The Primacy Effect Impact of Information’s Order on Investors’ Perception

Abstract

The annual report is the way to communicate about the business position to the stakeholders. The annual reports provide meaningful information regarding historical performance and prospective future opportunities. The president’s letter or director's report is a report submitted by the directors of a company to its shareholders, appraising them of the performance of the company under its direction. It is an exercise of self-evaluation. The letter mainly summaries company’s performance and the financial results, discusses company's plans for expansion, diversification or modernization, tells about appropriation of profits, and elaborates company's future prospects and plans for investments. Apart from mandatory disclosure for annual reports to shareholders, it is used as marketing tools which is used to focus the firm’s mission, objectives, strategies, and financial performance. The content of the letter is very important because it catch the attention of the readers like shareholders, investors, analysts, suppliers, government, banks, financial institutions etc. That is why it is very important to take care about the information, positive or negative, convey in presidents’ letter. This paper tried to examine the impact of ordering (Primacy and Recency effect) of the positive and negative information in the president’s letter on readers’ perception. The study concludes that the Primacy Effect can be observed due to change in
information’s order.

Keywords: primacy effect, recency effect, information order, chi square test

JEL Classification: G02