Brand personality and its influence on brand loyalty - Do sophisticated brands have more brand loyal customers?

Objectives. Creating loyal customers is one of the most important aims organisations have. However, most marketing departments try to create loyal customers through customer loyalty programmes only. This study aims at investigating the influence of the brand’s image (i.e., brand personality; Aaker, 1997) on brand loyalty. Method. Study 1 (N = 360) was used to derive a valid single-item measure from a multi-item scale for the three inter-culturally stable brand personality dimensions (sincerity, excitement, sophistication; Aaker, Benet-Martinez, & Garolera, 2001). Study 2, using an automobile customer sample (N = 1032), assessed the influence of brand personality on brand loyalty while controlling for previous purchases and customer personality. Results. Previous purchases and customers’ conscientiousness were significant determinants of brand loyalty. Additionally, all three brand personality dimensions explained incremental variance (ΔR² = .28) of customers’ loyalty. Conclusion. Practical implications for the application of brand personality in loyalty campaigns are derived

Enriching ontological user profiles with tagging history for multi-domain recommendations

Many advanced recommendation frameworks employ ontologies of various complexities to model individuals and items, providing a mechanism for the expression of user interests and the representation of item attributes. As a result, complex matching techniques can be applied to support individuals in the discovery of items according to explicit and implicit user preferences. Recently, the rapid adoption of Web2.0, and the proliferation of social networking sites, has resulted in more and more users providing an increasing amount of information about themselves that could be exploited for recommendation purposes. However, the unification of personal information with ontologies using the contemporary knowledge representation methods often associated with Web2.0 applications, such as community tagging, is a non-trivial task. In this paper, we propose a method for the unification of tags with ontologies by grounding tags to a shared representation in the form of Wordnet and Wikipedia. We incorporate individuals' tagging history into their ontological profiles by matching tags with ontology concepts. This approach is preliminary evaluated by extending an existing news recommendation system with user tagging histories harvested from popular social networking sites

One evidence base; three stories: do opioids relieve chronic breathlessness?

Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/. The efficacy of low-dose systemic opioids for chronic breathlessness was questioned by the recent Cochrane review by Barnes et al We examined the reasons for this conflicting finding and re-evaluated the efficacy of systemic opioids. Compared with previous meta-analyses, Barnes et al reported a smaller effect and lower precision, but did not account for matched data of crossover trials (11/12 included trials) and added a risk-of-bias criterion (sample size). When re-analysed to account for crossover data, opioids decreased breathlessness (standardised mean differences -0.32; -0.18 to -0.47; I2=44.8%) representing a clinically meaningful reduction of 0.8 points (0-10 numerical rating scale), consistent across meta-analyses

The ISCIP Analyst, Volume VIII, Issue 1

This repository item contains a single issue of The ISCIP Analyst, an analytical review journal published from 1996 to 2010 by the Boston University Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology, and Policy

The influence of reinforcing nano-particles on indentation size effect and microhardness of metallic materials

The Nix-Gao model [1], that explains why the indentation microhardness increases with decreasing depth of the indent, is extended to describe the non-monotonous depth dependence of indentation hardness of metals containing very tiny rigid particles. In the original model, the microhardness is controlled by the density of dislocations needed to accommodate the imprint. In the extended model, additional dislocations are injected by rigid particles being pushed into material by an indenter. The resulting indentation hardness firstly decreases and then increases with increasing penetration depth. Such depth dependence of hardness qualitatively agrees with that observed for Fe-nanoZnO biomaterials. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Workshop synthesis: Measuring attitudes and perceptions in large scale (quantitative) surveys

This paper presents the main outcomes of the workshop A5 Measuring attitudes and perceptions in large scale (quantitative) surveys. There is a big need in the community to include more questions about psychological factors in surveys, because the travel behavior is getting more divers. The workshop discussion revealed that while there are different survey methods to capture information about the participants’ psychology, Likert scales are mainly used because they are easy to implement and to fill in. However, the reliability of the results must be assessed in light of the survey method and type of analysis. Further research is needed to combine quantitative surveys with methods to collect psychological information

The ISCIP Analyst, Volume VIII, Issue 12

This repository item contains a single issue of The ISCIP Analyst, an analytical review journal published from 1996 to 2010 by the Boston University Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology, and Policy

Response Strategies to Challenges Faced by the Horticultural Firms in Nairobi County of Kenya

The horticultural sector has an immense contribution to the economic development of many countries including Kenya. However, the sector faces numerous challenges that hinder its full contribution to most economies especially in the developing countries. This study was carried out to determine the response strategies that the horticultre firms  in Nairobi County, Kenya can put in place to counter the many challenges it faces. The study made use of primary data, collected from the management and staff of thirty six horticultural fims in the County.The data was analysed using frequencies and measures of central tendcency such as mean, mode and standard deviation. The study is of critical importance to horticulural firms in Kenya and other countries. It is also of great importance since it helps in establishing important strategies that can help in improving perfomance among the firms. The study established that horticultural firms can use several strategies in their operations which can help in eliminating the challenges they face and improve their performance in the sector. The key strategies  include : Turn around strategies- an all-round strategy dealing with competition, product diversification, new market penetration, e-marketing of the company’s products, investing in packaging and product differentiation, target market, out-sourcing of services, differentiating strategies, refocusing the business and enlarged branch network worldwide. It is recommended that the management should device appropriate ways of putting in place strategies that are underutilized in order to deal with the challenges they face for a maximum profitability of the firms. Key words: Response, Strategies, Nairobi County, Keny