Customer orientation on new product activities and performance from the contract manufacturer’s viewpoint

Studies have suggested the positive effect of customer orientation on superior performance. However, these studies have not shown how to covert customer orientation into superior performance through new product development (NPD) activities. The purpose of this study was to fill the gap between customer orientation and new product performance and elucidate the mediating influence of product launch, product development capability, and innovativeness on the relationship between customer orientation and new product performance. From the contract manufacturer’s perspective, it was proposed that customer orientation toward new product performance affects NPD activities. Focus was placed on product launch because the launch stage is the most expensive and riskiest aspect of NPD activities. Focus was also given to product development capability, which facilitates superior product performance. Product innovativeness also plays a crucial role in building competitive advantage. NPD activities include product launch, product development capability, and product innovativeness. We used a questionnaire to collect data to test the postulated research model and hypotheses from project, account and product managers in the high-tech industry. The results demonstrated the strong positive effect of customer orientation on NPD activities, and NPD activities play crucial roles as mediators between customer orientation and new product performance

Heavy quarkonium: progress, puzzles, and opportunities

A golden age for heavy quarkonium physics dawned a decade ago, initiated by the confluence of exciting advances in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and an explosion of related experimental activity. The early years of this period were chronicled in the Quarkonium Working Group (QWG) CERN Yellow Report (YR) in 2004, which presented a comprehensive review of the status of the field at that time and provided specific recommendations for further progress. However, the broad spectrum of subsequent breakthroughs, surprises, and continuing puzzles could only be partially anticipated. Since the release of the YR, the BESII program concluded only to give birth to BESIII; the $B$-factories and CLEO-c flourished; quarkonium production and polarization measurements at HERA and the Tevatron matured; and heavy-ion collisions at RHIC have opened a window on the deconfinement regime. All these experiments leave legacies of quality, precision, and unsolved mysteries for quarkonium physics, and therefore beg for continuing investigations. The plethora of newly-found quarkonium-like states unleashed a flood of theoretical investigations into new forms of matter such as quark-gluon hybrids, mesonic molecules, and tetraquarks. Measurements of the spectroscopy, decays, production, and in-medium behavior of c\bar{c}, b\bar{b}, and b\bar{c} bound states have been shown to validate some theoretical approaches to QCD and highlight lack of quantitative success for others. The intriguing details of quarkonium suppression in heavy-ion collisions that have emerged from RHIC have elevated the importance of separating hot- and cold-nuclear-matter effects in quark-gluon plasma studies. This review systematically addresses all these matters and concludes by prioritizing directions for ongoing and future efforts.Comment: 182 pages, 112 figures. Editors: N. Brambilla, S. Eidelman, B. K. Heltsley, R. Vogt. Section Coordinators: G. T. Bodwin, E. Eichten, A. D. Frawley, A. B. Meyer, R. E. Mitchell, V. Papadimitriou, P. Petreczky, A. A. Petrov, P. Robbe, A. Vair