"This is the first paper to establish that marketing spending is necessary, not discretionary, for longer-term positive stock market performance," says lead author Imran Currim, UCI Chancellor's Professor of marketing.

Imran Currim, Chancellor’s Professor of marketing and director of the Beall Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, is the lead author on a research report named a “highly commended” paper in the 2017 Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence. The study, published in the European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 50, Issue 12, establishes the longer-term positive stock market performance of continuous marketing spending through past recessions. “We found that firms committed to spending achieved better stock market returns,” Currim said. “The findings are robust across B2B and B2C industries, different periods and U.S.-based firms that vary on the proportion of the global revenue from international sales.” Results were based on regression analysis of a combination of data from the National Bureau of Economic Research, Compustat and the Center for Research in Security Prices, compiled for 6,000 firms between 1982 and 2009. Jooseop Lim, associate professor of marketing at Concordia University in Montreal, and Yu Zhang, assistant professor of management at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai, are study co-authors.