Comparative Advertising Wars: An Historical Analysis of Their Causes and Consequences

This historical study contributes to the extensive literature on comparative advertising by examining the causes and consequences of comparative advertising wars; that is, when one advertiser responds to a direct or implied attack by another advertiser. Primary and secondary sources consist of articles published in historic and contemporary marketing and advertising trade journals, such as Printers’ Ink, Advertising & Selling, and Advertising Age. The findings reveal that well-publicized advertising wars occurred frequently between major U.S. advertisers throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, and that they most often occurred in product and service markets characterized by intense competition. Many, if not most, advertisers’ principal motive for responding to a comparative advertising attack has been emotional rather than rational. The findings also reveal that advertising wars often became increasingly hostile, leading to negative consequences for all combatants, as well as a broad and negative social consequence in the form of potentially misleading advertising.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Measuring client experiences in long-term care in the Netherlands: a pilot study with the Consumer Quality Index Long-term Care.

BACKGROUND: This study aims to describe the development, testing and optimization of a new standard instrument, the Consumer Quality Index (CQ-index) Long-term Care, for measuring client experiences with long-term care in the Netherlands. METHODS: Three versions of the CQ-index questionnaires and protocols for study sampling and data collection were developed, designed for interviews with residents of nursing or residential care homes and postal surveys among representatives of psychogeriatric residents and homecare clients. From July to November 2006 a pilot study was conducted among 2,697 clients of 68 nursing or residential care homes, 2,164 representatives of clients in 57 psychogeriatric care institutions, and 1,462 clients of 19 homecare organizations. We performed psychometric analyses and descriptive analyses, and evaluated the pilot study. RESULTS: The pilot study showed the feasibility and usability of the instruments, supported the multidimensionality of the questionnaires and showed first findings on client experiences and possibilities for quality improvement. Nine scales applied to all care settings: shared decision making, attitude and courtesy, information, body care, competence and safety of care, activities, autonomy, mental well-being, and availability of personnel. The pilot resulted in three optimized questionnaires and recommendations for nationwide implementation. CONCLUSIONS: The CQ-index Long-term Care provides a good basis to investigate the quality of nursing homes, residential care homes and homecare from the clients' perspective. This standardized instrument enables a nationwide comparison of the quality of long-term care for the purpose of transparency and quality assurance. (aut. ref.

Highly charged ions interacting with carbon surfaces: An influence of surface structure

Auger electron spectroscopy has been used to investigate the reaction of various carbon surfaces - including fullerene covered metal surfaces - on the impact of highly charged ions. An influence of the electronic surface structure on the interaction is clearly observed. However, the goal of modifying the electronic and the geometrical structure, e.g. to create nano devices by means of ion impact, has not yet been realized

High-resolution neutron capture and transmission measurements, and the stellar neutron-capture cross section of Sr-88

We have made new and improved measurements of the neutron capture and total cross sections for Sr-88 at the Oak Ridge Electron Linear Accelerator (ORELA). Improvements over previous measurements include a wider incident neutron energy range, better resolution, the use of metallic rather than carbonate samples, better background subtraction, reduced sensitivity to sample-dependent backgrounds, and better pulse-height weighting functions. Because of its small cross section, the Sr-88(n,gamma) reaction is an important bottleneck during s-process nucleosynthesis. Hence, an accurate determination of this rate is needed to better constrain the neutron exposure in s-process models and to better understand the recently discovered isotopic anomalies in certain meteorites. We performed an R-matrix analysis of our capture and transmission data to extract parameters for 101 resonances between 100 eV and 350 keV. In addition, we fitted our transmission data alone to extract parameters for 342 additional resonances between 350 and 950 keV. We used this information to calculate average properties of the Sr-88+ n system for comparison to previous work. Although previous data and resonance analyses were much less extensive, they are, in general, in good agreement with our results except that the average radiation widths as well as the p-wave correlation coefficients we determined are significantly smaller, and the s-wave correlation coefficient we determined has opposite sign from that reported in previous work. We used these resonance parameters together with a calculation of the small, but significant direct-capture contribution to determine the astrophysical reaction rate for the Sr-88(n,gamma) reaction to approximately 3% accuracy across the entire range of temperatures needed by s-process models. Our new rate is in good agreement with the results from a high-precision activation measurement at kT=25 keV, but it is approximately 9.5% lower than the rate used in most previous nucleosynthesis calculations in the temperature range (kT=6-8 keV), where most of the neutron exposure occurs in current stellar models of the s process. We discuss the possible astrophysical impact of this new, lower rate.Peer reviewe

High-resolution neutron capture and transmission measurements, and the stellar neutron-capture cross section of Sr-88 (vol C62, art. no. 055803, 2000)

Peer reviewe