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A Refresher on Marketing ROI

Harvard Business Review

Companies spend a lot on marketing communications. And more fundamentally, does marketing actually work? Marketing ROI analysis can help answer those questions. What is Marketing ROI, and How Do Companies Use It? Avery explains that it is also referred to by its acronym, MROI, or as return on marketing investment (ROMI).

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Should Companies Retain "Strategic" Cash?

Harvard Business Review

This raises the question of whether retaining strategic cash makes economic sense and should be viewed as a legitimate corporate finance tool in today's environment. Strategic cash also can be used to finance long-term reinvestment programs in the business—which is especially valuable to companies in capital-intensive industries (e.g.,

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What U.S. CEOs Should Do with the Money from Corporate Tax Cuts

Harvard Business Review

Our research and experience suggest that many executives underestimate the value of growth, specifically in today’s low-interest rate environment, and are thus missing out on a chance to make their businesses much more valuable than they are today. The cost of capital is at historic lows, averaging below 6% for most large U.S.

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Providing Earnings Guidance? Think Again

Harvard Business Review

Investors reward companies (such as Apple and Kimberly-Clark ) whose current performance or guidance for the future exceeds market expectations, and they punish companies (as they did Starbucks and Procter & Gamble ) whose performance or guidance fails to meet expectations.

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The Case for Investing More in People

Harvard Business Review

Managed by Q, a cleaning and office services company in New York City, decided to pay employees higher wages than the prevailing market rate. In turn, the company is achieving lower levels of employee and customer churn, and correspondingly lower employee hiring and customer acquisition costs.

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When "Creative Destruction" Destroys More than It Creates

Harvard Business Review

When changes in the natural environment accelerate, so do the extinction rates of the Earth's creatures. Of the 70,000 companies with market data available, more than 42,000 earned shareholder returns (dividends + stock price appreciation) below inflation. Markets change; technology evolves. Root it out wherever you find it.

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Why Europe's Carbon Woes Matter to the Whole World

Harvard Business Review

Europe''s $100 billion carbon market, an innovative force in the powerful carbon-reduction approach known as cap and trade, has ceased to function the way it''s supposed to. And it''s all because of a failure of political will in Europe to override the market''s built-in lack of flexibility and fix the imbalance between supply and demand.

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