earticle

영어

This paper investigates the relationship between the consumer sentiment index which represents consumer attitudes and expectations toward their current and future financial status and economic conditions and a firm’s inventory level. Consumer sentiment is commonly used as a leading economic indicator to describe the consumer’s evaluation and expectation on current and future economy. One of the best-known and widely used consumer sentiment measurement is the University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment(ICS). University of Michigan’s Survey Research Center conducts monthly surveys to measure consumer’s opinions about their own and the national economy’t recent, current, and expected economic and financial status. ICS contains information about potential changes in consumer spending and thus, changes in ICS are an important signal which reflects management’s decision making when planning marketing strategy, production and inventory management. While major researches in the classical inventory management have been developed at the single-item level in the perspective of microeconomics, we have an interest in aggregate inventories at a firm level. We empirically examine the relationship between the consumer sentiment index and a firm’s inventory level using the sample of 122,584 firm-years for 14,030 unique firms in the U.S. over the period of 1980–2012. We obtained our samples from public U.S. listed companies from the Standard & Poor’s Compustat database. Using OLS regression analysis, we find that the change of consumer sentiment positively relates to the change of firm’s inventory level. In addition to the pooled analysis, we test our hypothesis across eight industries. We classify our sample into eight industries according to the Standard Industry Classification(SIC) code and examine whether the relation between the change of the consumer sentiment index and the change of the inventory level differs by industry. Additionally, we conduct an analysis using consumers’ demographic information such as gender, age, and income groups and investigate whether the change of the consumer’s sentiment index affects the change in the level of inventory differently across demographic groups. We find that the change of the consumer sentiment index is positively related to the change of the inventory level for firms in nondurable, durable, manufacturing, equipment, retail industries but fail to find any statistically significant results for firms in chemical and healthcare industries. We further find that the positive relationship between the change of the consumer sentiment index and the change of the inventory level is stronger in a low income consumer group than it is in a high income consumer group. By exploring the link between macroeconomic indicator and aggregated inventory data, we empirically demonstrate that the index of consumer sentiment can provide useful information in a firm’s inventory management strategy at the aggregate firm-level. An understanding on how consumer sentiment behaves across industries and demographic groups may help managers maintain an appropriate inventory level leading to improved operating efficiency and increased sales and profits. Our study has several potential limitations. Other explanatory variable (such as production and sales) are not included in our models. We use aggregate Compustat financial data of U.S. public companies operating in 1980-2012. Our results represents only U.S. consumers and firms. If better data included Korean consumers and firms become available, it might be interesting to reevaluate our findings.

한국어

본 연구에서는 미래 경제상황에 대한 소비자의 태도와 예상을 측정하는 소비자 심리지수와 기업의 재고자산 수준간의 관계에 대하여 분석하였다. 구체적으로 소비자들의 금융상황과 가계소득의 변화에 대해 예측하는 소비자 심리지수 변화와 기업의 재고자산 변화율과의 관계를 점검하고, 이러한 상관관계가 산업별, 그리고 소비자들의 소득계층별로 차이가 있는지를 심층 분석하였다. 1980년부터 2012년까지의 미국 소비자 심리지수와 14,030개 미국 기업의 재고자산 변화율을 분석한 결과, 소비자 심리지수 변화는 기업의 재고자산 변화율과는 양(+)의 상관관계가 존재하는 것으로 나타났다. 특히, 산업별 분석에서는 비내구재, 내구재, 제조, 소매, 장비 산업 부분에서 소비자 심리지수 변화율과 재고자산 변화율이 통계적으로 유의한 양(+)의 관계를 보였으나, 화학, 의료 산업 부분에서는 통계적으로 유의하지 않았다. 그리고 소비자의 소득계층별로 분석한 결과, 소득수준이 낮은 그룹에서는 소득수준이 높은 그룹과 비교하여 소비자 심리지수 변화율과 재고자산 변화율의 양(+)의 관계가 더 크게 나타났다. 본 연구의 결과는 소비자 심리지수가 기업의 재고자산 관리에 중요한 결정 요인이 될 수 있음을 실증분석을 통해 밝혀냈다는 데에 의의가 있다. 기업의 의사결정자들은 급변하는 시장 상황에서 효율적인 재고 관리 전략을 수립하는데 있어서 소비자 심리지수를 거시경제의 지표로서 활용할 수 있을 것이다. 또한 이를 산업별로, 소비자 소득 수준별로 차이가 있음을 보임으로서 각 기업별로 목표 고객층에 적합한 재고자산 관리 전략을 수립하는데 도움이 될 것으로 기대된다.