firm Shareholder Value: Role of Advertising and Receivables Management

Value-appropriation activities enable a firm to extract more profits from existing customers. The authors examine how investments in two types of value-appropriation activities—advertising and receivables—are jointly associated with abnormal stock returns and idiosyncratic risk. Using data from 1,375 firms over the period of 2003–2015, the authors find that advertising investments and receivables investments interact as substitutes, such that increasing advertising (receivables) investments is detrimental to the beneficial effect of receivables (advertising) investments on firm shareholder value. They find that this association is contingent on firm business scope, such that the joint effect of advertising investments and receivables investments becomes weaker when firms have a broader business scope compared with a narrower business scope.