How to get lost customers back? : a study of antecedents of relationship revival

Most research in the field of customer relationship management has focused on keeping existing customers. However, some companies also systematically address lost customers and try to revive these relationships. This facet of customer relationship management has been largely neglected by academic research. Our study provides a theoretical discussion and an empirical analysis of factors driving the success of relationship revival activities. Drawing on equity theory we find that the customer’s perceived interactional, procedural, and distributive justice with respect to revival activities positively affect his or her revival-specific satisfaction which in turn has a strong impact on revival performance. Furthermore, revival performance depends on customer characteristics (variety seeking, involvement, age), and the overall customer satisfaction with the relationship

Social Identity and the Service-Profit Chain

The conventional service profit chain (SPC) proposes that a firm’s financial performance can be improved via a path that connects employee satisfaction, customer orientation, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. In this paper, a complementary SPC is introduced which is built on both a conventional path as well as a social identity-based path. The latter SPC part centrally builds on customer and employee company identification as a core construct. On the basis of a large scale triadic data set that included data from employees, customers and firms, we find strong support for the extended SPC, which accounts for important customer (loyalty and willingness to pay) and firm outcomes (financial performance). Also, the effects of company identification exist incrementally beyond the effects of the conventional SPC path

Design and operation of a Tesla-type valve for pulsating heat pipes

AbstractA new Tesla-type valve is successfully designed for promoting circulation in a pulsating heat pipe (PHP) and improving the thermal resistance. Its functionality and diodicity is tested by laminar single-phase modelling and by steady two-phase flow experiments. The valve is symmetrically integrated in a single-turn PHP, which reduces variabilities to give a more thorough understanding of the behaviour in PHPs. Two transparent bottom-heated PHPs, one with and one without valves, are manufactured and the flow behaviour and thermal performance is studied. The valves produced a diodicity which lead to a difference in velocity of 25% for the different flow directions. Furthermore, a decrease of 14% in thermal resistance was observed due to the addition of the valves

Simple Estimation of X- Trion Binding Energy in Semiconductor Quantum Wells

A simple illustrative wave function with only three variational parameters is suggested to calculate the binding energy of negatively charged excitons (X-) as a function of quantum well width. The results of calculations are in agreement with experimental data for GaAs, CdTe and ZnSe quantum wells, which differ considerably in exciton and trion binding energy. The normalized X- binding energy is found to be nearly independent of electron-to-hole mass ratio for any quantum well heterostructure with conventional parameters. Its dependence on quantum well width follows an universal curve. The curve is described by a simple phenomenological equation.Comment: 8 pages, 3 Postscript figure

Binding Energy of Charged Excitons in ZnSe-based Quantum Wells

Excitons and charged excitons (trions) are investigated in ZnSe-based quantum well structures with (Zn,Be,Mg)Se and (Zn,Mg)(S,Se) barriers by means of magneto-optical spectroscopy. Binding energies of negatively () and positively (X+) charged excitons are measured as functions of quantum well width, free carrier density and in external magnetic fields up to 47 T. The binding energy of shows a strong increase from 1.4 to 8.9 meV with decreasing quantum well width from 190 to 29 A. The binding energies of X+ are about 25% smaller than the binding energy in the same structures. The magnetic field behavior of and X+ binding energies differ qualitatively. With growing magnetic field strength, increases its binding energy by 35-150%, while for X+ it decreases by 25%. Zeeman spin splittings and oscillator strengths of excitons and trions are measured and discussed

How and When Socially Entrepreneurial Nonprofit Organizations Benefit From Adopting Social Alliance Management Routines to Manage Social Alliances?

Social alliance is defined as the collaboration between for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Building on the insights derived from the resource-based theory, we develop a conceptual framework to explain how socially entrepreneurial nonprofit organizations (SENPOs) can improve their social alliance performance by adopting strategic alliance management routines. We test our framework using the data collected from 203 UK-based SENPOs in the context of cause-related marketing campaign-derived social alliances. Our results confirm a positive relationship between social alliance management routines and social alliance performance. We also find that relational mechanisms, such as mutual trust, relational embeddedness, and relational commitment, mediate the relationship between social alliance management routines and social alliance performance. Moreover, our findings suggest that different types of social alliance motivation can influence the impact of social alliance management routines on different types of the relational mechanisms. In general, we demonstrate that SENPOs can benefit from adopting social alliance management routines and, in addition, highlight how and when the social alliance management routines–social alliance performance relationship might be shaped. Our study offers important academic and managerial implications, and points out future research directions

Evidence-based guideline : unexplained infertility

The GDG would like to acknowledge the help of many clinicians and professional organizations who refereed the content of the guideline and submitted helpful comments to the draft version. Special thanks to the steering committee of the ESHRE SIG Andrology for the feedback on the formulations of the key questions and the final draft of the guideline.Peer reviewe