Episodes and bonds in investor relationships

Empirical Support The purpose of this study is to describe, analyse and understand investor relationship marketing both theoretically and empirically. By investor relationship marketing, we mean the continuous, planned, purposeful, and sustained management activity which identifies, establishes, maintains, and enhanc-es mutually beneficial long term relationships between the companies and their current and potential investors, and the investment experts serving them. Short term investor episodes initially form the basis of long term interaction between the partners in the investor community. Various investor bonds of attraction, trust, and commitment may evolve. Finnish listed companies have laid down their main emphasis on improvements both in meetings with stock analysts and lately also in interim reports. Annual and interim reports are the principal sources of written information for the Finnish stock ana-lysts. Information in several oral forms is also vital for the stock analysts. Significant improvements can be found in the contents of interim reports while some weakening can be found in the informa-tion episodes of personal appointments and news in media. It can be concluded that Finnish listed companies have realised the necessity of investor relationship marketing and consequently many of them have activated their reporting and disclosing practices. The most advanced companies belong 28