Investment behaviors of businesses on ad and R&D according to their sizes: Food, beverage and tobacco sector in Turkey

Abstract

It is observed that the advertising and R&D expenditures of businesses, which are traded on Borsa Istanbul (BIST) in the Food, Beverage and Tobacco Sector, differ according to their business sizes. Within this context, two assumptions are developed. At first, the large businesses invest on the advertising and R&D expenditures regularly from sales revenues. At second, the relatively smaller businesses invest on these operations only in the periods which they generate over-expected sales revenues. In order to test these assumptions, the impacts of advertising and R&D expenditures on the sales revenues of large and middle-sized businesses in Food, Beverage and Tobacco Sector in BIST (2009–2013) are analyzed by panel regression after 22 businesses in the sector are classified as the large and middle-sized businesses according to their number of employees. As a result, it is proved that the large businesses invest on the advertising and R&D expenditures regularly. On the other hand, the middle-sized businesses set the R&D budget depending on their annual sales revenues whereas they act as the large businesses in terms of setting advertising budget.