Going Public and Underpricing as Brand Value Enhancing Tools

Abstract

After the year 2000, a new trend in corporate finance-related research has been investigating the relationship between Initial public offerings “IPOs” variables from one side and brand value on the other in order to come up with new explanations for the extreme underpricing levels for technological companies. Studies, in particular, connect underpricing as the main IPO variable to product enhancement measures such as brand value. Some studies find evidence that the level of underpricing is positively related to long-term product market strength. This review paper comes to integrate the financial theme of going public and the business theme of brand value. We provide a comprehensive review for the recent seminal work in going public and underpricing, and their relationship to brand value creation in order to draw policy implications for decision-makers.

Keywords: IPOs, Underpricing, Initial return, Marketing, Brand value, Brand creation, Private equity

JEL Classification: G24, M370