At-risk brand relationships and threats to the bottom line

Like a stock portfolio, each relationship type offers a brand higher or lower growth opportunities and risks. The type of relationship is particularly relevant in brand crisis events. When a brand is hit by a crisis, it is not necessarily the most successful strategy to focus exclusively on protecting positive emotional relationships. At-risk relationships are affected more than others and can lead to a significant decline of brand value. Our cases highlight that at-risk relationships represent a critical, but often overlooked, aspect of a brand’s relationship portfolio. Risks range from negative word of mouth that might have a negative impact on potential new customers to clear retention risk. Marketers should manage these risks proactively by identifying and investigating the nature of their customer relationships and by responding frankly and credibly to crisis events.Published versio

Patient-specific cancer genes contribute to recurrently perturbed pathways and establish therapeutic vulnerabilities in esophageal adenocarcinoma

Abstract: The identification of cancer-promoting genetic alterations is challenging particularly in highly unstable and heterogeneous cancers, such as esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC). Here we describe a machine learning algorithm to identify cancer genes in individual patients considering all types of damaging alterations simultaneously. Analysing 261 EACs from the OCCAMS Consortium, we discover helper genes that, alongside well-known drivers, promote cancer. We confirm the robustness of our approach in 107 additional EACs. Unlike recurrent alterations of known drivers, these cancer helper genes are rare or patient-specific. However, they converge towards perturbations of well-known cancer processes. Recurrence of the same process perturbations, rather than individual genes, divides EACs into six clusters differing in their molecular and clinical features. Experimentally mimicking the alterations of predicted helper genes in cancer and pre-cancer cells validates their contribution to disease progression, while reverting their alterations reveals EAC acquired dependencies that can be exploited in therapy

Retrospective evaluation of whole exome and genome mutation calls in 746 cancer samples

Funder: NCI U24CA211006Abstract: The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) curated consensus somatic mutation calls using whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), respectively. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, which aggregated whole genome sequencing data from 2,658 cancers across 38 tumour types, we compare WES and WGS side-by-side from 746 TCGA samples, finding that ~80% of mutations overlap in covered exonic regions. We estimate that low variant allele fraction (VAF < 15%) and clonal heterogeneity contribute up to 68% of private WGS mutations and 71% of private WES mutations. We observe that ~30% of private WGS mutations trace to mutations identified by a single variant caller in WES consensus efforts. WGS captures both ~50% more variation in exonic regions and un-observed mutations in loci with variable GC-content. Together, our analysis highlights technological divergences between two reproducible somatic variant detection efforts

Das Involvement als Erklaerungsvariable fuer das Entscheidungs- und Informationsverhalten von Konsumenten

SIGLEAvailable from Bibliothek des Instituts fuer Weltwirtschaft, ZBW, Duesternbrook Weg 120, D-24105 Kiel C 211822 / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekDEGerman

Using Consumer Attitudes to Value Brands: Evaluation of the Financial Value of Brands

This article introduces an Advanced Brand Valuation (ABV) model that combines the psychological strength of a brand in the mind of its consumers with accepted accounting practices to determine the true financial value of a brand. ABV is a modular approach that integrates common marketing research metrics into financial calculations and meets standards for tax and financial reporting purposes. (Sattler, H., S. H gl, and O. Hupp. Evaluation of the Financial Value of Brands. In ESOMAR, Excellence in International Research 2003, D. S. Fellows, ed. Amsterdam: ESOMAR, 2002.) This tool can be used for strategic decision-making purposes, such as assessing international expansion opportunities or prioritizing the purchase and or sale of brands.

At-Risk Brand Relationships and Threats to the Bottom Line

Like a stock portfolio, each relationship type offers a brand higher or lower growth opportunities and risks. The type of relationship is particularly relevant in brand crisis events. When a brand is hit by a crisis, it is not necessarily the most successful strategy to focus exclusively on protecting positive emotional relationships. At-risk relationships are affected more than others and can lead to a significant decline of brand value

An Air- and Moisture-stable Zinc(II) Carbene Dithiolate Dimer Showing Fast TADF and Dexter Energy Transfer Catalysis

A dimeric ZnII carbene complex featuring bridging and chelating benzene-1,2-dithiolate ligands is highly stable towards air and water. The donor-Zn-acceptor structure leads to visible light emission in the solid state, solution and polymer matrices with max between 577-657 nm and, for zinc(II) complexes, unusually high radiative rate constants for triplet exciton decay of up to kr = 1.5105 s-1 at room temperature. Variable temperature and DFT/MRCI studies show that a small energy gap between the 1/3LL/LMCT states of only 79 meV is responsible for efficient TADF. Time-resolved luminescence and transient absorption studies confirm the occurrence of long-lived, dominantly ligand-to-ligand charge transfer excited states in solution, allowing for application in Dexter energy transfer photocatalysis