Interesting Subject Headings For Marketers

I came across the subject Headings below.  Follow the links to find books on marketing and public opinion. Public opinion -- United States. National characteristics, American.  Social psychology -- United States.  Consumption (Economics) -- United States.

The Death of Hollywood and the Politics of Monopoly

Ever notice Hollywood doesn't make creative, adult-oriented films anymore? Sure, there are great. American films for grownups but they tend to be indie.

Wonder why?

Here is one answer by the great writer Matt Stoller:

"Both the Paramount Consent Decrees and the Fin-syn rules were designed to break creative industries into a three-tiered structure: production, distribution, and retailing. Producers were prohibited from vertically integrating into the traditional distribution business. That way, there are fewer conflicts of interest in the content business; producers had to create high quality work, and if they didn’t, distributors could choose to sell someone else’s art. Policy removed power as the mechanism of competition, and emphasized art."

What Do P/E Ratios Really Mean?

Taken from p. 143 of Active Value Investing, the classic book from Vitaliy N. Katsenelson.

P/E (price per earning) refers to the amount of money stock investors are willing to pay for the stock as reflected in its stock price. First, determine how much the company is earning per share. Then check the stock price. Divide the current stock price by the earnings per share number. You have the P/E ratio!

So is a high P/E a good or bad sign? Depends.

A new growth stock will typically show much higher P/E ratios than an established company. Once a company stops growing rapidly, the P/E ratio will actually decline. 

Katsenelson quotes the legendary Benjamin Graham as giving a P/E figure of around 8 as about right for a company with solid fundamentals but low growth.

Katsenelson includes a cool chart on p.143 that shows appropriate levels of P/E in relation to expected levels of growth.

Ad$pender - The Problem of Zero Results

Ad$pender is usually a wonderful database that gives you advertising budgets for categories of products, companies and brands.  You can use the database from off-campus with your regular net ID and password.

HOWEVER, a common problem is building your query and getting no results.

This is because a data point is missing. Instead of n/a in your results, you just get a big fat zero for the whole thing. Through trial and error, you'll have to adjust your query in order to get results.


I'll let AdSpender explain.

What does “There were no results for the report you requested” mean? This means that there was no activity found for the report you ran. This could happen for a number of reasons. For example, the brands included in your report may not have had any activity during the time period you requested, or perhaps dollars or ratings were not yet available for the time period you included in the report. In this situation you should check data availability or change some of your selections before running your report again.

Note: This tutorial is excellent, but it starts with the old library page. AdSpender still works exactly the same - just find Ad$pender here.

Business at the Movies: Margin Call

Margin Call is a great way to understand the beginning of the financial crisis and the financial derivatives that caused it.  Set in a fictionalized Wall Street trading firm, the company math whiz discovers that the company mathematical models are geared to a theory that doesn't match the reality.  The problem is, so many people believed the theory was infallible that the firm could not survive any mistakes because no reserves were set aside (why would you?).

That's the quickest way I know how to describe how derivatives and some of the other mathematical models melted down.

Margin Call features a great cast including Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Simon Baker, Demi Moore and Stanley Tucci, 

Browzine Lets You Visually Browse Journals

Browzine is a mobile device app which allows easy access to Texas State University's academic journals.
Read entire issues of your favorite periodical without keyword searching!

Browzine can be downloaded for free from the Google Play store, Amazon app store, Apple app store, or by following this link http://thirdiron.com/download

Annual Reviews: Bibliographic Essays For Experts

Annual Reviews are a great way to get some background in your topic. They present bibliographic essays aimed at specialists on extremely specialized topics . They are written in a very high level so that's good for graduate students and academic researchers!