Implications
Our central result is that beyond the impact of the firm’s earnings and the general investment climate, product introductions have positive and increasing effects on firm value. In contrast, sales promotions diminish long-term firm value, even though they have positive effects on revenues and (in the short run) on profits. Thus, the investor community rewards new product introductions and punishes discounting beyond the readily observable financial performance of the firm. Table 9 summarizes these findings. Are the reported elasticity economically relevant? Table 10 reports the size of the monetary effects on market capitalization in dollars. New product introductions typically generate tens of millions of dollars of long-term firm value, and often several hundred million dollars (up to $302 million). The reverse is true for promotions, which subtract tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars of firm value, or up to $324 million in our calculations. These amounts are especially great given that both product introduction and sales promotions are not isolated events in the auto industry. They occur relatively frequently and, as such, can account for substantial up or downward movement in auto companies stock prices.