Getting rivals to back off? Biasing sales forecasts to reduce competition

I examine the effect of strategic competition on management sales forecast bias. Strategic complement firms react to a rival’s action by moving in the same direction (e.g., increasing their own sales in response to a rival’s sales increase). Strategic substitute firms react to a rival’s action by moving in the opposite direction. I predict that strategic complement firms will issue pessimistic sales forecasts (i.e., behave less aggressively) and strategic substitute firms will issue optimistic sales forecasts (i.e., behave more aggressively) to induce their respective rivals to compete less aggressively. I find that strategic complement firms issue more pessimistic sales forecasts than strategic substitute firms. I also predict and find that strategic complement (substitute) firms issue more pessimistic (optimistic) forecasts in industries with a greater proportion of firm-specific shocks. In contrast, in industries with a greater proportion of industry-wide shocks, firms competing strongly in strategic complements and substitutes issue more pessimistic forecasts than firms competing weakly in these types.

Grantor dc:publisher

Temple University. Libraries

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Author dc:creator

• Lee, Caroline

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Basu, Sudipta, 1965-
• Byzalov, Dmitri

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Gordon, Elizabeth A. (Associate professor)
• Krishnan, Jagan
• Naveen, Lalitha

• Accounting

Statement dc:rights

• IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12613/6445

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/6445