Dr. Saad Alhoqail, Assistant professor of Marketing at College of Business’s paper “When it is Advisable for a Firm to Fire its Marketing Leader” has been accepted in 2015 Winter Marketing Educators’ Conference, the most important & top-ranked conference in marketing around the world. The conference will be hold next week in Texas, USA.
Study’s abstract:
Drawing upon market signaling and contingency theories, I attempt to add to the existent literature on chief marketing officer (CMO) impact by tracking the CMOs’ value on the firm. As its main contribution, this study attempts to answer two main questions: 1) do firms benefit from firing CMOs (how does CMO dismissal impact firm stock return?) and 2) Can this impact varies as a result of firms’ profitability?
Based on real data pooled from the best USA Fortune companies, the findings of this study suggest that announcing a CMO is involuntarily leaving should positively affect firm financial performance (firm stock return). Furthermore, firm experiencing less profitability should realize higher stock return through such announcement more so than a profitable firm. This is the first study to gauge the effect of CMO dismissal. The study of CMOs leaving contributes to the literature in general and to the growing body of CMO literature by 1) ascertaining the effect of CMO leaving and 2) highlighting the difference between the voluntary and involuntary impact on firm financial performance.
