A Customer Perspective on Product Eliminations: How the Removal of Products Affects Customers and Business Relationships

Regardless of the apparent need for product eliminations, many managers hesitate to act as they fear deleterious effects on customer satisfaction and loyalty. Other managers do carry out product eliminations, but often fail to consider the consequences for customers and business relationships. Given the relevance and problems of product eliminations, research on this topic in general and on the consequences for customers and business relationships in particular is surprisingly scarce. Therefore, this empirical study explores how and to what extent the elimination of a product negatively affects customers and business relationships. Results indicate that eliminating a product may result in severe economic and psychological costs to customers, thereby seriously decreasing customer satisfaction and loyalty. This paper also shows that these costs are not exogenous in nature. Instead, depending on the characteristics of the eliminated product these costs are found to be more or less strongly driven by a company’s behavior when implementing the elimination at the customer interface

How to build a bone: PHOSPHO1, biomineralization and beyond

Since its characterization two decades ago, the phosphatase PHOSPHO1 has been the subject of an increasing focus of research. This work has elucidated PHOSPHO1’s central role in the biomineralization of bone and other hard tissues, but has also implicated the enzyme in other biological processes in health and disease. During mineralization PHOSPHO1 liberates inorganic phosphate (Pi) to be incorporated into the mineral phase through hydrolysis of its substrates phosphocholine (PCho) and phosphoethanolamine (PEA). Localization of PHOSPHO1 within matrix vesicles allows accumulation of Pi within a protected environment where mineral crystals may nucleate and subsequently invade the organic collagenous scaffold. Here, we examine the evidence for this process, first discussing the discovery and characterization of PHOSPHO1, before considering experimental evidence for its canonical role in matrix vesicle-mediated biomineralization. We also contemplate roles for PHOSPHO1 in disorders of dysregulated mineralization such as vascular calcification, along with emerging evidence of its activity in other systems including choline synthesis and homeostasis, and energy metabolism