Anchoring is a ubiquitous heuristic, by which decision-makers rely on a piece of information (anchor) that appears prior to a judgment. Yet few strategy scholars consider the impact of anchoring on strategic decision-making. This study investigates how anchoring might influence acquisition premium decisions, with the prediction that a market’s preceding acquisition premium acts as an anchor on the premium decision for a focal acquisition in the market, particularly if the preceding acquisition happened more recently or exhibited a superficial resemblance with the focal acquisition. A population of 13,496 acquisitions provides strong support for this prediction. Moreover, the influence of a preceding premium decision is weaker for focal acquirers with acquisition experience in the target industry, and stronger for those with a higher recent acquisition rate.

doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2014.77, hdl.handle.net/1765/101232
74th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, AOM 2014

Malhotra, S. (Shavin), & Zhu, P. (2014). Influence of local market's preceding acquisition on acquisition premiums. In 74th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, AOM 2014 (pp. 648–653). doi:10.5465/AMBPP.2014.77