Distribution information technology investment and the market value of the firm: Focusing on RFID case

Abstract

Purpose - This paper investigates how the market value of the firms are impacted by distribution information technology investment in Korea over time and across markets, industries and project characteristics. This is the first empirical study on the market payoffs from the RFID investment in Korea. The purpose of this study is to provide a appropriate guideline for investors and practitioners with respect to the announcement representing RFID adoption in Korea. This reaction guideline will stimulate the practitioners to monitor and evaluate the benefits and costs of the innovative RFID technology. Research design, data, and methodology - This paper employs event study methodology to analyze the payoffs from distribution information technology investment announcements over a fifteen-year period from 2003 to 2017. Event study method is based on the assumptions such as market efficiency, unanticipated RFID invest announcements and no confounding effects in the data. This study collected the information on RFID investment announcements by using a full text search engine Bigkinds provided by Korea Press Foundation over a fifteen-year period from January 2003 through December 2017. This paper selected 88 announcements representing RFID adoption by 46 firms. This paper estimated the payoffs from RFID investment announcement through events windows by using the market model of Mcwilliams and Siegel (1997) and calculated the Z-values. Using this test statistics we could infer if RFID adoption make large differences in abnormal returns across various classifications of the firms. Results - There is significant positive market returns from the announcement representing distribution information technology investment in the pre-2009 time period, the significances of payoffs disappear in the post-2009 time period. For this reason investors or practitioners can understand the importance of market entry time and the fact that the greater rewards may belong to early innovators while late imitators cannot reap such a rewards. This paper also find that there is a large differences in the payoffs from the announcement across markets, industries and project characteristics. Conclusions - Analysing the selected sample of 88 announcements representing RFID Adoption over fifteen-year period from 2003 to 2017, this study find that there is not only significant abnormal excess returns from RFID investment announcements but also there is great differences in the abnormal returns over time and across firm sizes or affiliated markets, industries, and project characteristics. This means that there are considerable values for the investors across various firm classifications. The findings of this paper provide useful implications for the practitioners to make judicious decisions whether to adopt the innovative technologies in general or not considering the various concrete circumstances in Korea.