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

Examining Career And Technical Education Practitioner Preparation And Professional Development Needs

This quantitative study was used to investigate Illinois automotive educator professional development needs and to identify the demographic landscape of Illinois secondary and post-secondary automotive teachers. The study should bring a greater understanding of what automotive teachers feel they need to learn in order to continue as successful educators. A modified Borich (1980) needs assessment model was used to identify the perceived importance and ability levels for 32 professional competencies. Mean Weighted Discrepancy Scores (MWDS) were calculated using the importance and ability scores in order to report the professional development need. The administered survey was also utilized to examine their level of education, level of teacher preparation, the length of automotive teaching experience, age, and type of school in which they served. An effort was made to discover any unique professional development needs based on these listed demographic categories. Understanding what automotive teachers in Illinois are struggling with will go a long way in working to establish support systems for the teachers

Mental wellbeing in non-ambulant youth with neuromuscular disorders: What makes the difference?

The physical and social challenges associated with neuromuscular disorders may impact mental wellbeing in non-ambulant youth during the more vulnerable period of adolescence. This cross-sectional survey investigated non-ambulant youths’ mental wellbeing and relationships with physical health, participation and social factors. The conceptual model was the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). Thirty-seven youth aged 13 – 22 years old (mean age 17.4 years; n = 30 male; n = 24 Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy) and their parents provided biopsychosocial data through a comprehensive self-report questionnaire. The primary outcome measure was the Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS). Relationships between mental wellbeing and variables within and across each ICF domain were explored using linear regression models. Mean WEMWBS scores (55.3/70 [SD 8.1]) were higher than for typically developing youth and comparable to youth with other chronic conditions. Over half of youth reported severe co-morbidities across all body systems. Multivariable modelling indicated that mental wellbeing was independently associated with academic achievement and perceived family support but not with physical health variables. Beyond management of physical co-morbidities, enabling youths’ educational attainment and attending to social support likely optimises youth’s wellbeing

Designing a Safe, Durable, Affordable Crib

ME450 Capstone Design and Manufacturing Experience: Winter 2010Kids In DangerSM, a nonprofit organization, is concerned with safety and affordability of baby cribs currently available. This is because the crib is the one product where the child is intended to be left alone, and many low-income families with newborns cannot afford safe cribs. Ms. Nancy Cowles, Executive Director of Kids In Danger, contacted us to design and build a safe, affordable crib. Through our research, we have determined the targets needed for the design of such a crib. Using these target engineering specifications and customer requirements, we generated concept ideas in a morphological chart to meet these separate requirements. Using the concept ideas, five total crib concepts were generated and evaluated in a Pugh chart using a weighted scoring system based on the importance of the customer requirements. From this evaluation an "alpha" concept design was selected. Via engineering analysis, the alpha concept design was further refined, and the sides were made to be collapsible. These changes resulted in the final concept design. A working prototype of the final design was made and validation procedures were conducted. The mass production price was found to be $82.58, the overall weight was 45.2 lbs, and the cycles to failure were found to be 55,406. The predicted lifetime based on the cycles to failure analysis was 15.2 years, and computed with equations since there was a time constraint where an actual test could not be completed. We recommend a further refinement which would result in weight reduction as well as more rigorous safety and durability testing before widespread use.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/109380/1/me450w10project22_report.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/109380/2/me450w10project22_photo.jp

Macromolecular Crowding Effects on Cellular NADH-enzyme Binding Kinetics

University of Minnesota M.S. thesis. August 2017. Major: Chemistry. Advisor: Ahmed Heikal. 1 computer file (PDF); xii, 83 pages.Reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) is a major cofactor for a large number of biological enzymes that are essential in a myriad of metabolic pathways such as glycolytic and oxidative phosphorylation pathways. In addition, NADH is intrinsically fluorescent and therefore has the potential of serving as a biomarker to monitor mitochondrial dysfunctions associated with aging, cancer, and apoptosis. In this thesis, we investigate how macromolecular crowding may affect the biochemical reaction kinetics of NADH interaction with lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) as a model system in biomimetic crowding (e.g., Ficoll-enriched buffer at 0 ̶ 400 g/L). Using noninvasive, quantitative two-photon fluorescence lifetime and associated anisotropy, we exploit the sensitivities of NADH fluorescence lifetime and rotational diffusion to protein binding. To differentiate between viscosity and crowding effects on the reaction kinetics, we also conducted complementary measurements in glycerol-enriched buffer. Additionally, we are investigating the sensitivity of cellular NADH interaction with dehydrogenases to metabolic manipulations. Our quantitative and non-invasive methodology complements the traditional biochemical and thermodynamics techniques without the destruction of live cells. Intracellular NADH also exists as a mixture of free and enzyme-bound populations at dynamic equilibrium throughout living cells, which can be imaged using fluorescence lifetime imaging for both quantitative and noninvasive assessment of cellular metabolism. 2P-fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM) and 2P- fluorescence anisotropy of intrinsic NADH was measured in cultured mouse embryonic cells under both resting conditions and metabolic-manipulation

Optimal control for halo orbit missions

This paper addresses the computation of the required trajectory correction maneuvers (TCM) for a halo orbit space mission to compensate for the launch velocity errors introduced by inaccuracies of the launch vehicle. By combiningdynamical systems theory with optimal control techniques, we produce a portrait of the complex landscape of the trajectory design space. This approach enables parametric studies not available to mission designers a few years ago, such as how the magnitude of the errors and the timingof the first TCM affect the correction ΔV. The impetus for combiningdynamical systems theory and optimal control in this problem arises from design issues for the Genesis Discovery mission being developed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory