“互联网+销售”有助于改善管理层预测的质量吗——基于上市公司开设电商店铺的数据分析

Does‘Internet+Sales’ Business Help Managers Improve Earnings Forecast Quality?——Based on the Data of E-commerce Platforms

本文基于上市公司在电商平台开设店铺的信息,利用双重差分模型研究了“互联网+销售”对管理层业绩预测质量的影响。我们发现,“互联网+销售”主要可以产生两方面影响:1)提高信息传递效率,“互联网+”能够升级公司的信息技术,提高管理层对盈余信息的获取能力,从而促使管理层更及时地发布业绩预测;2)增加销售不确定性,“互联网+销售”同时也为公司带来了异于传统商业模式的销售环境,这种销售模式的转换会增加管理层对未来盈余进行估计的难度,从而导致其业绩预测的准确度降低。本文针对销售环境的研究还发现,“互联网+销售”降低了公司销售客户的集中度,并且,在不确定性较低的销售环境中,管理层预测的准确度并不会受到显著影响,这些结果都进一步验证了销售不确定性对业绩预测准确度的影响。通过本文的研究,能够为“互联网+”如何影响公司信息披露提供较为典型和具体的经验证据,也有助于利益相关者和政策制定者合理地甄别和理解“互联网+”对公司会计信息质量的影响。

Based on the data of firms opening stores on e-commerce platforms and DID regression model,we investigate the impacts of‘Internet+Sales’on management forecasts.We find two impacts of‘Internet+Sales’:1)‘Internet+Sales’can upgrade firms’information technology and enhance managers’ability to obtain earnings information which help improve the timeliness of forecasts,2)‘Internet+Sales’will change firms’traditional sales activity and raise the difficulty for managers to estimate future earnings performance which causes a decrease in the accuracy of forecasts.Moreover,we also find a decrease in customer concentration in these firms,and a better performance in forecast accuracy in the e-commerce platforms with less sales uncertainty policy,indicating that uncertainty can affect forecast accuracy.This paper provides typical and specific evidence on how‘Internet+’affects management disclosure,and can help stakeholders and regulators have a better understanding of‘Internet+’business.