Marketing's credibility: A longitudinal investigation of marketing communication productivity and shareholder value

Practitioners and scholars have questioned marketing communication's credibility because it has not been linked to firm shareholder value. Using secondary longitudinal data, the authors show that the impact of marketing communication productivity (MCP) on shareholder value is positive and nonlinear. In particular, the influence of MCP on the forward-looking performances of Tobin's q and stock return is curvilinear with an inverted U shape. The authors also investigate the moderating role of research-and-development investment and competitive intensity. The findings have implications for marketing managers regarding how to model and benchmark MCP and the dangers of blindly improving the productivity of advertising and sales promotion expenditures.