The economic worthn of a celebrity endorsers

Cloth of gold一块价值堪比黄金的布Why the economic value of a face mask is$56.14为什么说一个口罩的经济价值是56.14美元After a brutal first six months of the year,governments across the world are hoping for an economic bounce-back.Rich-world GDP fell by about 10%in the first half of2020.在经历今年上半年的残酷考验后，世界各国政府都期待经济能够触底反弹。

2020年上半年，发达国家的GDP下降了约10%。

Yet much has changed since—including that more people are now wearing masks.Economists,obsessed with translating everything into GDP,wonder if more widespread face-covering could help the recovery.然而，自从越来越多的人戴上口罩后，情况发生了显著变化。

经济学家痴迷于用GDP来解释一切事物，如今他们想知道，随着更多的人戴上了口罩，经济能否走向复苏。

The thinking goes that masks can,in part,substitute for lockdowns. People wearing them need not be discouraged as much from using public transport.More shops and offices might be able to reopen,albeit while practising social distancing.这种想法基于这样一个逻辑，戴口罩在一定程度上可以代替封锁措施。

1. Leading man男一号Wang Jianlin, China’s richest man, wants to be a movie mogulSep 28th 2013 |From The Economist the print edition中国首富王健林想成为电影大亨IT IS not exactly the most glamorous place to build a film studio. Qingdao, a sooty industrial port along China’s north-eastern coast that was once colonised by the Germans, is better known as the home of Haier, the world’s biggest maker of domestic appliances, and Tsingtao, a leading Chinese brewery, than as a crucible of the creative arts. And yet this is where the country’s richest man is building China’s answer to Hollywood.青岛不是一个修建电影拍摄基地最富魅力的理想之地，它是一座位于中国东北的海滨工业港口城市，烟尘遍地，曾一度沦为德国的殖民地。

青岛出名并非因为它是一个创新艺术的锤炼之地，而是因为海尔和青岛啤酒公司的总部均设于此。

前者是全球最大的家用电器生产商，后者是一家首屈一指的啤酒酿造公司。

Wang Jianlin, the boss of Dalian Wanda, a Chinese multinational that made its money in the property business, clearly wants to be a media mogul. Last year his firm acquired AMC Theaters, an American cinema chain, for $2.6 billion. In June it also agreed to buy Sunseeker, a British yacht-maker whose sleek craft have featured in James Bond films. He has just made a $20m donation to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which runs the Oscars award ceremonies.万达集团是中国一家房地产跨国公司，作为该集团的老总，王健林很显然想成为媒体大亨。

经济学金句英文English:"Economics is the study of how society allocates its scarce resources to satisfy unlimited wants. At its core, it's about making choices. As Nobel laureate Milton Friedman famously said, 'There's no such thing as a free lunch.' This succinctly captures the concept of opportunity cost, the idea that every decision comes with trade-offs. Another iconic quote comes from Adam Smith, often hailed as the father of economics, who wrote in 'The Wealth of Nations' that individuals, by pursuing their self-interest, unintentionally contribute to the wealth and well-being of society as a whole through the invisible hand of the market. This notion underpins the principle of laissez-faire capitalism, advocating for minimal government intervention in the economy. However, economists like John Maynard Keynes challenged this notion during times of economic crisis, arguing for active government involvement to stabilize economies through fiscal and monetary policies. Keynes famously quipped, 'In the long run, we are all dead,' emphasizing the importance of addressing short-term economic challenges. These contrasting perspectives reflect the ongoing debate between free-market capitalism and government intervention, illustrating the dynamic nature of economic thought."中文翻译:"经济学是研究社会如何分配有限资源以满足无限欲望的学科。

两种变量系统地相互联系在一起的程度。

307、Cost ，average 平均成本等于总成本（参见 "总成本" ， cost ，total ）除以产出的单位数。

The Economist 《经济学人》常用词汇总结 我眼泪都流出来了 太珍The Economist 《经济学人》常用词汇总结 我眼泪都流出来了 太珍贵了 !! 16 小时前 301、Consumption function 消费函数 总消费与个人可支配收人（ PDI ） 认为会对消费产生影响。

的数值对应关系。

总财富和其他变量也常被 302、Consumption-possibility line 消费可能线 见预算线（ budget line ）。

303、Cooperative equilibrium合作性均衡 博弈论中，指各方协调行动，以求共同的支付（ joint pay － offs ）最优化的 策略而达到的结果。

304、Corporate income tax 公司所得税对公司年净收入课征的税收。

305、Corporation 公司 现代资本主义经济中企业组织的主要形式。

它是由个人或其他公司所拥有的 企业，具有与个人一样的购买、销售和签订合同的权利。

公司和对公司负 责任" 的所有人二者，在法律上是不同的概念。

"有限306、Correlation相关308、Cost ，average fixed 平均固定成本等于固定成本除以产出的单位数。

309、Cost，average variable 平均可变成本等于可变成本（参见" 可变成本" ，cost ，variable ）除以产出的单位数。

310、Cost ，fixed 固定成本一企业在某时段即使在产量为零时也会发生的成本。

总固定成本由诸如利息支出、抵押支出、管理者费用等契约性开支所组成。

311、Cost ，marginal 边际成本多生产1 单位产品所增加的成本（或总成本的增加额），或少生产1 单位产品总成本的减少额。

经济学关于价值名句英文1、从眼球经济到体验经济再到粉丝经济，谁掌握工具的运用，谁就可以赢得未来！From eyeball economy to experience economy to fan economy, y finally comes to the time economy.2、政治是经济的女儿，所以他照顾自己的女儿是很自然的。

politics is the daughter of the economy, so it is natural for him to take care of his daughter.3、警惕啊，中国，在经济问题上，吹捧也是一种谋杀。

Be vigilant. China is also a murder on economic issues.4、难道坐头等舱会比坐经济舱先到达目的地吗？Is it better to travel first class to the destination than the economy class?5、时间对于我来说是很宝贵的，用经济学的眼光看是一种财富。

Time is precious to me. It is a modity production, expansion of the market is the root of the problem.6、实际上，没有一种社会形态能够阻止社会所支配的劳动时间以这处或那种方式调整生产。

In fact, there is no form of society that can prevent society from adjusting production in one ic center, and I am quite interested in conquering the economic y, but also a category of morality.7、经济头脑是在解决我们经济问题的过程中锻炼出来的。

Digest Of The. Economist.2006(6-7)Hard to digestA wealth of genetic information is to be found in the human gutBACTERIA, like people, can be divided into friend and foe. Inspired by evidence that the friendly sort may help with a range of ailments, many people consume bacteria in the form of yogurts and dietary supplements. Such a smattering of artificial additions, however, represents but a drop in the ocean. There are at least 800 types of bacteria living in the human gut. And research by Steven Gill of the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Maryland, and his colleagues, published in this week's Science, suggests that the collective genome of these organisms is so large that it contains 100 times as many genes as the human genome itself.Dr Gill and his team were able to come to this conclusion by extracting bacterial DNA from the faeces of two volunteers. Because of the complexity of the samples,they were not able to reconstruct the entire genomes of each of the gut bacteria, just the individual genes. But that allowed them to make an estimate of numbers.What all these bacteria are doing is tricky to identify—the bacteria themselves are difficult to cultivate. So the researchers guessed at what they might be up to by comparing the genes they discovered with published databases of genes whose functions are already known.This comparison helped Dr Gill identify for the first time the probable enzymatic processes by which bacteria help humans to digest the complex carbohydrates in plants. The bacteria also contain a plentiful supply of genes involved in the synthesis of chemicals essential to human life—including two B vitamins and certain essential amino acids—although the team merely showed that these metabolic pathways exist rather than proving that they are used. Nevertheless, the pathways they found leave humans looking more like ruminants: animals such as goats and sheep that use bacteria to break down otherwise indigestible matter in the plants they eat.The broader conclusion Dr Gill draws is that people aresuperorganisms whose metabolism represents an amalgamation of human and microbial attributes. The notion of a superorganism has emerged before, as researchers in other fields have come to view humans as having a diverse internal ecosystem. This, suggest some, will be crucial to the success of personalised medicine, as different people will have different responses to drugs, depending on their microbial flora. Accordingly, the next step, says Dr Gill, is to see how microbial populations vary between people of different ages, backgrounds and diets.Another area of research is the process by which these helpful bacteria first colonise the digestive tract. Babies acquire their gut flora as they pass down the birth canal and take a gene-filled gulp of their mother's vaginal and faecal flora. It might not be the most delicious of first meals, but it could well be an important one.Zapping the bluesThe rebirth of electric-shock treatmentELECTRICITY has long been used to treat medical disorders. As early as the second century AD, Galen, a Greek physician, recommended the use of electric eels for treatingheadaches and facial pain. In the 1930s Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini, two Italian psychiatrists, used electroconvulsive therapy to treat schizophrenia. These days, such rigorous techniques are practised less widely. But researchers are still investigating how a gentler electric therapy appears to treat depression.Vagus-nerve stimulation, to give it its proper name, was originally developed to treat severe epilepsy. It requires a pacemaker-like device to be implanted in a patient's chest and wires from it threaded up to the vagus nerve on the left side of his neck. In the normal course of events, this provides an electrical pulse to the vagus nerve for 30 seconds every five minutes.This treatment does not always work, but in some cases where it failed (the number of epileptic seizures experienced by a patient remaining the same), that patient nevertheless reported feeling much better after receiving the implant. This secondary effect led to trials for treating depression and, in 2005, America's Food and Drug Administration approved the therapy for depression that fails to respond to all conventional treatments, including drugs and psychotherapy.Not only does the treatment work, but its effects appear to be long lasting. A study led by Charles Conway of Saint Louis University in Missouri, and presented to a recent meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, has found that 70% of patients who are better after one year stay better after two years as well.The technique builds on a procedure called deep-brain stimulation, in which electrodes are implanted deep into the white matter of patients' brains and used to “reboot” faulty neural circuitry. Such an operation is a big undertaking, requiring a full day of surgery and carrying a risk of the patient suffering a stroke. Only a small number of people have been treated this way. In contrast, the device that stimulates the vagus nerve can be implanted in 45 minutes without a stay in hospital.The trouble is that vagus-nerve stimulation can take a long time to produce its full beneficial effect. According to Dr Conway, scans taken using a technique called positron-emission tomography show significant changes in brain activity starting three months after treatment begins. The changes are similar to the improvements seen in patientswho undergo other forms of antidepression treatment. The brain continues to change over the following 21 months. Dr Conway says that patients should be told that the antidepressant effects could be slow in coming.However, Richard Selway of King's College Hospital, London, found that his patients' moods improved just weeks after the implant. Although brain scans are useful in determining the longevity of the treatment, Mr Selway notes that visible changes in the brain do not necessarily correlate perfectly with changes in mood.Nobody knows why stimulating the vagus nerve improves the mood of depressed patients, but Mr Selway has a theory. He believes that the electrical stimulation causes a region in the brain stem called the locus caeruleus (Latin, ironically, for “blue place”) to flood the brain with norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter implicated in alertness, concentration and motivation—that is, the mood states missing in depressed patients. Whatever the mechanism, for the depressed a therapy that is relatively safe and long lasting is rare cause for cheer.The shape of things to comeHow tomorrow's nuclear power stations will differ from today'sTHE agency in charge of promoting nuclear power in America describes a new generation of reactors that will be “highly economical” with “enhanced safety”, that “minimise wastes” and will prove “proliferation resistant”. No doubt they will bake a mean apple pie, too.Unfortunately, in the world of nuclear energy, fine words are not enough. America got away lightly with its nuclear accident. When the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania overheated in 1979 very little radiation leaked, and there were no injuries. Europe was not so lucky. The accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986 killed dozens immediately and has affected (sometimes fatally) the health of tens of thousands at the least. Even discounting the association of nuclear power with nuclear weaponry, people have good reason to be suspicious of claims that reactors are safe.Yet political interest in nuclear power is reviving across the world, thanks in part to concerns about global warming and energy security. Already, some 441 commercial reactorsoperate in 31 countries and provide 17% of the planet's electricity, according to America's Department of Energy. Until recently, the talk was of how to retire these reactors gracefully. Now it is of how to extend their lives. In addition, another 32 reactors are being built, mostly in India, China and their neighbours. These new power stations belong to what has been called the third generation of reactors, designs that have been informed by experience and that are considered by their creators to be advanced. But will these new stations really be safer than their predecessors?Clearly, modern designs need to be less accident prone. The most important feature of a safe design is that it “fails safe”. Fo r a reactor, this means that if its control systems stop working it shuts down automatically, safely dissipates the heat produced by the reactions in its core, and stops both the fuel and the radioactive waste produced by nuclear reactions from escaping by keeping them within some sort of containment vessel. Reactors that follow such rules are called “passive”. Most modern designs are passive to some extent and some newer ones are truly so. However, some of the genuinely passive reactors are also likely to be moreexpensive to run.Nuclear energy is produced by atomic fission. A large atom (usually uranium or plutonium) breaks into two smaller ones, releasing energy and neutrons. The neutrons then trigger further break-ups. And so on. If this “chain reaction” can be controlled, the energy released can be used to boil water, produce steam and drive a turbine that generates electricity. If it runs away, the result is a meltdown and an accident (or, in extreme circumstances, a nuclear explosion—though circumstances are never that extreme in a reactor because the fuel is less fissile than the material in a bomb). In many new designs the neutrons, and thus the chain reaction, are kept under control by passing them through water to slow them down. (Slow neutrons trigger more break ups than fast ones.) This water is exposed to a pressure of about 150 atmospheres—a pressure that means it remains liquid even at high temperatures. When nuclear reactions warm the water, its density drops, and the neutrons passing through it are no longer slowed enough to trigger further reactions. That negative feedback stabilises the reaction rate. Can business be cool?Why a growing number of firms are taking global warming seriouslyRUPERT MURDOCH is no green activist. But in Pebble Beach later this summer, the annual gathering of executivesof Mr Murdoch's News Corporation—which last year led to a dramatic shift in the media conglomerate's attitude tothe internet—will be addressed by several leading environmentalists, including a vice-president turned climatechangemovie star. Last month BSkyB, a British satellite-television company chaired by Mr Murdoch and run by hisson, James, declared itself “carbon-neutral”, having taken various steps to cut or offset its discharges of carboninto the atmosphere.The army of corporate greens is growing fast. Late last year HSBC became the first big bank to announce that itwas carbon-neutral, joining other financial institutions, including Swiss Re, a reinsurer, and Goldman Sachs, aninvestment bank, in waging war on climate-warming gases (of which carbon dioxide is the main culprit). Last yearGeneral Electric (GE), an industrial powerhouse, launched its “Ecomagination” strategy, aiming to cut its outputofgreenhouse gases and to invest heavily in clean (ie, carbon-free) technologies. In October Wal-Mart announced aseries of environmental schemes, including doubling the fuel-efficiency of its fleet of vehicles within a decade.Tesco and Sainsbury, two of Britain's biggest retailers, are competing fiercely to be the greenest. And on June 7thsome leading British bosses lobbied Tony Blair for a more ambitious policy on climate change, even if that involvesharsher regulation.The greening of business is by no means universal, however. Money from Exxon Mobil, Ford and General Motorshelped pay for television advertisements aired recently in America by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, with thedaft slogan “Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution; we call it life”. Besides, environmentalist critics say, some firmsa re engaged in superficial “greenwash” to boost the image of essentially climate-hurting businesses. Take BP, themost prominent corporate advocate of action on climate change, with its “Beyond Petroleum” ad campaign, highprofileinvestments in green energy, and even a “carbon calculator” on its website that helps consumers measuretheirpersonal “carbon footprint”, or overall emissions of carbon. Yet, critics complain, BP's recent record profits arelargely thanks to sales of huge amounts of carbon-packed oil and gas.On the other hand, some free-market thinkers see the support of firms for regulation of carbon as the latestattempt at “regulatory capture”, by those who stand to profit from new rules. Max Schulz of the ManhattanInstitute, a conservative think tan k, notes darkly that “Enron was into pushing the idea of climate change, becauseit was good for its business”.Others argue that climate change has no more place in corporate boardrooms than do discussions of other partisanpolitical issues, such as Darfur or gay marriage. That criticism, at least, is surely wrong. Most of the corporateconverts say they are acting not out of some vague sense of social responsibility, or even personal angst, butbecause climate change creates real business risks and opportunities—from regulatory compliance to insuringclients on flood plains. And although these concerns vary hugely from one company to the next, few firms can besure of remaining unaffected.Testing timesResearchers are working on ways to reduce the need for animal experiments, but new laws mayincrease the number of experiments neededIN AN ideal world, people would not perform experiments on animals. For the people, they are expensive. For theanimals, they are stressful and often painful.That ideal world, sadly, is still some way away. People need new drugs and vaccines. They want protection fromthe toxicity of chemicals. The search for basic scientific answers goes on. Indeed, the European Commission isforging ahead with proposals that will increase the number of animal experiments carried out in the EuropeanUnion, by requiring toxicity tests on every chemical approved for use within the union's borders in the past 25years.Already, the commission has identified 140,000 chemicals that have not yet been tested. It wants 30,000 of theseto be examined right away, and plans to spend between €4 billion-8 billion ($5 billion-10 billion) doing so. Thenumber of animals used for toxicity testing in Europe will thus, experts reckon, quintuple from just over 1m ayearto about 5m, unless they are saved by some dramatic advances in non-animal testing technology. At the moment,roughly 10% of European animal tests are for general toxicity, 35% for basic research, 45% for drugs andvaccines, and the remaining 10% a variety of uses such as diagnosing diseases.Animal experimentation will therefore be around for some time yet. But the hunt for substitutes continues, and lastweekend the Middle European Society for Alternative Methods to Animal Testing met in Linz, Austria, to reviewprogress.A good place to start finding alternatives for toxicity tests is the liver—the organ responsible for breaking toxicchemicals down into safer molecules that can then be excreted. Two firms, one large and one small, told themeeting how they were using human liver cells removed incidentally during surgery to test various substances forlong-term toxic effects.PrimeCyte, the small firm, grows its cells in cultures over a few weeks and doses them regularly with the substanceunder investigation. The characteristics of the cellsare carefully monitored, to look for changes in theirmicroanatomy.Pfizer, the big firm, also doses its cultures regularly, but rather than studying individual cells in detail, it counts cellnumbers. If the number of cells in a culture changes after a sample is added, that suggests the chemical inquestion is bad for the liver.In principle, these techniques could be applied to any chemical. In practice, drugs (and, in the case of PrimeCyte,food supplements) are top of the list. But that might change if the commission has its way: those140,000screenings look like a lucrative market, although nobody knows whether the new tests will be ready for use by2009, when the commission proposes that testing should start.Other tissues, too, can be tested independently of animals. Epithelix, a small firm in Geneva, has developed anartificial version of the lining of the lungs. According to Huang Song, one of Epithelix's researchers, thefirm'scultured cells have similar microanatomy to those found in natural lung linings, and respond in the same way tovarious chemical messengers. Dr Huang says that theycould be used in long-term toxicity tests of airbornechemicals and could also help identify treatments for lung diseases.The immune system can be mimicked and tested, too. ProBioGen, a company based in Berlin, is developing anartificial human lymph node which, it reckons, could have prevented the near-disastrous consequences of a drugtrial held in Britain three months ago, in which (despite the drug having passed animal tests) six men sufferedmultiple organ failure and nearly died. The drug the men were given made their immune systems hyperactive.Such a response would, the firm's scientists reckon, have been identified by their lymph node, which is made fromcells that provoke the immune system into a response. ProBioGen's lymph node could thus work better than animaltesting.Another way of cutting the number of animal experiments would be tochange the way that vaccines are tested, according to CoenraadHendriksen of the Netherlands Vaccine Institute. At the moment, allbatches of vaccine are subject to the same battery of tests. DrHendriksen argues that this is over-rigorous. When new vaccine culturesare made,belt-and-braces tests obviously need to be applied. But if abatch of vaccine is derived from an existing culture, he suggests that itneed be tested only to make sure it is identical to the batch from which itis derived. That would require fewer test animals.All this suggests that though there is still some way to go before drugs,vaccines and other substances can be tested routinely on cells ratherthan live animals, useful progress is being made. What is harder to see ishow the use of animals might be banished from fundamental research.Anger managementTo one emotion, men are more sensitive than women MEN are notoriously insensitive to the emotional world around them. At least, that is the stereotype peddled by athousand women's magazines. And a study by two researchers at the University of Melbourne, inAustralia,confirms that men are, indeed, less sensitive to emotion than women, with one important and suggestiveexception. Men are acutely sensitive to the anger of other men.Mark Williams and Jason Mattingley, whose study hasjust been published in Current Biology, looked at the way aperson's sex affects his or her response to emotionally charged facial expressions. People from all cultures agreeon what six basic expressions of emotion look like. Whether the face before you is expressing anger, disgust, fear,joy, sadness or surprise seems to be recognised universally—which suggests that the expressions involved areinnate, rather than learned.Dr Williams and Dr Mattingley showed the participants in their study photographs of these emotional expressions inmixed sets of either four or eight. They asked the participants to look for a particular sort of expression, andmeasured the amount of time it took them to find it. The researchers found, in agreement with previous studies,that both men and women identified angry expressions most quickly. But they also found that anger was morequickly identified on a male face than a female one.Moreover, most participants could find an angry face just as quickly when it was mixed in a group of eightphotographs as when it was part of a group of four. That was in stark contrast to the other five sorts ofexpression,which took more time to find when they had to be sorted from a larger group. This suggests that something in thebrain is attuned to picking out angry expressions, and that it is especially concerned about angry men. Also, thishighly tuned ability seems more important to males than females, since the two researchers found that men pickedout the angry expressions faster than women did, even though women were usually quicker than men to recognizeevery other sort of facial expression.Dr Williams and Dr Mattingley suspect the reason for this is that being able to spot an angry individual quickly hasa survival advantage—and, since anger is more likely to turn into lethal violence in men than in women, the abilityto spot angry males quickly is particularly valuable.As to why men are more sensitive to anger than women, it is presumably because they are far more likely to getkilled by it. Most murders involve men killing other men—even today the context of homicide is usually aspontaneous dispute over status or sex.The ability to spot quickly that an alpha male is in a foul mood would thus have great survival value. It wouldallowthe sharp-witted time to choose appeasement, defence or possibly even pre-emptive attack. And, if it is right, thisstudy also confirms a lesson learned by generations of bar-room tough guys and schoolyard bullies: if you wantattention, get angry.The shareholders' revoltA turning point in relations between company owners and bosses?SOMETHING strange has been happening this year at company annual meetings in America:shareholders have been voting decisively against the recommendations of managers. Until now, mostshareholders have, like so many sheep, routinely voted in accordance with the advice of the people theyemploy to run the company. This year managers have already been defeated at some 32 companies,including household names such as Boeing, ExxonMobil and General Motors.This shareholders' revolt has focused entirely on one issue: the method by which members of the boardof directors are elected. Shareholder resolutions on other subjects have mostly been defeated, as usual.The successful resolutionscalled for directors to be elected by majority voting, instead of by thetraditional method of “plurality”—which in practice meant that only votes cast in favour were counted,and that a single vote for a candidate would be enough to get him elected.Several companies, led by Pfizer, a drug giant, saw defeat looming and pre-emptively adopted a formalmajority-voting policy that was weaker than in the shareholder resolution. This required any director whofailed to secure a majority of votes to tender his resignation to the board, which would then be free todecide whether or not to accept it. Under the shareholder resolution, any candidate failing to secure amajority of the votes cast simply would not be elected. Intriguingly, the shareholder resolution wasdefeated at four-fifths of the firms that adopted a Pfizer-style majority voting rule, whereas it succeedednearly nine times out of ten at firms retaining the plurality rule.Unfortunately for shareholders, their victories may prove illusory, as the successful resolutions wereall“precatory”—meaning that they merely advised management on the course of action preferredbyshareholders, but did not force managers to do anything. Several resolutions that tried to imposemajority voting on firms by changing their bylaws failed this year.Even so, wise managers should voluntarily adopt majority voting, according to Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen &Katz, a Wall Street law firm that has generally helped managers resist increases in shareholder power butnow expects majority voting eventually to “become universal”. It advises that, at the very least,managers should adopt the Pfizer model, if only to avoid becoming the subject of even greater scrutinyfrom corporate-governance activists. Some firms might choose to go further, as Dell and Intel have donethis year, and adopt bylaws requiring majority voting.Shareholders may have been radicalised by the success last year of a lobbying effort by managersagainst a proposal from regulators to make it easier for shareholders to put up candidates in boardelections. It remains to be seen if theywill be back for more in 2007. Certainly, some of the activistshareholders behind this year's resolutions have big plans. Where new voting rules are in place, they plancampaigns to vote out the chairman of the compensationcommittee at any firm that they think overpaysthe boss. If the 2006 annual meeting was unpleasant for managers, next year's could be far worse.Intangible opportunitiesCompanies are borrowing against their copyrights, trademarks and patentsNOT long ago, the value of companies resided mostly in things you could see and touch. Today it liesincreasingly in intangible assets such as the McDonald's name, the patent for Viagra and the rights toSpiderman. Baruch Lev, a finance professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, puts theimplied value of intangibles on American companies' balance sheets at about $6 trillion, or two-thirds ofthe total. Much of this consists of intellectual property, the collective name for copyrights, trademarksand patents. Increasingly, companies and their clever bankers are using these assets to raise cash.The method of choice is securitisation, the issuing of bonds based on the various revenues thrown off byintellectual property. Late last month Dunkin' Brands, owner of Dunkin' Donuts, a snack-bar chain, raised$1.7billion by selling bonds backed by, among other things, the royalties it will receive from itsfranchisees. The three private-equity firms that acquired Dunkin' Brands a few months ago have used thecash to repay the money they borrowed to buy the chain. This is the biggest intellectual-propertysecuritisation by far, says Jordan Yarett of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a law firm that hasworked on many such deals.Securitisations of intellectual property can be based on revenues from copyrights, trademarks (such aslogos) or patents. The best-known copyright deal was the issue in 1997 of $55m-worth of “Bowie Bonds”supported by the future sales of music by David Bowie, a British rock star. Bonds based on the films ofDreamWorks, Marvel comic books and the stories of John Steinbeck have also been sold. As well asDunkin' Brands, several restaurant chains and fashion firms have issued bonds backed by logos andbrands.Intellectual-property deals belong to a class known as operating-asset securitisations. These differ fromstandard securitisations of future revenues, such as bonds backed by the payments on a 30-yearmortgage or a car loan, in that theborrower has to make his asset work. If investors are to recoup theirmoney, the assets being securitised must be “actively exploited”, says Mr Yarett: DreamWorks mustcontinue to churn out box-office hits.The market for such securitisations is still small. Jay Eisbruck, of Moody's, a rating agency, reckons thataround $10 billion-worth of bonds ar e outstanding. But there is “big potential,” he says, pointing out thatlicensing patented technology generates $100 billion a year and involves thousands of companies.Raising money this way can make sense not only for clever private-equity firms, but also for companieswith low (or no) credit ratings that cannot easily tap the capital markets or with few tangible assets ascollateral for bank loans. Some universities have joined in, too. Yale built a new medical complex withsome of the roughly $100m it raised securitising patent royalties from Zerit, an anti-HIV drug.It may be harder for investors to decide whether such deals are worth their while. They are, after all,highly complex and riskier than standard securitisations. The most obvious risk is that the investorscannot be sure that the assets。

44Journal of Marketing Vol.73 (July 2009),44–63©2009,American Marketing AssociationISSN:0022-2429 (print),1547-7185 (electronic)Michael A.Wiles & Anna DanielovaThe Worth of Product Placement in Successful Films:An Event StudyAnalysisAs a result of the diminishing effectiveness of broadcast advertising, firms are increasingly turning to product placements in films and television to promote their products.A growing stream of product placement research has conducted surveys of consumer and practitioner views on the practice and experiments to gauge product placement’s impact on brand awareness, attitudes, and purchase intent.However, there is no evidence of whether firms’investments in film product placements are worthwhile.The event study of 126 product placements in successful films during 2002 reveals a mean cumulative abnormal return of .89% during the film’s opening,indicating that product placement in a successful film is associated with positive movements in firm stock prices.Cross-sectional analysis of the returns offers new insight into how product, film, and execution factors influence the placement’s worth.The authors find that placement abnormal returns are enhanced by tie-in advertising and brand equity but are inhibited by audience absorption, critical acclaim, and violent film content.Placement modality,character associations, and blatancy also significantly affect the placement’s value.Keywords :product placement, brand integration, event study, movies, abnormal returnsMichael A.Wiles is Assistant Professor of Marketing, W.P .Carey School of Business, Arizona State University (e-mail:michael.wiles@).Anna Danielova is Assistant Professor of F inance, DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University (e-mail:adaniel@mcmaster.ca).The authors thank Neil Morgan, Rebecca Slotegraaf, Rosann Spiro, and the four anonymous JM reviewers for their thoughtful comments.The authors also greatly appreciate the suggestions of Mark Houston, Neal Galpin,Jennifer Klett, Adam Duhachek, Alina Sorescu, and Daniel Smith on prior versions of the article, as well as the generous support of Jonlee Andrews and the Center for Brand Leadership at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University.The shareholder returns to marketing actions and resource deployments are a primary concern of schol-ars and firms (Rust et al. 2004). As one of the most visible areas of marketing activity and the largest item of marketing spending in most firms, advertising has been an area of particular interest to researchers and managers. Sev-eral empirical studies of the advertising–performance rela-tionship have provided strong evidence that firms’tradi-tional advertising communications generate positive wealth for shareholders (Conchar, Crask, and Zinkhan 2005).However, because of growing consumer resistance to tradi-tional broadcast advertising, firms are increasingly turning to alternative ways to reach consumers and enhance the value of their brands (Elliot 2008; Keller 2001). An alterna-tive that has received particular interest among many firms is product placement in television and films.Product placement (also sometimes referred to as “brand integration”) is the inclusion of branded products or identifiers through audio or visual means within mass-media programming (Balasubramanian 1994). Film product placement originated in the 1940s, but only in the past decade have firms employed it as a key marketing tactic (Karrh, McKee, and Pardun 2003). Firms paid $722 million in fees, free products, and promotional support for film product placement in 2005, and by 2010, spending on film placement is predicted to surge to $1.8 billion (PQ Media 2006). In general, fees for individual placements are not disclosed, but firms are known to have contributed $25 mil-lion toward the production cost of Minority Report to show-case their products and services (Grossberg 2002). Cadbury Schweppes and Mitsubishi have each spent tens of millions of dollars promoting film placements, and V olkswagen will spend $200 million on fees and promotion to be integrated into NBC Universal’s films and television programs (Finni-gan 2002; Ives 2005; Linnet and Halliday 2003).However, in contrast to traditional broadcast advertising activities, the literature reveals little evidence on whether these investments pay off (Balasubramanian, Karrh, and Patwardhan 2006), and firms are either unable or unwilling to make such assessments (Russell and Belch 2005). Given the increasing pressures to hold marketing expenditures accountable (Day and Fahey 1988; Luo and Donthu 2006;Rust et al. 2004) and managers’evident uncertainty about the legitimacy and role of film product placement in their marketing strategies, objective assessments that calibrate the contribution of film placement to firms’expected cash flows and profits are urgently needed. To address this important knowledge gap, this article addresses the funda-mental question of the economic worth of placement in films.We investigate the worth of product placements in films through an event study. Event studies are commonly used to assess the returns to a marketing action because it is extremely difficult to control for all the other concomitant factors that influence firm revenue and profits (Geyskens, Gielens, and Dekimpe 2002). E vent studies allow the event’s unique contribution to the firm’s future profit per-formance to be isolated and measured (Hyman and Mathur 2005). Examining the highest-grossing movies in 2002, we show that product placements in successful films are associ-ated with abnormal returns for shareholders. This provides the first empirical evidence to support the value of film product placement. In addition, we advance theoretical understanding by constructing a comprehensive model of the product and program factors that affect film placement worth, and we test this model using a cross-sectional analy-sis of the abnormal returns. This provides important new insights into which placement strategies maximize share-holder value.We organize the remainder of the article as follows: After reviewing the gaps that hinder our understanding of the returns to product placements in successful films, we integrate theory on the marketing–finance interface with insights from the advertising response and media effects lit-erature streams to develop hypotheses on how product and film factors affect placement worth. We then review our data collection, and after presenting the results of the event study and the cross-sectional analysis, we discuss our find-ings. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of the study.Literature Review Considerable research indicates that firms’advertising and marketing communication decisions have strong influences on firms’stock prices. One perspective holds that advertis-ing indicates the availability of discretionary firm resources and firm financial solvency (Erickson and Jacobson 1992), but spending on advertising is more commonly viewed as an investment in intangible firm assets, shaping the prospective size and vulnerability of the firm’s future cash flows (Srivastava, Shervani, and Fahey 1998). Advertising is also believed to raise the firm’s capital market visibility, which can broaden the firm’s investor base, improve liquid-ity, and lower the firm’s systematic risk and cost of capital (Grullon, Kanatas, and Weston 2004; McAlister, Srinivasan, and Kim 2007). Studies of firms’aggregate advertising expenditures have found that increased levels of advertising and related brand-building activities are associated with enhanced cash flows and market values (Conchar, Crask, and Zinkhan 2005). However, the returns to individual ad campaigns are more variable (Agrawal and Kamakura 1995; Tellis et al. 2005; Wiles 2007).E vidence that alternative ways of enhancing product exposure are worthwhile is still emerging. The results from event studies suggest that major-league sports and Olympic sponsorships enhance firms’stock prices (e.g., Cornwell, Pruitt, and Clark 2005), but the wisdom of less salient com-munication alternatives, such as product placement, remains unclear. Investors’judgments of the worth of a firm’s mar-keting action are conditioned by the action’s perceived con-sumer impact (Lane and Jacobson 1995). Therefore, the economic return to product placement in successful films is inextricably connected to the placement’s expected effects on consumers.Scholars have primarily pointed to McCracken’s (1989) meaning-transfer model as a mechanism that can explain consumers’response to placements. McCracken suggests that the use of celebrity endorsers is effective because celebrities are endowed with symbolic meaning that is passed on to the product through its association with the celebrity. In much the same way, popular entertainment has rich symbolic meaning that can be transferred to the placed product (Russell 2002). Consumers connect the film world to their own, mapping their aspirations onto the products placed in the film (DeLorme and Reid 1999), which in turn influences attitudes and consumption norms (Pechmann and Shih 1999). For these reasons, film and television product placements have been found to enhance brand awareness, attitudes, and purchase intent (e.g., D’Astous and Chartier 2000; Russell 2002). Prominent placements capture atten-tion and enhance these intermediate consumer outcomes (e.g., Gupta and Lord 1998), but the enhancing effects of other execution factors, such as modality and plot connec-tion, have received less consistent support (Law and Braun 2000; Russell 2002), clouding knowledge of which place-ments are valuable.Therefore, our review suggests that several gaps remain in the understanding of film product placement. Because there is no direct evidence connecting film placement to increases in firm cash flows and stock price performance, it remains unclear whether film placement is indeed a wise practice. Prior placement research has also paid little atten-tion to how film characteristics affect placement outcomes. This oversight is surprising, given the substantial literature on how program factors affect ad effectiveness (Feltham and Arnold 1994). Because it is also not apparent how product-level factors affect placement value and because prior research has not simultaneously controlled for each of the different execution dimensions, firms have little knowl-edge about which placement opportunities to pursue. Thus, there is a need for research that can discern the worth of film placement and that considers simultaneously the effects of product, film, and execution factors. Our event study approach is uniquely suited to filling this gap.Conceptual FrameworkFilm placement worth is derived from the placement’s abil-ity to influence shareholder value positively, and there are several hypotheses that can offer a credible mechanism by which product placement information affects investor deci-sions. First, the price pressure hypothesis states that public attention (Barber and Odean 2008; Meschke 2004) or public mood and enthusiasm (Fehle, Tsyplakov, and Zdorovtsov 2005; Huberman and Regev 2001) alone can move stock trading volume and prices. Second, the investor recognition hypothesis, originally developed by Merton (1987), highlights the role of increased publicity and firm awareness on investor trading behavior. According to thisProduct Placement in Successful Films / 45view, increased visibility for a firm can draw investor atten-tion, induce some of these investors to follow the firm, and motivate these investors to become new shareholders, thus leading to a greater ownership base of the stock and greater liquidity (Grullon, Kanatas, and Weston 2004). Similarly, scholars have found that increased publicity for initial pub-lic offerings attracts additional retail investors to such offer-ings and enhances offer price valuations (Cook, Kieschnick, and Van Vess 2007). Third, the investor sentiment hypothe-sis posits that sentimental investors may drive up the rela-tive demand for shares of the firms that have the vector of principal characteristics that is compatible with their senti-ment (Baker and Wurgler 2006).Perhaps more important, however, film placement infor-mation can also be expected to affect stock prices by directly changing investor expectations regarding the firm’s future financial performance, and thus there would also likely be information-based trading in response to the film placement event. Because the firm’s stock price reflects the discounted value of the firm’s expected cash flows, market-ing activities that accelerate and enhance future cash flows have the ability to affect shareholder value positively (i.e., the stock price effect) (Anderson, Fornell, and Mazvan-cheryl 2004; Gruca and Rego 2005; Rao and Bharadwaj 2008). Financial markets are forward looking; thus, if the film placement has positive implications for the firm’s prospects, the firm’s market value will shift to reflect these anticipated changes in the firm’s financial performance before these changes actually occur. By building intangible market-based assets, firm marketing actions have the poten-tial to shape prospective cash flows and, thus, the firm’s market value by (1) increasing cash flow levels, (2) acceler-ating cash flow timing, (3) reducing cash flow vulnerability, and (4) increasing the firm’s residual value (Fornell et al. 2006; Srivastava, Shervani, and Fahey 1998). Evidence sug-gests that film product placement can facilitate firm perfor-mance in each of these ways.How Film Product Placement Positively Shapes Expected Future Cash FlowsFirst, there are strong reasons for investors to expect that film product placement enhances future cash flow levels. Ample evidence indicates that product placements increase consumer awareness and enhance brand attitudes (e.g., D’Astous and Chartier 2000; Gupta and Lord 1998). Thus, film product placement has the potential to improve brand equity, and improvements in brand equity have long been associated with increased consumer demand and increases in cash flow levels (Aaker and Day 1974; Conchar, Crask, and Zinkhan 2005). E nhanced brand associations can also increase the perceived value of the firm’s offering and improve customer satisfaction, further facilitating cash flows (e.g., Gruca and Rego 2005; Rust, Zahorik, and Kein-ingham 1995). For these reasons, strong links between brand enhancement and improvements in firm market value have often been observed (Aaker and Jacobson 2001; Lane and Jacobson 1995).Second, film placements can enhance firm market val-ues by accelerating the expected timing of the firm’s cash flows. Placements have been found to increase purchase intent (Gould, Gupta, and Grabner-Krauter 2000); thus, placements can lead to impulse purchases, which can accel-erate the receipt of cash flows. A placement’s ability to stimulate new product uses and applications may also fur-ther facilitate investors’expectations of firm cash flow tim-ing. Placements are especially effective in encouraging new types of product consumption because placements are aspi-rational and can set consumption norms (Russell 1998).Third, film product placement has the potential to enhance firm market value by reducing the expected vulner-ability of the firm’s cash flows. Consumers’connections with films can create strong loyalty for the products in the film, creating substantial switching costs. Placements can also affect consumption trends and styles for years after the film’s release (Yorks 1989). Ford’s use of Steve McQueen in a 2005 Mustang commercial further suggests that film placements can be an enduring source of positive brand associations and equity.Finally, film product placement can be expected to expand the firm’s customer base, increasing the firm’s residual value. The significant increase in sales of Red Stripe after The Firm and the Mini Cooper after The Italian Job is testament to the potential of film placement to attract new customers to brands. Moreover, film placements are an attractive way to target specific audiences, such as teenagers, and they allow firms to expose their products to consumers who would not normally pay attention to the brand. For example, Cadillac placed its cars in The Matrix Reloaded to reach a younger audience.In summary, extensive theory and evidence suggest that investors should react positively to film placement. Place-ments should lead investors to develop positive expectations for future financial performance because placements can lead to improvements in brand associations and loyalty that can accelerate and enhance the firm’s cash flows. For these reasons, we posit the following:H1: Film product placement is positively associated with a change in firm market value.Following advertising response models (MacInnis and Jaworski 1989), we assert that the worth of a film product placement is related to product, film, and execution factors (see Figure 1), which affect the likely consumer and investor response to the placement. Because of the ample research on the execution factors, we incorporate these fac-tors into our framework as controls.Product and Film Determinants of Placement WorthTie-in advertising. Tie-in advertising occurs when the firm promotes a product’s appearance in a film before the film’s release. First, a reason cash flow levels due to the placement are enhanced is that tie-in advertisements facili-tate consumer processing of the placement. Prior exposure to a concept increases the concept’s accessibility (i.e., Hig-gins and King 1981), improving people’s ability to identify the concept in visually complex environments. Therefore, tie-in advertisements increase the likelihood that consumers will notice the placement in the film.46/ Journal of Marketing,July 2009FIGURE 1A Conceptual Model for the Worth of Product Placements in Successful FilmsSecond, placements supported by tie-in advertising campaigns are worth more because the tie-in campaign strengthens consumers’meaning transfer from the film to the product. Consumers are more likely to draw film–product connections because the advertising and its cost highlight the placement’s significance to the firm. The expense and publicity of the tie-in campaign increase the placement’s diagnosticity (Kirmani 1990), elevating the importance of the placement in consumers’network of brand associations. Tie-in advertising may also create con-textual priming effects (Yi 1993), which further facilitate meaning transfer.Third, the expenditure of financial and organizational resources on the tie-in advertising also signals the place-ment’s strategic importance to the firm. The tie-in campaign indicates the priority that the firm places on leveraging its involvement with the film, suggesting that the firm consid-ers the film’s associations vital additions to the brand. Investors may also respond more favorably because of the potential communication synergies of the tie-in campaign.In summary, tie-in advertising directs consumer atten-tion to the placement and thus enhances film–product meaning transfer and bolsters film–product connections. For these reasons, we expect the following:H2: The worth of product placement in successful films is pos-itively related to the presence of tie-in advertising.Brand equity. Familiar, favorably regarded brands have high brand equity (Keller 1993), and the returns from film product placement should be positively related to brand equity for three primary reasons. First, consumers’motiva-tion and ability to process the placement increase when the placement is for a strong, familiar brand rather than a weak, unfamiliar brand. Attention in cluttered visual environments focuses on objects with easily accessible attitudes, and con-sumers are more motivated to pay attention to advertise-ments for well-known brands (Tellis 1988). As a result, advertisements for well-known brands enjoy higher levels of recall, and well-known brands are less affected by competitive inference (Kent and Allen 1994). Thus, place-ments for high-equity brands are worth more because these brands draw attention, lengthening the opportunity for meaning transfer.Second, evidence also indicates that brand equity may enhance the mapping process. Because of consistency con-cerns, positive information is weighed more heavily when the brand is familiar and well regarded (Ahluwalia 2002). Thus, the mapping of the film onto the product occurs more easily for high-equity brands, enhancing the increases in demand and cash flows from the placement.Third, placements for high-equity brands may convey more strategic information to financial markets. The high-equity brand’s high familiarity suggests that the primary intent of the placement is not merely to increase brand exposure but also to deepen and enhance brand associa-tions. Therefore, investors are likely to infer greater strate-gic significance to these brand placements. For example, the placement of Mercedes in Men in Black II signified new emphasis on the fun of driving a Mercedes, a shift to enhance the brand’s appeal with younger consumers. Thus, brand equity expands the returns from film placement because it leads to favorable consumer processing and toProduct Placement in Successful Films / 47positive inferences about the brand’s future strategic direction.H3: The worth of product placement in successful films is pos-itively related to brand equity.Audience absorption. Theories from multiple research streams suggest that the level of audience absorption affects consumers’motivation and ability to attend to placements. Media processing models from psychology contend that people process the narratives in books and films by becom-ing absorbed in and transported into the story (Dal Cin, Zanna, and Fong 2004). Absorption is a convergent process in which attention is focused on understanding the events in the narrative, leaving little motivation and ability for other tasks. People who are absorbed lose themselves in the story, thus limiting placement awareness.The relationship between advertising effectiveness and program involvement suggests additional evidence for the inhibiting effect of absorption. Most of this research has examined the effects of program involvement in situations, such as radio and television commercials, in which the pro-gram and the advertisement are presented sequentially (Lord and Burnkrant 1993). With placements, however, the entertainment and commercial messages are presented con-currently. When the advertisement is presented at the same time as the entertaining content, program involvement inhibits attention to the advertisements (Norris and Colman 1992; Wang and Calder 2006), thus limiting the opportunity for meaning transfer.In summary, these streams converge on the idea that placements in absorbing films receive less favorable con-sumer processing. Therefore, investors should react less positively to placements in absorbing films.H4: The worth of product placement in successful films is negatively related to film absorption.Critical acclaim. Though counterintuitive, three argu-ments suggest that placements in critically acclaimed films are less valuable to the firm. First, evidence suggests that consumers become irritated when advertisements impede consumption goals (E dwards, Li, and Lee 2002). Product placements in critically acclaimed films hinder consumers’attainment of their artistic consumption goals (Holbrook and Hirschman 1982) because the placements are commer-cial messages that disrupt their experience of the film. Thus, consumers become upset and angry when they encounter placements in critically praised films (DeLorme and Reid 1999), which dampens brand evaluations.Second, because consumers expect the high art experi-ence to be free from advertising persuasion tactics (Charters 2006), the appearance of placements in acclaimed films may also disconfirm expectations. Disconfirmation leads to increased elaboration and lower evaluations of the dis-crepant product when the novelty is not appreciated (Camp-bell and Goodstein 2001). These negative reactions to the placement may be exacerbated if the artistic processing goals increase the irrelevance of the discrepancy, further lowering the placement’s worth.Third, there is growing consumer consciousness that certain public artistic goods need to be protected from advertising messages (Klein 1999; Meenaghan and Shipley 1999). Thus, consumers may react negatively to placements in acclaimed films because they believe that these films should be a protected area, free from marketing persuasion tactics. As such, consumers may perceive placements in acclaimed films as inappropriate, thus reducing their worth.In summary, research streams on goal impediment, information expectancy, and marketing tactic appropriate-ness converge on the idea that consumers react less posi-tively to placements in critically acclaimed films. Because consumer anger and annoyance with an advertising tactic are believed to reduce advertising effectiveness (Aaker and Bruzzone 1985), we predict that investors consider place-ments in critically acclaimed films less valuable.H5: The worth of product placement in successful films is negatively related to film critical acclaim.Association with violence. There are two main reasons to suspect that violence in films diminishes placement worth. First, the literature on media violence contends that consumers react to violence in television and films with feelings of hostility, aggression, and anger (Bushman 2005). These negative emotions and associations may be transferred to the placed product (McCracken 1989), thus attenuating placement value. For example, recent studies have found that advertisements embedded in violent televi-sion programs generate lower purchase intentions (Bush-man 2005).The second reason film violence may diminish place-ment worth is related to the inferences consumers draw from the firm’s involvement with the violent film. A product placement functions as an endorsement (Russell 1998), so a placement suggests that the firm approves of the film’s sub-ject matter. If the firm disapproved of the film’s content, it would not have placed the product in the film. For example, airlines refuse placements in films that depict flying in a negative manner. A product placement sends the message that the firm is not bothered by the film’s violence, and thus consumers may lower their opinions of products placed in violent films because of their concerns about film violence and its negative impact on society (Brown and Dacin 1997; Salwen and Dupagne 1999).In summary, we hypothesize that placement worth is negatively related to the level of violence in films. However, young men are less bothered by media violence (Hamilton 1998). This suggests that products that are primarily tar-geted toward consumer segments that do not judge film vio-lence negatively are less harmed by violent content. Although we make no formal prediction, we examine whether product type moderates the impact of violence.H6. The worth of product placement in successful films is neg-atively related to film violence.MethodEvent Study MethodologyWe use the event study methodology to assess the impact of the event’s unexpected information on the firm’s stock price. The efficient market hypothesis asserts that a stock48/ Journal of Marketing,July 2009price reflects all public information about the firm, so only unexpected information can change the price of a stock (Fama et al. 1969). If the new information indicates that the firm will garner higher (lower) future cash flows, the firm’s stock price rises (drops) in reaction to the new information. The stock’s abnormal return—the difference between the expected returns based on general market movement and the actual returns—provides an unbiased estimate of the economic worth of the event (Brown and Warner 1980).E xcellent reviews of the market model approach for esti-mating abnormal returns have appeared recently in the lit-erature (e.g., Srinivasan and Bharadwaj 2004). We use the portfolio method to construct our test statistic due to our event date clustering (Jaffe 1974), and we present details about this test in the Appendix.Information about the company’s film placement is dis-seminated to the market when the film is released, as well as before the event, through firm promotional efforts. This firm publicity can cue investors to the placement—drawing attention to the film—but we assume that the information needed to change investors’beliefs about the firm’s prospects is not available to investors until the film is shown. We validate this assumption in our results.DataBecause Hollywood studios release approximately 200 films each year, we limited our analysis to the most popular films, or the 31 movies in 2002 that made $20 million in the United States during their first weekend, according to . Seven movies had no product place-ments, so our final sample included 24 films.Variable OperationalizationOur event is the appearance of a product in the released film and the circumstances of its appearance because informa-tion about how the product appears (placement execution) and the film context in which it appears (e.g., film violence, audience size) is not available until the film’s release. A visual placement occurs if the product’s name or logo is legibly shown on the screen, and an audio placement occurs if the product is mentioned (Russell 2002). We summarize our measurement of the product, film, and execution factors in Table 1, and we present descriptive statistics and correla-tions in Tables 2and 3.Firm/product factors. We operationalized tie-in adver-tising as whether the firm supported its placement with a promotional advertising campaign, which we identified through a Factiva search. We measured brand equity as the brand’s value in billions of dollars from BusinessWeek’s top 100 global brands in 2002, a valid measure of brand equity (Madden, Fehle, and Fornier 2006). We also controlled for the market value of the firm on the event day, which we determined by multiplying the closing stock price on the event day by the number of shares outstanding.Film factors. To proxy audience absorption, we used the decimal equivalent of the film’s grade from CinemaScore, a market research firm that surveys opening-night audiences about how much they enjoyed the film. Enjoyment is a good proxy for absorption for two reasons. First, theorists assert that one key element of an enjoyable book, or film, is that it is absorbing; it transports people from their mundane reality into a story world (Green, Brock, and Kaufman 2004). Sec-ond, it has been empirically determined that enjoyment is highly correlated with absorption levels (ρ= .77) (Green et al. 2004).We measured critical acclaim as the film’s ME TA-SCORE, which we obtained from , a Web site that aggregates the ratings of approximately 40 film critics. Using this score, we developed an index (0–100) of critical sentiment toward the film. We determined the film’s level of violence, profanity, and sexuality using data from Kids-In-Mind, one of the oldest and most popular film content advisory services. Kids-In-Mind employs trained reviewers who screen for objectionable material and then rate the film’s amount of violence, profanity, and sexuality on a scale ranging from 0 to 10. The organization has no political or religious affiliation; it aims to provide an “objective” account of the level of violence, sex, and pro-fanity in the film, without making value judgments about the age appropriateness of the content (Thompson and Yokota 2004). Kids-In-Mind does not provide a rating for drug content, so we had two independent coders review the films and record the instances of drug use. We included the film’s opening three-day gross in the model to control for the placement’s potential reach. We also included the num-ber of placements in the film for other firms to control for competitive interference from other placements.Execution factors. To account for the idiosyncrasies in placement execution, we captured measures for all execu-tion factors previously found to affect consumers’place-ment processing. The placement’s “plot connection”reflected whether the placement advanced the plot or increased the audience’s understanding of a main character (Russell 2002). To control for placement “modality,” we captured the number of audiovisual placements for the firm in the film. We incorporated the “prominence of the visual placement” by capturing the placement’s time on screen, the time in the background, and the time that the product was the only placement on screen (Gupta and Lord 1998). We captured the “valence of the audio placement” to con-trol for differences in endorsement (Russell and Stern 2006). An audio mention was positive (negative) if it was a favorable (critical) comment about the product. Comments that were neither positive nor negative were considered neutral. However, perfect multicollinearity with plot con-nection prevented positive valence from being included in the analysis. Because of their high correlation with plot connection, we did not include time in background and neutral valence to minimize the potential problems of multicollinearity.We controlled for “star association” because celebrities increase attention, recall, and purchase intent (Agrawal and Kamakura 1995). Actors credited before the film’s title were considered stars (Lippman 2005), and star association was recorded as a binary variable, representing whether the product was touched, held, consumed, or mentioned by the star. We also controlled for “association with a recurrent character,” a character established in a previous film or tele-Product Placement in Successful Films / 49。

有关追星的作文英文Being a fan of a celebrity is like having a secret crush on someone you'll never meet. You admire them from afar, follow their every move, and dream of the day you might actually get to see them in person.I remember the first time I saw my favorite singer in concert. I was so starstruck that I couldn't even speak. It was like a dream come true, and I never wanted the moment to end.Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to actually meet my idol in person. Would I be able to hold a conversation without fainting? Would they be as kind and charming as they seem in interviews? The possibilities are endless, and I can't help but daydream about the moment when our paths might cross.Despite the ups and downs of being a fan, I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. The excitement ofwaiting for a new album to drop, the thrill of attending a concert, and the joy of connecting with other fans onlineall make the experience worth it.At the end of the day, being a fan is all about passion. It's about finding something or someone that brings you joy and excitement, and holding onto that feeling no matter what. So here's to all the fans out there, chasing their dreams and living for the moments that make it all worthwhile.。

明星生活英文作文Living the life of a celebrity is nothing short of extraordinary. The glitz and glamour, the constant attention, and the luxurious lifestyle are all part and parcel of being a star. It's like living in a dream, where every day is filled with excitement and surprises.Imagine waking up in a beautiful mansion, surrounded by pristine gardens and a breathtaking view. The mornings are peaceful, with the soft chirping of birds and the gentle rays of the sun streaming through the windows. It's a serene start to the day, a moment of calm before the storm of activities that lie ahead.As the day progresses, it's time to dive into the world of fashion. The wardrobe is filled with designer clothes, each piece carefully curated to make a statement. From red carpet events to photo shoots, every outfit is a work of art. The stylists and makeup artists work their magic, transforming me into a vision of beauty. It's like being acanvas, waiting to be painted with the colors of creativity.But being a celebrity is not all about the glitz and glamour. It's also about using your platform to make a difference. Whether it's advocating for a cause, raising awareness about social issues, or simply bringing joy to people's lives, celebrities have the power to influence and inspire. It's a responsibility that comes with fame, andone that should never be taken lightly.Of course, there are also the perks of being a star.The parties, the premieres, and the endless invitations to exclusive events. It's a whirlwind of excitement, where every night is a celebration. The paparazzi are always lurking, capturing every moment, but it's all part of the package. After all, what's a star without a little bit of drama?But amidst all the glitz and glamour, it's important to remember that celebrities are human too. Behind the fameand fortune, there are struggles and challenges that we all face. The pressure to always be perfect, the constantscrutiny from the media, and the never-ending demands of the industry. It's a constant balancing act, trying to stay true to oneself while navigating the complexities of stardom.In the end, living the life of a celebrity is a rollercoaster ride. It's a mix of highs and lows, of triumphs and setbacks. But through it all, one thing remains constant – the love and support of the fans. They are the ones who make it all worthwhile, who cheer us on and lift us up when we're feeling down. It's their unwavering support that keeps us going, that reminds us why we do what we do.So, yes, the life of a celebrity is extraordinary. It's a whirlwind of excitement, a journey filled with ups and downs. But at the end of the day, it's the passion for our craft and the love of our fans that make it all worth it.。