Corporate Brand Image and Customer Satisfaction on Loyalty: An Empirical Study of Starbucks Coffee in Taiwan

Corporate image has been assessed as an important antecedent of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Corporate brand is vital because positive corporate brands help companies achieving higher performance, such as sales. Marketing exists to deliver more value to satisfy customers as well as build a long-term and mutually profitability relationship with customers. If a firm’s products or services do not satisfy or meet the customer’s needs and wants, all the strategies are insufficient. With loyal customers, companies can have higher market share and reduce the operating cost. An improvement of 5 percent in customer retention leads to an increase of 25 percent to 75 percent in profit. It costs more than five times as much to obtain a new customer than to keep an existing one. This initial study was from relevant literature, then set up research structure and hypotheses. Survey was employed, and respondents were from the customers of Starbucks Coffee in Taipei area. There were 199 usable questionnaires to analyze descriptive statistics, reliability, validity, and SEM model. The research found that corporate brand image significantly affects customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, and customer satisfaction has strong impact on customer loyalty for the sample. Therefore, firms have to specifically focus on these factors in order to build a long-term and mutually profitability relationship with a customer and create loyalty as competitive advantages in the market

PTSD Among Working Women in a Developing Country

https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/wrin_briefs/1004/thumbnail.jp

Factors Related to Intra-Tendinous Morphology of Achilles Tendon in Runners

The purpose of this study was to determine and explore factors (age, sex, anthropometry, running and injury/pain history, tendon gross morphology, neovascularization, ankle range of motion, and ankle plantarflexor muscle endurance) related to intra-tendinous morphological alterations of the Achilles tendon in runners. An intra-tendinous morphological change was defined as collagen fiber disorganization detected by a low peak spatial frequency radius (PSFR) obtained from spatial frequency analysis (SFA) techniques in sonography. Ninety-one runners (53 males and 38 females; 37.9 ± 11.6 years) with 8.8 ± 7.3 years of running experience participated. Height, weight, and waist and hip circumferences were recorded. Participants completed a survey about running and injury/pain history and the Victorian Institute of Sport Assessment-Achilles (VISA-A) survey. Heel raise endurance and knee-to-wall composite dorsiflexion were assessed. Brightness-mode (B-mode) sonographic images were captured longitudinally and transversely on the Achilles tendon bilaterally. Sonographic images were analyzed for gross morphology (i.e., cross-sectional area [CSA]), neovascularization, and intra-tendinous morphology (i.e., PSFR) for each participant. The factors associated with altered intra-tendinous morphology of the Achilles tendon were analyzed using a generalized linear mixed model. Multivariate analyses revealed that male sex was significantly associated with a decreased PSFR. Additionally, male sex and the presence of current Achilles tendon pain were found to be significantly related to decreased PSFR using a univariate analysis. Our findings suggested that male sex and presence of current Achilles tendon pain were related to intra-tendinous morphological alterations in the Achilles tendon of runners

Epidemiology of digital amputation and replantation in Taiwan: A population-based study

AbstractBackgroundPublications on digital amputation and replantation have been mostly derived from case series in high-volume hand surgery practices, and epidemiological studies are few. This study used a population-based dataset to illustrate the incidence of digital amputation, patient and hospital characteristics, and their relationships with replantation.MethodsA claim for reimbursement dataset (2008) was provided as a research database by the Bureau of National Health Insurance, Taiwan. Patients with ICD-9-CM coded as digital amputation (885 and 886) were included. These were cross-referenced with procedure codes for replantation procedures (84.21 and 84.22). We defined the patients who underwent thumb replantation (84.21) and thumb amputation (84.01) during a single hospitalization as replantation failure. Patient and hospital characteristics were studied with statistical analysis.ResultsIn total, 2358 patients with digital amputation were admitted (1859 male, 499 female), mean age 39.2 ± 15.5 years. The incidence was 10.2/100,000 person–years. The highest incidence was 14.7/100,000 person–years in the age group 45–54 years. Machinery and powered hand tools caused 68.8% of digital amputations. Thumb amputation [odds ratio (OR): 1.35, p = 0.01], private hospital (OR: 1.40, p = 0.01), medical center (OR: 2.38, p < 0.001), regional hospital (OR: 2.41, p < 0.001) and hospitals with an annual volume >20 digital amputations (OR: 4.23, p < 0.001) were associated with higher attempt rates for replantation. Elderly patients (age >65 years) had higher risk of thumb replantation failure (OR: 32.30, p = 0.045), while hospitals with >20 annual replantations had lower risk (OR: 0.11, p = 0.02).ConclusionOur study of the National Health Insurance database characterized the epidemiology of digital amputation patients undergoing replantation and the facilities in Taiwan where these procedures are performed. The hospitals treating more digital amputation patients had higher attempt rates and lower thumb failure rates

THE UPPER LIMB EMG ACTIVITY COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT TABLE TENNIS FOREHAND DRIVES

The purpose of this study was to combine dynamics and surface EMG methods to analyze the movements of table tennis forehand drives by Taiwan elite table tennis players performing straight and cross court forehand drives from topspin and backspin serves. The kinematical data were collected by 10 Vicon MX13+ high-speed cameras and one Biovision system was used to record the EMG signal of seven muscles groups on the dominate hand. The results showed that there were significant differences among the four table tennis drives. The players exerted greater muscular activity in the wrist extensors, the biceps and the triceps for the backspin serve forehand drive than when returning the topspin serve forehand drive, not only on the straight but also on the cross court strokes

5-Hy­droxy­indan-1-one

In the title compound (5HIN), C9H8O2, is perfectly planar as all atoms, except the H atoms of both CH2 groups, lie on a crystallographic mirror plane. In the crystal, mol­ecules are linked by strong inter­molecular O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, forming an infinite chain along [100], generating a C(8) motif

What’s Cooking? – Cognitive Training of Executive Function in the Elderly

Executive function involves the efficient and adaptive engagement of the control processes of updating, shifting, and inhibition (Miyake, 2000) to guide behavior toward a goal. It is associated with decrements in many other cognitive functions due to aging (West, 1996; Raz, 2000) with itself particularly vulnerable to the effect of aging (Treitz et al., 2007). Cognitive training in the form of structural experience with executive coordination demands exhibited effective enhancement in the elderly (Hertzog et al., 2008). The current study was thus aimed at the development and evaluation of a training regime for executive function in the elderly. The breakfast cooking task of Craik and Bialystok (2006) was adapted into a multitasking training task in a session (pre-test vs. post-test) by group (control vs. training). In the training condition, participants constantly switched, updated, and planned in order to control the cooking of several foods and concurrently performed a table setting secondary task. Training gains were exhibited on task related measures. Transfer effect was selectively observed on the letter–number sequencing and digit symbol coding test. The cooking training produced short term increase in the efficiency of executive control processing. These effects were interpreted in terms of the process overlap between the training and the transfer tasks

SWITCHING THE HORIZONTAL GRF TO THE PATH OF PROGRESSION IN THE TABLE TENNIS FOREHAND DRIVE

Knowing the kinetic strategies of the lower limbs is a crucial factor to investigate the forehand drive which comprises the changes of the foot placement. It is difficult to directly evaluate the movement of feet with the data of ground reaction force (GRF) and impulse (GRI).This study tried to analyze table tennis forehand drives via the GRF and GRI data based upon the anatomical perspective. The motion and the GRF data were collected from eight right-handed Taiwanese elite table tennis players. The horizontal GRF data were transformed to a reference frame and then integrated with time to get the GRI. During the forehand drive shot, the participants performed a greater lateral impulse to cause the trunk rotation and decelerated their body from initial to mid-phase and then accelerated the body to perform a forehand drive shot