AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF MEDIA IN ANNUAL REPORTS (MULTIMEDIA, GENDER)

In 1965, Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message.” This statement suggests that the selected media affects the receipt of a message's content. In line with this philosophy, annual reports have changed radically from a bland legalistic document to a vibrant high-tech multimedia presentation designed to influence investors and consumers. Employing an experimental approach, this research investigates the efficacy of the newest form of annual report: the multimedia annual report. Two experiments were conducted to extend the extant annual report literature by: (1) An examination of user effects across the multimedia and paper report offerings of two companies; and (2) An examination of video presentation of financial information and its interaction effects with source gender, and type of news.; The first experiment examines the report user effects of paper and multimedia annual reports within and between two companies (EDS and Macromedia). Experiment one also extends relevant accounting literature by using expert report users. The second experiment examines the effect of video on non-expert users of annual reports. Additionally, experiment two examines the interaction effects of video with source gender and news type.; The results for experiment one indicate that expert and non-expert report users are affected differently by annual report attributes. Specifically, non-experts are influenced significantly more than expert report users. Non-experts also had a more favorable opinion of the annual report design than experts did. Recall results indicate that experts recall significantly more information when free recall is used. However, expert and non-expert subjects did not differ significantly in their ability to recall information when cued recall is used.; The results for experiment two indicate that video is an important determinant of overall attitude about a company. Subjects also judged a video presentation to be higher in quality than a paper presentation. In addition, subject believed the video presentation to a greater extent than they did the paper presentation. Experiment two found that paper reports induced greater recall of information regardless of the type of recall (free recall or cued recall).; In conclusion, some of the evidence in the experiments contains conflicting results. To clarify these results, additional research is needed in the area of media in annual reporting.