An investigation into the relationship between customer relationship marketing and customer retention: superstore retailing context in Bangladesh

The context of this study is Bangladesh`s food retailing sector. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM) and customer retention. The core aim of Relationship Marketing is to build long lasting mutually bonded relationships with customers and various other important stakeholders. The concept has attracted considerable attention among scholars in recent decades and has appeared in service marketing literature as a new marketing paradigm. The concept is critical to the success of any organisation as it has been an accepted phenomenon that maintains that existing customers are far easier to retain than is the process of acquiring new customers. In order to stay in business and cope with the challenging business dynamism, organisations are continuously searching for reliable and serviceable strategies to be employed in order to increase customer retention. However, there is a lack of consensus among researchers on the core antecedents of relationship marketing that can be used to achieve the above aims, especially while the concept is new in the context of organised retailing sectors in Bangladesh. In response, the study developed a conceptual framework of customer retention strategy which incorporates bonds, service quality and relational quality into one relationship model. The model establishes eleven hypotheses. A sample of 202 grocery food retail customers were selected in a random sample from four selected superstores. The results support hypothesized relationships built on the model. The findings indicate that service quality, trust, bond and customer satisfactions are vital for creating positive customer loyalty which in turn creates customer retentionPeer reviewedFinal Published versio

Promoting engagement and learning in first year university studies: The role of personalisation

Student engagement in higher education can be conceptualised as involving three components: students’ social needs and circumstances, the cognitive characteristics of academic studies, and the prevailing institutional ethos or philosophy that specifies the relationships that students have with learning and knowledge. This paper reports on an investigation into student engagement in a first-year human development course at the University of Waikato at Tauranga, New Zealand where the teaching staff has a commitment to relating learning to individual experiences. Information from an end-of-course survey indicates that a philosophy of personalisation promotes learning engagement. Students reported that they were required to think a lot or a great deal, that they put time into the course assessments, and that they valued the human development course itself

Child death in high-income countries

Although high income countries have made substantial progress towards reducing child mortality over recent decades, rates vary markedly between and within countries, and modifiable factors continue to be identified in many deaths. A series of three articles in The Lancet has described the epidemiology of child mortality and a standardised approach to child death reviews in high income countries. Patterns of child mortality at different ages are delineated into five broad categories: perinatal, congenital, acquired natural, external, and unexplained; while contributory factors are described across four broad domains: factors intrinsic to the child, the physical environment, the social environment, and service delivery. This commentary attempts to draw on the conclusions of these three articles and make practical recommendations on strategies in three key areas with perhaps the greatest potential to further reduce child mortality in high income countries: perinatal conditions, particularly preterm birth; acquired natural conditions, such as sepsis or acute respiratory problems; and external causes, including road traffic fatalities

Graded potential of neural crest to form cornea, sensory neurons and cartilage along the rostrocaudal axis

Neural crest cells arising from different rostrocaudal axial levels form different sets of derivatives as diverse as ganglia, cartilage and cornea. These variations may be due to intrinsic properties of the cell populations, different environmental factors encountered during migration or some combination thereof. We test the relative roles of intrinsic versus extrinsic factors by challenging the developmental potential of cardiac and trunk neural crest cells via transplantation into an ectopic midbrain environment. We then assess long-term survival and differentiation into diverse derivatives, including cornea, trigeminal ganglion and branchial arch cartilage. Despite their ability to migrate to the periocular region, neither cardiac nor trunk neural crest contribute appropriately to the cornea, with cardiac crest cells often forming ectopic masses on the corneal surface. Similarly, the potential of trunk and cardiac neural crest to form somatosensory neurons in the trigeminal ganglion was significantly reduced compared with control midbrain grafts. Cardiac neural crest exhibited a reduced capacity to form cartilage, contributing only nominally to Meckle's cartilage, whereas trunk neural crest formed no cartilage after transplantation, even when grafted directly into the first branchial arch. These results suggest that neural crest cells along the rostrocaudal axis display a graded loss in developmental potential to form somatosensory neurons and cartilage even after transplantation to a permissive environment. Hox gene expression was transiently maintained in the cardiac neural tube and neural crest at 12 hours post-transplantation to the midbrain, but was subsequently downregulated. This suggests that long-term differences in Hox gene expression cannot account for rostrocaudal differences in developmental potential of neural crest populations in this case

Hippocampal representations switch from errors to predictions during acquisition of predictive associations

We constantly exploit the statistical regularities in our environment to help guide our perception. The hippocampus has been suggested to play a pivotal role in both learning environmental statistics, as well as exploiting them to generate perceptual predictions. However, it is unclear how the hippocampus balances encoding new predictive associations with the retrieval of existing ones. Here, we present the results of two high resolution human fMRI studies (N = 24 for both experiments) directly investigating this. Participants were exposed to auditory cues that predicted the identity of an upcoming visual shape (with 75% validity). Using multivoxel decoding analysis, we find that the hippocampus initially preferentially represents unexpected shapes (i.e., those that violate the cue regularities), but later switches to representing the cue-predicted shape regardless of which was actually presented. These findings demonstrate that the hippocampus is involved both acquiring and exploiting predictive associations, and is dominated by either errors or predictions depending on whether learning is ongoing or complete

Know your HIV epidemic (KYE) report: review of the HIV epidemic in South Africa.

In order to update and consolidate South Africa’s evidence base for HIV-prevention interventions, it was decided by the Government of South Africa to commission a synthesis of the available data on the epidemiology of prevalent and incident HIV infections, and the wider epidemic context of these infections. This know your epidemic (KYE) approach has been successfully implemented in a number of sub-Saharan African countries.2 The process involves a desk review and secondary analysis of existing biological, behavioural and socio-demographic data in order to determine the epidemiology of new HIV infections. KYE reports present key findings and policy and programme recommendations which are grounded in local evidence and aim to support decision-making and improve HIV-prevention results. In 2010, South Africa also conducted a know your response (KYR) review, which critically assessed HIV-prevention policies, programmes and resource allocations. The overall results of this HIV epidemic review and the KYR review will be published in a separate, national KYE/KYR synthesis report

Lens-derived Semaphorin3A regulates sensory innervation of the cornea

The cornea, one of the most highly innervated tissues of the body, is innervated by trigeminal sensory afferents. During development, axons are initially repelled at the corneal margin, resulting in the formation of a circumferential nerve ring. The nature and source of guidance molecules that regulate this process remain a mystery. Here, we show that the lens, which immediately underlies the cornea, repels trigeminal axons in vivo and in vitro. Lens ablation results in premature, disorganized corneal innervation and disruption of the nerve ring and ventral plexus. We show that Semaphorin3A (Sema3A) is expressed in the lens epithelium and its receptor Neuropilin-1 (Npn1) is expressed in the trigeminal ganglion during cornea development. Inhibition of Sema3A signaling abrogates axon repulsion by the lens and cornea in vitro and phenocopies lens removal in vivo. These results demonstrate that lens-derived Sema3A mediates initial repulsion of trigeminal sensory axons from the cornea and is necessary for the proper formation of the nerve ring and positioning of the ventral plexus in the choroid fissure

The Social Support Networks of Indochinese Refugees

Refugee sponsors and social service staff of agencies serving Indochinese refugees in Utah were surveyed to determine the relationship between social support and economic self-sufficiency among refugees. Agency staff and refugee sponsors rated contacts by family, work, school, and sponsors who are family members as most useful, with differences emerging between the two groups regarding other sources of social support. Respondents who had been refugees rated some forms of social support higher than nonrefugee respondents. Mutual Assistance Associations were seen as underutilized resources for helping Indochinese refugees build and maintain networks of social support