ScholarWorks@숙명여자대학교

초록

This study views advertising expenditures not merely as a simple marketing cost but as a discretionary spending item reflecting a firm's strategic judgment, and empirically analyzes how corporate governance influences these expenditures. While prior research has primarily focused on the performance effects of advertising and their heterogeneity, empirical verification of the mechanisms through which advertising decisions are determined under various governance environments has been relatively limited. To address this research gap, this study approaches corporate advertising expenditures from the perspective of governance. To this end, a panel analysis was conducted on 459 manufacturing companies listed on the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) from 2013 to 2020. The empirical results reveal that professional management systems are associated with an increase in advertising expenditures, whereas higher ownership by controlling shareholders and related parties tends to suppress such spending. This suggests that advertising and promotion expenses?which possess relatively high performance visibility and allow for significant managerial discretion?can be adjusted differently depending on the specific characteristics of the governance structure. Meanwhile, aggregate ownership by outside blockholders did not have a significant impact on advertising expenditures. However, when disaggregated by type, ownership by the National Pension Service showed a significant negative (-) relationship with advertising intensity, while ownership by foreign institutional investors did not yield statistically significant results. In particular, by elaborating on how advertising expenditures with intangible asset characteristics are adjusted within the context of corporate governance, this study successfully extends the scope of intangible asset investment literature, which has been predominantly focused on R&D expenses. These findings provide practical implications that both internal governance structures and external monitoring environments should be comprehensively considered alongside financial performance indicators during the process of establishing corporate advertising strategies and investor decision-making. Overall, the results imply that advertising expenditures are not merely explained by firm performance or market conditions but are the result of strategic decision-making adjusted by governance structures and the nature of external monitoring entities.

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