Marketing managers are being required to demonstrate the profitability of their marketing actions down to the level of their individual customers and on an ongoing basis. At the same time, customers expect firms to increasingly customize their products and services to meet their demands. Firms still need to produce superior products, sell smarter, and understand the markets as a whole, but the ability of firms to orient themselves to interact successfully with their individual customers will differentiate them in the future. Advances in technology have resulted in increasing opportunities for interactions between firms and customers, between customers, and between firms. An interaction orientation reflects a firm's ability to interact with its individual customers and to take advantage of information obtained from them through successive interactions to achieve profitable customer relationships. First, the authors identify the components of interaction orientation: (1) customer concept, (2) interaction response capacity, (3) customer empowerment, and (4) customer value management. Second, they relate interaction orientation to both customer-level and aggregate-level performance measures. Third, they identify the antecedents of interaction orientation. Fourth, they examine the moderating effects of customer-initiated contacts and competitive intensity on the interaction orientation-performance linkage. The results are based on a survey of top marketing managers. The commonly held view that customer-based relational performance is related to customerbased profit performance is not supported. However, both customer-based relational performance and customerbased profit performance affect aggregate business-level performance positively. Interaction orientation is a phenomenon observed in both business-to-business and business-to-consumer firms. The extent of customerinitiated contacts moderates the interaction orientation-performance relationship.

One of the most important tasks in marketing is to create and communicate value to customers to drive their satisfaction, loyalty, and profitability. In this study, the authors assume that customer value is a dual concept. First, in order to be successful, firms (and the marketing function) have to create perceived value for customers. Toward that end, marketers have to measure customer perceived value and have to provide customer perceptions of value through marketing-mix elements. Second, customers in return give value through multiple forms of engagement (customer lifetime value, in the widest sense) for the organization. Therefore, marketers need to measure and manage this value of the customer(s) to the firm and have to incorporate this aspect into real-time marketing decisions. The authors integrate and synthesize existing findings, show the best practices of implementation, and highlight future research avenues.

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SummaryA new group of potent antibacterial compounds, noniron metalloporphyrins (MPs), is described. MPs possess a strong antibacterial activity against Grampositive bacteria, Gram-negative bacteria and mycobacteria. Anaerobically grown bacteria and microorganisms that do not respire and/or express haem uptake systems were resistant to MPs. Antibacterial activity of MPs was not affected by known antibiotic resistance mechanisms operating in bacteria. The most potent MP against Y. enterocolitica, methicillin-resistant S. aureus and M. smegmatis was gallium protoporphyrin IX (Ga-PPIX). When tested alone, Ga ions and metalfree porphyrins had approximately 100-fold higher minimum inhibitor y concentration (MIC) values for these organisms. Ga-PPIX was not degraded by MPsensitive bacteria, indicating that the whole molecule is responsible for antibacterial activity. MPs are antibacterial 'Trojan horses', as they exploit haem transport systems of Gram-negative bacteria as portals of entry into the cell. Bacterial mutants in superoxide dismutases, catalases and stationary-phase sigma factors were hypersensitive to Ga-PPIX. The extreme sensitivity of sod mutants to MPs and the requirement for active respiration for MP activity suggests that these compounds stimulate the production of reactive oxygen radicals in bacteria. Ga-PPIX was not toxic to primary human fibroblasts, several established cell lines and experimental animals at concentrations > 100-fold higher than the MIC for sensitive bacteria.

We develop a conceptual framework, which identifies the customer-level characteristics and supplier factors that are associated with purchase behavior across multiple channels. We also propose that multichannel shoppers provide benefits as measured by several customer-based metrics. We conduct an empirical analysis of our propositions using the customer database of a high technology hardware and software manufacturer. We find that customers who buy across multiple product categories, initiate more contacts with the firm, have past experience with the supplier through the online channel, have longer tenure, purchase more frequently, are larger and receive communication from the supplier through multiple communication channels, especially through highly interpersonal channels. We also find evidence for a nonlinear relationship between returns and multichannel shopping, and that there is a positive synergy towards multichannel shopping when customers are contacted through various communication channels. Customers who shop across multiple transaction channels provide higher revenues, higher share of wallet, have higher past customer value, and have a higher likelihood of being active than other customers.We derive several implications for managers who wish to target customers for a multichannel strategy.

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The firm–customer exchange process consists of three key parts: (1) firm-initiated marketing communications, (2) customer buying behavior, and (3) customer product return behavior. To date, the literature in marketing has largely focused on how marketing communications affect customer buying behavior and, to some extent, how past buying behavior affects a firm's decisions to initiate future marketing communications. However, the literature on product returns is sparse, especially in relation to analyzing individual customer product return behavior. Although the magnitude of the value of product returns is known to be high ($100 billion per year), how it affects customer buying behavior is not known because of a lack of data availability and understanding of the role of product returns in the firm–customer exchange process. Given that product returns are considered a hassle for a firm's supply chain management and a drain on overall profitability, it is important to study product return behavior. Thus, the authors empirically demonstrate the role of product returns in the exchange process by determining the exchange process factors that help explain product return behavior and the consequences of product returns on future customer and firm behavior. In addition, the authors demonstrate that product returns are inevitable but by no means evil.

A large number of natural and synthetic porphyrins of diverse chemical compositions and characteristics can be isolated from nature or synthesised in the laboratory. Antimicrobial and antiviral activities of porphyrins are based on their ability to catalyse peroxidase and oxidase reactions, absorb photons and generate reactive oxygen species (ROS) and partition into lipids of bacterial membranes. Light-dependent, photodynamic activity of natural and synthetic porphyrins and pthalocyanines against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria has been well demonstrated. Some non-iron metalloporphyrins (MPs) possess a powerful light-independent antimicrobial activity that is based on the ability of these compounds to increase the sensitivity of bacteria to ROS or directly produce ROS. MPs mimic haem in their molecular structure and are actively accumulated by bacteria via high affinity haem-uptake systems. The same uptake systems can be used to deliver antibiotic-porphyrin and antibacterial peptide-porphyrin conjugates. Haemin, the most well known natural porphyrin, possesses a significant antibacterial activity that is augmented by the presence of physiological concentrations of hydrogen peroxide or a reducing agent. Natural and synthetic porphyrins have relatively low toxicity in vitro and in vivo. The ability for numerous chemical modifications and the large number of different mechanisms by which porphyrins affect microbial and viral pathogens place porphyrins into a group of compounds with an outstanding potential for discovery of novel agents, procedures and materials active against pathogenic microorganisms.