EXPRESS: Timing Market Entry – the Mediation Effect of Market Potential

Timing a multinational firm’s entry into a new country is a pivotal decision with long-term impact on the firm’s overall performance, thus a deeper understanding of the drivers of the decision and their interrelationship can yield significant managerial benefits. We explore the mediating role of market potential by decomposing the total effects of the decision’s main drivers—macro-economic attractiveness, market concentration, social heterogeneity, population density—into direct and indirect effects. These decompositions explain the countervailing effects of some drivers that simultaneously make both positive and negative impacts. Our dataset encompasses mobile 4G broadband penetration in 130 countries, including market entry timings for 28 international operators in 79 countries. We establish the nature of the mediation effect of market potential on the drivers of entry timing. Using early penetration data, we utilize growth mixture modeling to divide the countries into four latent segments. We validate this segmentation using machine learning with the four key drivers as classifiers; the process establishes macro-economic attractiveness as the predominant classifier. Our analysis offers entry-timing guidance at both pre- and post-launch stages.

Millennial Reaction towards Customer Attraction and Retention Strategies Adopted by Digital Payment/UPI Apps.

The digital payment/UPI transactions have seen tremendous growth in the last five years in India. Mobile penetration, data offers by telecoms and government initiatives such as Digital India are playing a catalyst role that leads to an exponential growth of digital/UPI payments. Millennial customers are generally known to be tech-savvy generation and sometimes categorize as innovators or early adopters generation, making the most use of digital/UPI payments at the point of sale (POS) for services and products. The structured questionnaire was used to collect data to understand the reasons for preferring digital payment/UPI apps over cash/card and to examine the reactions from millennial towards marketing strategies. Primary data was collected from 100 respondents in Hyderabad, India. The study found that millennial customers are very positive towards preferring digital payment/UPI apps over cash/card. ANOVA was used to analyze the responses, which indicate that there is no significant variance in consumer preference and reactions towards marketing strategies based on demographic factors

Bayesian model selection for metal yield models in high-velocity impact

There are multiple candidate models for the von Mises yield stress in elastoplastic models that are used to simulate material deformation in high-velocity impact. Previous work has studied the effects of such models on quantities of interest in high-strain-rate deformation, in order to select the most appropriate model in comparison to experimental data [1-2]. This work focuses on selecting between three such models, based on their ability to reproduce time-varying depth of penetration data of a tungsten-alloy rod impacting a hardened steel plate at high velocity, measured by Anderson, Hohler et al. [3]. Novel in the present study is the systematic treatment of uncertainty in the process, and automation of the process. The three models considered are the Johnson-Cook (JC), Zerilli-Armstrong (ZA), and Steinberg-Guinan-Lund (SGL) flow stress models [4-6].

The impact of the “World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates” list on scientific publications and media

Assessing the impact of conservation campaigns is of high importance for optimizing the use of limited resources. Lists of threatened species are often used as media outreach tools, but their usefulness is rarely tested. We investigated whether the inclusion of a species in the list “World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates”, published biannually by the International Primatological Society, the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Species Survival Commission Primate Specialist Group, and Conservation International from 2000, had an effect both on scientific publications and on the general public. We analyzed a database of 40 million articles from major scientific publishers (Elsevier, Springer, Nature, Plos, Pubmed, Biomed Central) finding an increase in the number of papers mentioning a species after its inclusion in the list. We also analyzed media penetration (data from Google News), and online interest (data from Google Blogs, Twitter, and Google Trends), collecting daily data for one month before and one after the official launch of the 2014-2016 list (24th November 2015). The results show a short spike of interest on Google News and Twitter but no long term effect, indicating a limited effect on the general public. Our results are important for the understanding of the impact of current conservation campaigns and to provide strategies for future campaigns.

Differential Scanning Calorimetry Analyses of Idebenone-Loaded Solid Lipid Nanoparticles Interactions with a Model of Bio-Membrane: A Comparison with In Vitro Skin Permeation Data

Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) has emerged as a helpful technique both to characterize drug delivery systems and to study their interactions with bio-membranes. In this work, we compared idebenone (IDE)-loaded solid lipid nanoparticle (SLN) interactions with bio-membranes assessed by DSC with previous in vitro skin penetration data to evaluate the feasibility of predicting IDE skin penetration using DSC analyses. In vitro interactions experiments were performed using multi-lamellar liposomes as a model of bio-membrane. Enthalpy changes (ΔH) and transition temperature (Tm) were assessed during nine repeated DSC scans to evaluate IDE-loaded SLN–bio-membrane interactions over time. Analyzing ΔH and Tm values for each scan, we observed that the difference of ΔH and Tm values between the first and the last scan seemed to be related to SLN ability to locate IDE in the epidermis and in the stratum corneum, respectively. Therefore, the results of this study suggest the possibility of qualitatively predicting in vitro IDE skin penetration from IDE-loaded SLN utilizing the calorimetric parameters obtained from interaction experiments between the carriers under investigation and a model of bio-membrane.