The impact of different touchpoints on brand consideration

Marketers face the challenge of resource allocation across a range of touchpoints. Hence understanding their relative impact is important, but previous research tends to examine brand advertising, retailer touchpoints, word-of-mouth, and traditional earned touchpoints separately. This article presents an approach to understanding the relative impact of multiple touchpoints. It exemplifies this approach with six touchpoint types: brand advertising, retailer advertising, in-store communications, word-of-mouth, peer observation (seeing other customers), and traditional earned media such as editorial. Using the real-time experience tracking (RET) method by which respondents report on touchpoints by contemporaneous text message, the impact of touchpoints on change in brand consideration is studied in four consumer categories: electrical goods, technology products, mobile handsets, and soft drinks. Both touchpoint frequency and touchpoint positivity, the valence of the customer's affective response to the touchpoint, are modeled. While relative touchpoint effects vary somewhat by category, a pooled model suggests the positivity of in-store communication is in general more influential than that of other touchpoints including brand advertising. An almost entirely neglected touchpoint, peer observation, is consistently significant. Overall, findings evidence the relative impact of retailers, social effects and third party endorsement in addition to brand advertising. Touchpoint positivity adds explanatory power to the prediction of change in consideration as compared with touchpoint frequency alone. This suggests the importance of methods that track touchpoint perceptual response as well as frequency, to complement current analytic approaches such as media mix modeling based on media spend or exposure alone

How organisations generate and use customer insight

The generation and use of customer insight in marketing decisions is poorly understood, partly due to difficulties in obtaining research access and partly because market-based learning theory views knowledge as a fixed asset. However, customer insight takes many forms, arrives at the organisation from increasingly diverse sources and requires more than mere dissemination if it is to be useful. A multiple case study approach is used to explore managerial practices for insight generation and use. Multiple informants from each of four organisations in diverse sectors were interviewed. Findings reveal the importance of value alignment and value monitoring across the insight demand chain, to complement the information processing emphasis of extant research. Within the firm, the study suggests the importance of customer insight conduct practices including insight format, the role of automation and insight shepherding, to complement the much-researched process perspective. The study provides a basis for assessing the effectiveness of insight processes by both practitioners and scholars

Balancing the demands of two tasks: an investigation of cognitive–motor dual-tasking in relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis

Background: People with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (PwRRMS) suffer disproportionate decrements in gait under dual-task conditions, when walking and a cognitive task are combined. There has been much less investigation of the impact of cognitive demands on balance. Objectives: This study investigated whether: (1) PwRRMS show disproportionate decrements in postural stability under dual-task conditions compared to healthy controls, and (2) dual-task decrements are associated with everyday dual-tasking difficulties. The impact of mood, fatigue, and disease severity on dual-tasking was also examined. Methods: A total of 34 PwRRMS and 34 matched controls completed cognitive (digit span) and balance (movement of center of pressure on Biosway on stable and unstable surfaces) tasks under single- and dual-task conditions. Everyday dual-tasking was measured using the Dual-Tasking Questionnaire. Mood was measured by the Hospital Anxiety & Depression Scale. Fatigue was measured via the Modified Fatigue Index Scale. Results: No differences in age, gender, years of education, estimated pre-morbid IQ, or baseline digit span between groups. Compared with controls, PwRRMS showed significantly greater decrement in postural stability under dual-task conditions on an unstable surface (p=.007), but not a stable surface (p=.679). Balance decrement scores were not correlated with everyday dual-tasking difficulties or fatigue. Stable surface balance decrement scores were significantly associated with levels of anxiety (rho=0.527; p=.001) and depression (rho=0.451; p=.007). Conclusions: RRMS causes dual-tasking difficulties, impacting balance under challenging conditions, which may contribute to increased risk of gait difficulties and falls. The relationship between anxiety/depression and dual-task decrement suggests that emotional factors may be contributing to dual-task difficulties

Incorporating solar activity into general perturbations analysis of atmospheric friction

A new parameter is introduced, termed the density index, which enables the solar activity cycle to be captured in a new analytical atmospheric density model. Consequentially, a new solar activity model is developed that uses a single independent variable per solar cycle to describe the solar activity across that cycle, as indicated by the F10.7 index. These models are combined and applied to a well-known general perturbations method for satellite orbit lifetime analysis, which is first modified using modern mathematical tools to remove simplifications in the derivation. Validation against historical data shows an improvement in orbit lifetime estimates from an average error of 50.44 percent with a standard deviation of 24.96 percent, to an average error of 3.46 percent with a standard deviation of 3.25 percent. Furthermore, the new method with applied atmospheric and solar activity models is found to compare favorably against other general and special perturbations methods, including third party, and commercial software, the most accurate of which was found to have an average error of 6.63 percent and standard deviation of 7.00 percent. A case study, the UKube-1 spacecraft, is presented and it is found that the spacecraft was inserted into an orbit 54km lower than required to comply with best-practice guidelines, and that with 1σ confidence its orbit will decay in June 2028 ± 2 years, and June 2028 ± 4 months if the next solar cycle is an average magnitude cycle

Improving the accuracy of general perturbations methods of spacecraft lifetime analysis

Using modern mathematic tool sets, various general perturbations methods such as the methods developed by the authors1,2, by Cook, King-Hele & Walker3 or by Griffin & French4 among others can be enhanced with the development of an average projected area model. A new method of determining the average projected area of a tumbling CubeSat is presented, which improves on the accuracy of the method recommended in Section 6.3 of the ISO standard 27852:2010(E)5. This enhancement can be applied to many different general perturbations methods and due to its simple mathematical nature it allows users to perform rapid Monte-Carlo analyses with thousands of permutations of the problem. Traditional numerical or even semi-analytical solutions would require a much greater length of time to produce an orbit lifetime prediction for a single permutation. For the range of CubeSat configurations presented it can be seen that the new method improves the error in the average projected area from, approximately 27% to within 5%. The enhancements are seen to outperform the ISO standard consistently and the ISO standard is seen to consistently overestimate the average projected area when considering non-cuboid spacecraft configurations, meaning that when applied to an orbit decay model it will consistently underestimate the orbit lifetime. However its worth lies not only in the improvement in accuracy but also in the time saved when considering space debris analysis or in initial mission design where many parameters may be unknown. In these situations the ability to swiftly provide solutions for thousands of permutations of the problem or to provide a range of predictions based on initial uncertainties and a confidence value for that range is invaluable. The enhanced solution has then been demonstrated using UKube-1 (COSPAR spacecraft identification 2014-037F) as a case study. It can be seen that the new method outperforms the ISO standard, with an error in the average projected area of 8.09% compared to the ISO standards 14.48%

Down In Bom - Bombay

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Identifying the right solution customers: a managerial methodology

The purpose of this paper is to develop and apply a methodology for identifying, assessing and segmenting customers for business solutions. Firstly, criteria for evaluating solution customers are identified from the literature. These criteria are then refined and differentiated through interviews with 23 solution project managers. Secondly, a longitudinal case study with three solution suppliers and five of their customers is conducted to transfer the selection criteria into a managerial methodology which is validated by both solution suppliers and customers. The developed methodology comprises 21 criteria which are structured into two dimensions: the quality of the relationship to date and the customer's potential for future solution partnership. By combining these two dimensions into a portfolio analysis, four customer segments are identified to help suppliers determine customer attractiveness. The study's contribution lies in bridging academic knowledge and managerial practice to develop a new methodology for helping solution providers to make better informed decisions and reduce the risk of solution failure

An analytical low-cost deployment strategy for satellite constellations

This work proposes a novel method for the deployment of a constellation of nano-satellites into Low Earth Orbit by using carrier vehicles to deliver the nano-satellites into the required orbit positions. The analytical solution presented allows for rapid exploration of the design space and a direct optimisation of the deployment strategy to minimise the time for complete constellation deployment. Traditionally, the deployment of satellite constellations requires numerous launches – at least one per orbital plane – which can be costly. Launching as a secondary payload may offer significant cost reductions, but this comes at the price of decreased control over the launch schedule and final orbit parameters. The analytical method presented here allows for the optimal positioning of the orbit planes of the constellation to be determined and the minimum time for deployment determined as a function of the manoeuvre ΔV. The effect of atmospheric drag on the manoeuvre propellant cost is also considered to ensure a realistic deployment scenario. A case study considering three constellation designs is presented which compares the cost of deployment using traditional launch methods with that of deploying the constellation using carrier vehicles. The results of this study show a significant reduction in cost when using the carrier vehicles on a dedicated launch, compared with launching the satellites individually. Most significantly, the launch cost when using carrier vehicles is primarily determined by the total number of satellites in the constellation, rather than the number of orbital planes. Thus, the carrier vehicle deployment strategy would allow for constellations with a large number of planes to be deployed for a fraction of the equivalent cost if traditional launch methods were used