Strategic Foretelling / 17 Journal of Marketing Vol. 64 (January 2000), 17–30 Roger J. Calantone & Kim E. Schatzel Strategic Foretelling: Communication-Based Antecedents of a Firm’s Propensity to Preannounce The authors examine preannouncements as strategic marketing communications aimed at influencing the percep- tions and attitudes of industry stakeholders. The growth of the Internet points to the expanded importance of pre- announcements. With an investigation of 265 chief executive officers (CEOs) and presidents from manufacturers of new products, the authors examine the effects of three firm-specific factors (first-mover predisposition, firm in- formation interactivity, and competitive equity building) and one environmental construct (industry dynamism) on a firm’s propensity to preannounce its future intended actions. The results indicate that competitive equity building, defined as a firm’s tendency to pursue a high-profile leadership position within its industry, is the main driver of a firm’s propensity to preannounce. Future directions for research include the development of a normative prean- nouncement framework and investigation of the role of preannouncements within the context of CEO marketing activities. Roger Calantone is the Eli Broad Professor of Marketing & Product Inno- vation, Michigan State University. Kim Schatzel is at the Department of Marketing, Boston College. Both authors contributed equally to the manu- script and are listed alphabetically. The authors thank Cornelia Droge and an anonymous JM reviewer for comments on a previous draft of this article. P reannouncements are a type of signal that Porter (1980, p.75) defines as “any action by a firm that pro- vides a direct or indirect indication of its intentions, motives, goals, or internal situation.” Preannouncements dif- fer from other signal types, in that they are a firm’s deliber- ate communication regarding its future planned actions (Eliashberg and Robertson 1988). Individual studies often have specific perspectives of preannouncement, such as a communication that precedes a new product introduction (Chaney, Devinney, and Winer 1991; Eddy and Saunders 1980; Eliashberg and Robertson 1988; Lane and Jacobsen 1995; Lilly and Walters 1997; Rabino and Moore 1989; Robertson, Eliashberg, and Rymon 1995), price reduction (Heil and Langvardt 1994; Heil and Walters 1993), or divi- dend policy change (Downes and Heinkel 1982). This per- spective may restrict understanding of preannouncements to only discrete, single events that are highly situation specific. Our discussions with chief executive officers (CEOs) and chief financial officers, through case studies and in- depth interviews, and an exploratory content analysis of 75 news items indicate that preannouncements can also focus on, for example, changes in licensing arrangements (Apple to change clone licensing deals), joint ventures, strategic al- liances and acquisitions (Mattel and Intel to codevelop a new generation of smart toys), or distribution practices (NBC to seek help from affiliates to pay for ER). They can be posted by news wire services as press releases on the firm’s Web site or company intranet or through management speeches, interviews, or conferences. In short, preannounce- ments can focus on virtually any future action and exhibit a wide range of formats, lengths, and specificity. For the firm, preannouncements are highly appealing tools for strategic marketing communications. They are a low-cost means to inform customers, employees, competi- tors, channel members, investors, industry experts, and ob- servers of the firm’s future intentions. Notions about the fu- ture drive both competitor and buyer behavior in many product categories, especially durables and, most signifi- cantly, high-technology goods. However, no broad investi- gation has examined a firm’s propensity to preannounce fu- ture actions across a wide range of content despite recent emphasis on communication as an enabler of many stake- holder relationships (e.g., customers, employees, channel members, investors; Duncan and Moriarty 1998). The goal of this study is to model factors that would motivate a firm’s propensity to preannounce. We do not limit our examination to specific preannouncement types (e.g., new product and pricing preannouncements); in- stead, our focus is the firm’s use of preannouncements in a more generalized sense, namely, its preannouncement propensity, which encompasses a broad range of content. We investigate three firm-specific constructs and one en- vironmental construct that may create a compelling need for the firm to foretell its future intentions regarding a wide range of possible actions to target audiences. The three firm-specific constructs, which focus on the possible influences of organizational tendencies and strategy selec- tion on the propensity to preannounce, are (1) the firm’s innovative posture in the form of first-mover predisposi- tion; (2) firm information interactivity, which taps the