Business Strategy and the Cost of Equity Capital: An Evaluation of Pure versus Hybrid Business Strategies

We examine the effect of pure (product differentiation or cost leadership) versus hybrid (a mix of product differentiation and cost leadership) business strategies on the cost of equity capital. Our results suggest that firms with a pure, relative to a hybrid, business strategy have a significantly lower cost of equity, and the cost of equity effect is equally driven by pure product differentiation and pure cost leadership strategies. We also find that firms following a pure business strategy are associated with lower systematic risk. Further, the lower cost of equity effect of a pure product differentiation strategy is more pronounced in high-technology industries and in regions with greater innovative capital. Our findings are robust to an array of robustness checks including change specification regressions and various methods for addressing endogeneity.