Can Advertising Investments Counter the Negative Impact of Shareholder Complaints on Firm Value?

Shareholder complaints put pressure on publicly listed firms, yet firms rarely directly address the actual issues raised in these complaints. The authors examine whether firms respond in an alternative way by altering advertising investments in an effort to ward off the financial damage associated with shareholder complaints. By analyzing a unique data set of shareholder complaints submitted to S&P 1500 firms between 2001 and 2016, supplemented...