How the perfectionistic climate of a sports team predicts the athletic performance of elite athletes: a case study of the CUBAL women's basketball team.

Objective: In competitive sports, understanding how the perfectionistic climate within teams influences the performance of elite female athletes can provide valuable insights for enhancing coaching practice and athletic achievement. Based on the cognitive appraisal theory of stress, this study constructs a dual-path model using stressors and coping strategies as mediators, referred to as the Perfectionistic Climate on Athletic Performance model (PCPM). The study explores the predictive role of the perfectionistic climate within sports teams on the athletic performance of elite female basketball players. Methods: The empirical study the relationships among the variables in the model using a sample of 125 core players from the top-level women's basketball teams in the 24th CUBAL24 tournament in 2022. A Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis was conducted using AMOS 20.0, primarily employing the bias-corrected Bootstrap method to test the dual-path model. Results: The findings reveal double-edged paths towards a perfectionistic climate on athletic performance. In the positive pathway, a perfectionistic climate can positively predict athletic performance through challenge-related sources of stress and positive coping strategies. In the negative pathway, a perfectionistic climate can negatively predict athletic performance through threat-related sources of stress and negative coping strategies. Conclusion: Coaches need to pay attention to athletes' cognitive evaluations of the perfectionistic climate as a source of pressure. By setting challenging goals, coaches can guide athletes to view the perfectionistic climate of the sports team as a source of challenging pressure, thus unleashing their potential. Coaches should actively guide athletes in coping with the pressure brought about by the perfectionistic climate, enhancing their ability to handle stress. This will enable athletes to better adapt to the team's perfectionistic climate and further improve individual and team athletic performance.

Antecedents and consequences of brand experience in virtual sports brand communities: A value co-creation perspective.

The influence mechanism for brand experience in virtual sports brand communities is the subject of many studies, but these studies do not feature a holistic consideration of antecedents and consequences, and the moderating role of brand attachment is unclear. Drawing on the value co-creation theory, this study determines the impact of brand experience and its mechanism using the data from 508 virtual sports brand communities. The empirical test results show that value co-creation (i.e., corporate-initiated value co-creation and customer-initiated value co-creation) has a positive effect on the brand experience and that the brand experience has a positive effect on the purchase intention. Brand attachment does not have a moderating role between brand experience and purchase intention so as the degree of brand attachment increases, the brand experience does not increase the purchase intention through a brand attachment. This study determines the antecedents and consequences of brand experience in virtual sports brand communities from a value co-creation perspective, to determine the impact and mechanisms of virtual sports brand communities to guide the marketing practices of virtual sports brand communities.

Research on the Relationship Between Service Guarantee Perception and Customer Value in the Chinese Context.

As an excellent management tool, service guarantee can improve the competitive advantage of enterprises and allow consumers to obtain high-quality products and services. However, in the current Chinese context, this tool has not played its proper function. One important reason is the perception deviation of Chinese consumers. This research analyzes the main reasons for this deviation, puts forward related hypotheses and research models, and discusses the influence of disposition to trust of contract, perceived structural assurance (PSA), and subjective norm on service guarantee perception (SGP). Also, this study discusses SGP of customers through perceived risk and quality. Through the verification of 574 sample data, the main conclusions are as follows: (1) Disposition to trust of contract, subjective norms, and PSA significantly affect SGP positively; (2) SGP positively affects customer value (CUV); and (3) SGP s are obviously different between people of different ages, education levels, and income levels. Hopefully, these conclusions can have the following enlightenment to enterprises serving Chinese consumers: (1) in the designing stage of service guarantee, perception of customers of this guarantee should be a consideration; (2) CUV can be a proper direction if an enterprise wish to lead the guarantee perception of the customer; (3) Not all products need the same level of service guarantee; and (4)The proper service guarantee level depends on various statistical characteristics of target customers of the service.

Effectiveness of Parenteral Glutamine on Methotrexate-induced Oral Mucositis in Children with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.

High-dose methotrexate (HDMTX) is important for children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). There is no effective treatment for patients with oral mucositis, which is a major side effect associated with HDMTX. Here, we reviewed the medical records of patients younger than 18 yr with newly diagnosed ALL in our hospitals from 2002 to 2013. According to the nationwide protocol (TPOG-ALL-2002), each patient received four courses of HDMTX (2.5 or 5 g/m2) during consolidation therapy. HDMTX courses with glutamine therapy were as the glutamine group, and intravenous glutamine (0.4 g/kg/day) was started within 48 h after the initiation of HDMTX for 3 consecutive days. HDMTX courses without glutamine were as the control group. A total of 347 HDMTX courses were administrated in the 96 children with ALL during the study period. The incidence of oral mucositis was significantly lower in the glutamine group than in the control group (3.8% vs. 17.6%; P = 0.004). In the glutamine group, no patients suffered from severe oral mucositis. No severe adverse effects associated with glutamine administration were noted. Accordingly, parenteral glutamine appears to be feasible and safe to prevent oral mucositis in patients receiving HDMTX.