NewsBites
Several influential media featured the accomplishments of the School of Management and the expertise of its faculty over the past year. Below is a summary of some of the school's citations in prominent national and regional media. These media "hits" enhance the school's national reputation and help to brand it as one of the nation's top business schools.
Business Week
John M. Thomas, professor of operations management and strategy and outgoing dean of the School of Management, was quoted in BusinessWeek in May about the problems some Western business schools are facing with programs they have set up in China. In the article, Thomas explains that our Executive MBA program in China is now customized for Motorola employees. "At Motorola, we don't have to worry about the marketing expenses and issues," Thomas said.
AP, New York Times, Time and The Economist
Lewis Mandell, professor emeritus of finance and managerial economics, was quoted in many media outlets in April regarding the 2008 Survey of Financial Literacy Among High School Students he conducts biennially for the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy. High school seniors surveyed correctly answered only 48.3 percent of questions on personal finance and economics, the worst result in the survey's history. "The survey demonstrated that graduating high school seniors continue to struggle with financial literacy basics," Mandell said in an Associated Press story that ran in numerous newspapers and on many national media Web sites, including Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, CBS, BusinessWeek, Washington Post, USA Today, Newsday, Chicago Tribune, AOL News, Huffington Post, MSNBC and National Public Radio. Jay Leno even mentioned the study in his "Tonight Show" monologue! An April article in The Economist also cited the survey and quoted Mandell. "Wherever you look in America or the OECD, classes in financial literacy don't do much good," Mandell said. "As an educator, I'd like to believe you can teach people to do anything right, but clearly the way we are going about teaching personal finance needs to be improved."
Forbes and ABC News
Debabrata Talukdar, associate professor of marketing, was quoted on the Forbes and ABC News Web sites about rising grocery costs, saying that tracking deals could save consumers several hundred dollars a year. "Most categories in which customers shop will have at least one deal," he said. "The most intense cherry pickers can save as much as 25 percent on grocery costs over normal customers." Talukdar's research on "cherry pickers"-consumers who aggressively seek the lowest prices-found that customers shopping across multiple stores can capture up to 76 percent of potential savings. "Prices rotate on a weekly cycle in groceries, so there are lots of opportunities for deals," he said.
AP, CBS Radio and The Boston Globe
Kenneth Kim, associate professor of finance and managerial economics, was widely quoted during Super Bowl week due to an Associated Press story about his research on Super Bowl commercials and stock prices. "Companies with well-liked commercials see, on average, a quarter of a percent increase in their stock prices the following Monday," Kim said. "When you consider that the average market value of a company that airs an ad during the Super Bowl is about $30 billion, it increases their value by roughly $80 million in one day." The story appeared in many markets, including The Boston Globe and on MSNBC.com, and Kim was also interviewed by CBS Radio.
MSNBC
Mandell and Kim were also quoted, along with William Hamlen, associate professor of finance and managerial economics, on the MSNBC Web site in January about economic stimulus actions, such as Fed rate cuts and rebate checks. "Ordinarily, Republicans don't like short-term, quick fixes such as increased government spending, or even to some extent, one-time tax cuts because they can have undesirable long-term effects," Hamlen said. "These forms of 'fiscal policy' are generally preferred by Democrats but in a major election year, the Republicans often forego their own preferences and agree to policies they dislike." Mandell said the actions taken may actually make controlling inflation more difficult. "With the Federal Reserve aggressively cutting rates and increasing the money supply, the federal government in an election year-pandering mode, the worldwide consumption of energy continuing unabated, the budget deficit about to increase again and the Chinese yuan accelerating in value against the U.S. dollar, stabilization of equity markets will come at a higher price in terms of inflation," he said. Kim believed the stock market would recover in the near term. "The tax rebate proposed by President Bush will work. It did last time," he said. About the Fed's interest-rate cut he said, "It's a quick fix, but combined with the rebate, this will get us out of any serious recession."
Chicago Tribune
Mandell was also quoted in an April Chicago Tribune article about children and teenagers investing their own money in the stock market. The market's spring tumbles provided a good teaching opportunity about investments, he said. "It's one of those learning moments," Mandell said. "Parents should really emphasize the buy-and-hold aspect of investing."
Vatican Radio
Hodan Isse, associate professor of finance and managerial economics, was interviewed by Vatican Radio in February about the political, economic and social institutions that must be established by the new government in her native country of Somalia. "We need to create an environment that's conducive for better living standards-to promote growth, to promote social skills, to promote Somalis to own their problems and solve their own problems," she said.
The Buffalo News
Nallan Suresh, UB Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Operations Management and Strategy, was quoted numerous times in the spring by The Buffalo News, Business First and WKBW-TV Channel 7 about the American Axle strike. "In the short run, it will be painful" to close the Tonawanda forge, he said, but wage cuts are necessary for companies like American Axle to become "leaner and more entrepreneurial." Arun Jain, Samuel P. Capen Professor of Marketing Research, was quoted in the News in March about how Target's "secret sales" are discussed online. "When this kind of buzz starts on the Web, it increases sales volume," Jain said. "Shoppers descend and end up buying additional items at full price." The News quoted Rajiv Kishore, associate professor of management science and systems, in May about "onshoring" contract work to lower-cost U.S. cities like Buffalo. "Dell had to relocate its technical support center back to the United States due to major customer satisfaction issues, part of which arose from language problems," Kishore said. With onshoring, "language issues go away, and cultural differences between the outsourcer and outsourcee firms are substantially reduced."
