Accounting’s failure to deal with intangibles is a major problem in business. Marketers, and others, need to engage with financial accountants to find a better way. Problems in accounting statements Feng Gu and Baruch Lev give more details on the problems with financial accounting in their recent piece for the Financial Analysts Journal. They argue…
Search Results for: accounting
Whose Problem Is It When Accounting Is Challenging?
New business possibilities create conundrums for traditional systems. How will traditional methods cope? Whose problem is it when accounting is challenging? Accounting for the Marijuana Business Canada is in the process of legalizing marijuana (written in 2018). This has a whole host of interesting public policy implications. Still, I’m going to use this big change…
A Sustainable Standard When Accounting For Marketing
The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) seems to have been remarkably successful. They have recruited some well-known board members. These have included Michael Bloomberg, Mary Schapiro (former SEC chair), and Laura Tyson (former London Business School Dean). This has helped them raise their profile. They have been working on a sustainable standard when accounting for…
A (Very Badly Done) Illustration Of Accounting For Marketing
I am not an artist in any way. Given this I’m not an ideal person to illustrate ideas. That said, I wanted to quickly (sadly not as quickly as it looks) get across the message that accountants really aren’t doing enough on the reporting of marketing assets. Considering how financial accountants report on marketing assets…
Accounting For Brands
In a 2003 piece Tony McAuley discussed the history of accounting for intangible values. He interviewed Michael Schurch, CFO of RHM (Rank Hovis McDougall). They discussed the company’s decision to add the value of brands to the balance sheet back in 1988. This created a bit of a stir at the time, and has influenced accounting for…
Accounting For Marketing
Accounting for marketing deserves more consideration. Neither accountants nor marketers seem to give it much thought. That is a shame. It is a key area for understanding business. Yet, few are experts in it. Accounting For Marketing I think that there is a desperate need for marketers to understand accounting. Indeed, I think a lot…
Who Has An Interest In Changing Accounting?
Baruch Lev and Feng Gu, accounting professors, ask a simple question. Why are managers and auditors so blasé about accounting for intangibles? Lev and Gu, 2016, page 90 Intangibles are a mess in financial accounting. Everyone knows there are obvious problems. So who has an interest in changing accounting? Intangible Assets And The Concept Of Matching…
Accounting For Profits And Decisions
Marketers, and business people more broadly, often use accounting profit to measure success. This isn’t too surprising. Often firms claim to be profit maximizing. Report something as profit and this sounds like something that should be maximized. That said, profits using in accounting and managerial decision-making are not really the same thing. Decisions taken to…
NPS And Casino Patrons
I really appreciate when academic papers seek to address issues that matter to non-academics. Sanghee Kim and Tom Gruca looked at the use of Net Promoter Score (NPS) to predict customer retention and spending a topic important to many business people. What do they find about NPS and casino patrons? Casinos And Net Promoter A…
Understanding And Using The Customer Asset
My new book with Shane (Xin) Wang covers the use and meaning of Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). Being clear on the nature of the customer asset allows us to understand CLV. What Value Are We Looking At? The book starts with the basics. For example, what value are we looking at when we talk of…