THE EFFECTS OF A PRAGMATIC SET OF INTERVENTIONS ON THE SHOULDER RANGE OF MOTION IN MALES AND FEMALES WITH SHOULDER PAIN: A CLINICAL TRIAL

Background and Aim: The effects of novel set of interventions are known but their effects with respect to gender are not known. This study aim to determine the effects of novel set of interventions on shoulder range of motion in males and females with shoulder pathology. Methodology: This study was of quasive experimental design. Thirty subjects of mean age (±SD) of 43. 23±10 years with shoulder pathology and restricted ROM were recruited. The major criteria for recruitment were 18-60 years of age. The general contraindications of manual therapy were the exclusion criteria. Shoulder functional movement and range of motion were the outcome measures.  Results: The mean % (SD) change for RUBB was 15.04±11.57for males and  14.49±10.44 for males. The change for RDBN was also significant (<0.00) from baseline and the % change in mean was 14.93±11.0 for males and 12.60±9.06 for females. The changes were well above the highly clinical meaningful difference (>0.8). It is further observed that the differences in gender were non-significant (P>0.05). Conclusion: The pragmatic set of interventions affect both the genders equally and improve shoulder range of motion and functional movements.  However, the results must be interpreted cautiously because of the inadequate sample size.

Protection and Growth of Brands Through Intellectual Property and Brand Governance Against Their Equity Loss at Firm Level in a Developing Country Pakistan

Brand equity loss is the most neglected area of research in brand management science at Asian level that has inhibited the developing nations to utilise the intangible value of brand equity of their firms. Brand equity is in nascent stage with no clear theoretical boundaries and notable research at Asian level whereas it‘s touching maturity at western world that not only nullifies the logic of using western theories in Asian perspective but also questions the credibility of past research in present scenario for Asian countries. In terms of research dominance, all the scholars of brand management have been working on the description, measurement and sustainable growth of brand equity from various business management research paradigms. In practice and theoretical explanation, intellectual property governance cannot explain the problem of brand equity loss; in contrast, brand governance is more holistic and provides the flexibility for the convergence of marketer and consumer perspective for identifying the most impactful reasons for brand equity loss. Qualitative descriptive research method was used by the researcher for the study of brand equity loss. Stratified purposeful sampling technique was deployed for collecting research problem concentric information from key informants for knowledge thickness after the analysis. Stratified samples were owners/brand managers/VPs/marketers from Businesses purposive sample for studying marketer perspective. Organisations and legal fraternity purposive samples had top managers and advocates as stratified samples for studying the consumer perspective. Primary data was collected from the stratified samples. The reports and documents of industries and organisations, related to brands, were used for support in extracting the targeted information from the interview transcripts for increasing data analysis richness. Thematic content analysis, by using Nvivo (version 10), was implemented through encoding the interview transcripts into nodes and reflecting the relation between the grouped data of the nodes through the Word Tag clouds, Frequency Tree Maps, Cluster Maps and Matrix Coding Maps. Brand governance model, as the result of the analysis, was crafted that provided the basis for deviation from previous main stream research on brand equity by having the meaning of brand equity loss from the dissection and integration of all the layers of the model, from top to bottom that cover both perspectives of brand science. The first layer is intellectual property governance and the consecutive ones are intellectual property enforcement, and brand equity loss. Therefore, brand equity loss cannot be explained by considering one approach or perspective holistically in Asian context. This invites cross sectional research in terms of approaches and perspectives. The study faced limitation in terms of lack of market documented evidence, theoretical work at Asian context, having a handful of people at national level who are information rich respondents under stratified sample and faced territorial restrictions. Conclusively, Cognitive Construct, personal concept of the brand in the minds of the consumer, is surrounded by loyalty, social sense, counterfeit, price, experience, and promises. All these are indicators of ''experience‘ that create suitable environment for infringement and counterfeiting that follows brand equity loss or vice versa. Furthermore, at the field, the best points of ''experience‘ are distributors, local sellers and people appointed from the same community as promoters.