Brand differentiation is now becoming an important tactic for combating competition in the hostile marketplace. A viable solution for establishing the distinctiveness of a brand is through brand personality. Attaching personalities to brands contributes to a differentiating brand identity, which can make brands more desirable to the consumer. Jennifer Aaker developed a specialized brand personality scale, the five dimensions of the scale being sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness. This study focused on measuring the brand personality of Colgate brand and exploring the model validity of Jennifer Aaker's Brand Personality scale. The study indicated that: About 93 per cent of the respondents used toothpaste and toothbrush among the oral care products. About 55 per cent of the respondents used only Colgate brand and about 39 per cent used Close-up and Pepsodent together with Colgate brand. 61 per cent of the respondents who were using only Colgate brand were using the brand for more than three years which indicates that most of the respondents had an understanding about the Colgate brand. Most of the respondents who were using more than one brand have indicated that they switch among the brands once in three months or once in more than six months. About 53 per cent of the respondents have indicated that they prefer Colgate dental cream among Colgate paste brands and 35 per cent Colgate Cibaca top among Colgate toothbrush brands. Confirmatory Factor Analysis revealed that ruggedness, competence, and excitement are the main dimensions of Colgate Brand Personality. This shows that the company should stress more on its functional benefits than the emotional benefits whenever the company introduces a new brand, new ad campaign or any other form of communication with the user. The items—trendy, exciting, and young—under Exciting Dimension are more relevant for the Colgate brand and the items—cool, contemporary and imaginative—are not applicable to the Colgate brand. This will be a major finding for the company and ad agency because they can improve the score in this dimension by concentrating on the creativity and contemporariness of its advertisements and other promotional materials. Also, the items—confident, secure, and hardworking—under Competence Dimension are more relevant for the Colgate Brand and the item—successful—is not applicable to the Colgate brand. This finding will be an eye opener for the company A validity check of the scale using Factor Analysis was carried out which indicates that the number of dimensions of Brand Personality is 13 and that about 10 items of Jennifer Aaker—s Brand Personality scale are not applicable in the Indian situation. The applicability of this scale in the Indian situation was not checked because it required an exploratory study to identify the dimensions of Brand Personality in the Indian situation. Hence, identifying the Indian Brand Personality construct can be undertaken by future researchers.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to measure the influence of peers, and the Government and non-governmental organization (NGO) initiatives on an individual’s attitudinal drivers such as environmental knowledge and environmental concern, which are the reasons for their green purchasing intentions. This concept was applied among the Indian young consumers. Design/methodology/approach For the research, a structured online questionnaire was used to obtain responses from 342 Indians from various cities. The participants were 20-25 years of age. SPSS software package was used to refine the data while SmartPLS was used to test the validity of the hypotheses. Findings The findings revealed that the Government and NGO initiatives along with peer influence do have a significant effect on a consumer’s environmental knowledge and environmental concerns. Further, this study found a significant positive effect of environmental knowledge and environmental concern on perceived value. In turn, the perceived value had a direct positive impact on green attitude leading to green purchase intention. Practical implications This paper provides critical insights for marketers, as well as for governmental agencies and NGOs promoting the conservation of the environment through environmental-friendly practices. These parties aim to generate greater awareness among consumers and impart knowledge about the benefits of green practices. Originality/value The studies measuring the impact of external factors on green consumption are scarce. Even the few studies available have measured the direct impact of external factors on green purchase intention. Governmental and NGO initiatives along with peer influence are the stimuli impacting operational factors such as environmental knowledge, environmental concern, perceived value, and green attitude, which, in turn, lead to the response of green purchase intention. This study provides new insights to this relationship by using a stimulus – organism – response framework.

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Single-file diffusion (SFD) of CO/CH 4 and CO/CO 2 mixtures as well as the corresponding pure gases in channels of polycrystalline L-Ala-L-Val dipeptide was investigated by pulsed field gradient (PFG) NMR. The measured SFD mobilities of the mixtures, where each component was found to exhibit identical diffusion behavior, were compared with the SFD mobilities of the corresponding pure gases at the same or comparable total gas concentrations. Both studied mixtures were observed to diffuse faster than the slowest pure component forming the mixture. This observed behavior is in stark contrast to the trend often reported in the case of normal diffusion in microporous materials where the addition of a faster diffusing component to a slower diffusing component does not change significantly the diffusivity of the slower diffusing component. Molecular clustering in the studied single-file channels is proposed to explain the observed relationship between the mixture and one-component mobilities and to reconcile the experimental SFD data with the predictions of a random walk model reported earlier. For sufficiently large diffusion times, this random walk model predicts a transition from the SFD to the mechanism of center-of-mass diffusion, which is characterized by concerted movements of all molecules in each channel. This transition to center-of-mass diffusion was not observed experimentally for CO/CH 4 and CO/CO 2 mixtures.

High field NMR diffusometry reveals single-file diffusion of CO/CH4 mixture in dipeptide nanochannels with a coincident mobility for CO and CH4. In contrast to the relationship commonly observed for normal diffusion, this mixture mobility is only slightly smaller than that of pure CO which diffuses much faster than pure CH4.

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Self-preserving personal care/cosmetic products can be developed which are as efficacious as preserved products by a prudent selection of multifunctional actives, antioxidants and chelators as a part of the formulation.