Executive confidence and myopic marketing management

Prior literature does not provide a clear prediction of how executive confidence affects the degree to which a firm engages in “myopic marketing management,” the tendency to decrease current marketing spending to mitigate any potential earnings shortfall. We propose that highly confident CEOs are more likely to cut marketing spending to raise current earnings numbers because they believe in their ability to generate high future firm earnings that can cover the long-term losses arising from their current short-term actions. The effect is heightened when the board of directors is more independent and monitors more, but attenuated if CMOs are more confident and thus are better able to convince their CEOs and boards of directors to support continued investments in marketing. The moderating impact of CMO confidence is proposed to be stronger as the CMO becomes more powerful. Using secondary data from a broad cross-section of firms, we provide robust empirical support for our model. Our results highlight situations in which CMOs need to be wary of cuts to their marketing budget, and also provide a potential mechanism through which marketers can protect their budget in the presence of highly confident CEOs—through their own confidence levels.