A netnography study on branded customer experience: Evidence from the red sea

This study addresses the question of what are the underlying dimensions and messages to self and others that constitute the construct of customer experience. The study uses a netnography method to validate or refute and extend a priori concepts that the literature identifies within the context of resort-hotel brands in a Sharm El Sheikh resort in Egypt. The results identify eight dimensions (comfort, educational, hedonic, novelty, recognition, relational, safety and sense of beauty) and unique configurations of these eight dimensions that extend prior research on customer experience

Linking experience realms and experiential service brand loyalty: Determinants and outcomes for future operationalization

The concept of ‗Customer Experience‘ has evolved as an imperative area of study within the marketing discipline. Despite its importance and the positive attention this concept received during the last few years, the explanation of customer experiences have remained vague and lack a thorough theoretical foundation. This paper aims to address the gap in the literature and to facilitate better understanding of the concept of customer experience and its antecedents and consequences from the consumer perspective. The paper examines the impact of customer experience on brand loyalty via a comprehensive review of existing literature on the concept of customer experience and service brand literatures. Additionally, twelve hypotheses, which describe and explain the antecedents of customer experience and impacts upon brand loyalty within the service sector, are presented. The outcome of this paper adds novel perspective to the growing body of brand literature, particularly service brand and suggests directions for future research

Applying marketing’s new dominant logic for interpreting customer experiences with brands

The concept of customer experience is evolving to an imperative area of study within the marketing discipline. Despite its importance and the positive attention this concept is receiving in the literature, the explanation of customer experiences remains vague and a thorough theoretical foundation is lacking. This paper addresses the gap in the literature and to facilitate a brand-management understanding of the concept of customer experience and its antecedents and consequences. The paper examines the impact of customer experience on brand loyalty via a comprehensive review of existing literature on the concept of customer experience and service brand literatures. Additionally, twelve propositions describe and explain the antecedents of customer experience and impacts upon brand loyalty within a service-centered marketing logic. This paper contributes a novel customer-brand experience perspective and conceptual tools relevant for further theory development and for effectively managing customer-brand relationships

Optimising antimicrobial prescription in hospitals by introducing an antimicrobial stewardship programme in Hong Kong: Consensus statement

Objective. To discuss the implementation of an 'antimicrobial stewardship programme' as a means to improve the quality of antimicrobial use in a hospital setting in Hong Kong. Participants. Consensus working group on 'antimicrobial stewardship programme', The Scientific Committee on Infection Control, Centre for Health Protection, Department of Health, comprised 11 experts. The remit of the working group was to discuss the rationale and requirement for optimising antimicrobial prescriptions in hospitals by the introduction of an 'antimicrobial stewardship programme'. Evidence. PubMed articles, national and international guidelines, and abstracts of international meetings published between January 2000 and December 2004 on programmes for improving the use of antimicrobials in hospitals. Only English medical literature was reviewed. Consensus process. Data search was performed independently by three members of the working group. They met on three occasions before the meeting to discuss all collected articles. A final draft was circulated to the working group before a meeting on 3 January 2005. Five commonly asked questions about an 'antimicrobial stewardship programme' were selected for discussion by the participants. Published information on the rationale, components, outcome measures, advantages, and disadvantages of the programme was reviewed. Recent unpublished data from local studies of an 'antimicrobial stewardship programme' were also discussed. The timing, potential problems, and practical issues involved in the implementation of an 'antimicrobial stewardship programme' in Hong Kong were then considered. The consensus statement was circulated to and approved by all participants. Conclusion. The continuous indiscriminate and excessive use of antimicrobial agents promotes the emergence of antibiotic-resistant organisms. Antimicrobial resistance substantially raises already-rising health care costs and increases patient morbidity and mortality. Pattern of prescriptions in hospitals can be improved through the implementation of an 'antimicrobial stewardship programme'. A 'universal' and 'continuous' 'antimicrobial stewardship programme' should now be established in Hong Kong hospitals.published_or_final_versio

The Naming Game in Social Networks: Community Formation and Consensus Engineering

We study the dynamics of the Naming Game [Baronchelli et al., (2006) J. Stat. Mech.: Theory Exp. P06014] in empirical social networks. This stylized agent-based model captures essential features of agreement dynamics in a network of autonomous agents, corresponding to the development of shared classification schemes in a network of artificial agents or opinion spreading and social dynamics in social networks. Our study focuses on the impact that communities in the underlying social graphs have on the outcome of the agreement process. We find that networks with strong community structure hinder the system from reaching global agreement; the evolution of the Naming Game in these networks maintains clusters of coexisting opinions indefinitely. Further, we investigate agent-based network strategies to facilitate convergence to global consensus.Comment: The original publication is available at http://www.springerlink.com/content/70370l311m1u0ng3

The effectiveness of neuromuscular warm-up strategies, that require no additional equipment, for preventing lower limb injuries during sports participation: a systematic review

PMCID: PMC3408383The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/10/75. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Symptom lead times in lung and colorectal cancers: What are the benefits of symptom-based approaches to early diagnosis?

This is the final version of the article. Available from Cancer Research UK via the DOI in this record.Background: Individuals with undiagnosed lung and colorectal cancers present with non-specific symptoms in primary care more often than matched controls. Increased access to diagnostic services for patients with symptoms generates more early-stage diagnoses, but the mechanisms for this are only partially understood. Methods: We re-analysed a UK-based case-control study to estimate the Symptom Lead Time (SLT) distribution for a range of potential symptom criteria for investigation. Symptom Lead Time is the time between symptoms caused by cancer and eventual diagnosis, and is analogous to Lead Time in a screening programme. We also estimated the proportion of symptoms in lung and colorectal cancer cases that are actually caused by the cancer. Results: Mean Symptom Lead Times were between 4.1 and 6.0 months, with medians between 2.0 and 3.2 months. Symptom Lead Time did not depend on stage at diagnosis, nor which criteria for investigation are adopted. Depending on the criteria, an estimated 27-48% of symptoms in individuals with as yet undiagnosed lung cancer, and 12-32% with undiagnosed colorectal cancer are not caused by the cancer. Conclusions: In most cancer cases detected by a symptom-based programme, the symptoms are caused by cancer. These cases have a short lead time and benefit relatively little. However, in a significant minority of cases cancer detection is serendipitous. This group experiences the benefits of a standard screening programme, a substantial mean lead time and a higher probability of early-stage diagnosis.This work was supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Programme Grants for Applied Research Programme, RP-PG-0608-10045

On stationary points of nonexpansive set-valued mappings

In this paper we deal with stationary points (also known as endpoints) of nonexpansive set-valued mappings and show that the existence of such points under certain conditions follows as a consequence of the existence of approximate stationary sequences. In particular we provide abstract extensions of well-known fixed point theorems.Dirección General de Enseñanza SuperiorJunta de Andalucí

Genetic risk factors for body mass index and obesity in an ethnically diverse population: results from the Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology (PAGE) Study

Several genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have demonstrated that common genetic variants contribute to obesity. However, studies of this complex trait have focused on ancestrally European populations, despite the high prevalence of obesity in some minority groups. As part of the ‘Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology (PAGE)’ Consortium, we investigated the association between thirteen GWAS-identified SNPs and BMI and obesity in 69,775 subjects, including 6,149 American Indians, 15,415 African-Americans, 2,438 East Asians, 7,346 Hispanics, 604 Pacific Islanders, and 37,823 European Americans. For the BMI-increasing allele of each SNP, we calculated beta coefficients using linear regression (for BMI) and risk estimates using logistic regression (for obesity defined as BMI ≥ 30) followed by fixed-effects meta-analysis to combine results across PAGE sites. Analyses stratified by racial/ethnic group assumed an additive genetic model and adjusted for age, sex, and current smoking. We defined “replicating SNPs” (in European Americans) and “generalizing SNPs” (in other racial/ethnic groups) as those associated with an allele frequency-specific increase in BMI. By this definition, we replicated 9/13 SNP associations (5 out of 8 loci) in European Americans. We also generalized 8/13 SNP associations (5/8 loci) in East Asians, 7/13 (5/8 loci) in African Americans, 6/13 (4/8 loci) in Hispanics, 5/8 in Pacific Islanders (5/8 loci), and 5/9 (4/8 loci) in American Indians. Linkage disequilibrium patterns suggest that tagSNPs selected for European Americans may not adequately tag causal variants in other ancestry groups. Accordingly, fine-mapping in large samples is needed to comprehensively explore these loci in diverse populations

Single Electrons from Heavy Flavor Decays in p+p Collisions at sqrt(s) = 200 GeV

The invariant differential cross section for inclusive electron production in p+p collisions at sqrt(s) = 200 GeV has been measured by the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider over the transverse momentum range $0.4 <= p_T <= 5.0 GeV/c at midrapidity (eta <= 0.35). The contribution to the inclusive electron spectrum from semileptonic decays of hadrons carrying heavy flavor, i.e. charm quarks or, at high p_T, bottom quarks, is determined via three independent methods. The resulting electron spectrum from heavy flavor decays is compared to recent leading and next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculations. The total cross section of charm quark-antiquark pair production is determined as sigma_(c c^bar) = 0.92 +/- 0.15 (stat.) +- 0.54 (sys.) mb.Comment: 329 authors, 6 pages text, 3 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett. Plain text data tables for the points plotted in figures for this and previous PHENIX publications are (or will be) publicly available at http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/papers.htm