Background: Today small business firms represent a considerable part of swedish economy, and the number of small firms has steadily increased the last ten years in relation to the total employment. The fact that there are firms willing to grow, it ought to be interesting observing their motives of growth, and what kind of strategies that can be identifiable in these firms. Purpose: To examine the motives of growth in small business firms, and to study which growth strategies the firms use when expanding their business. Realization: The study is accomplished through telephone interviews with six small business firms in the province of Jönköping. The firms contain between 10-49 employees.

Podcast is a new audio media in Sweden and has become larger and increasingly more popular in the past few years. In line with this, companies have seen the opportunity to use this type of marketing in the new coveted media and have created a new marketing tool in the form of sponsorship. Previous studies in this field indicate that this is a very effective method to reach a broad audience, but it still is a relatively new area with very little research in existence today. This study is an analysis of how receptive listeners are to marketing through podcasts and the ability companies have to create a sustainable and effective strategy for successful marketing through this type of medium. The collection of data for this study consists of two different qualitative interviews, the first one with listeners that were chosen, and the second with the sponsor company for two of the largest podcasts in Sweden. The essay´s empirical evidence shows how receptive listeners are to marketing via podcasts, what their podcast habits look like, what form of approach in marketing they prefer, and how often they take part in different offers. From the interviews with listeners and sponsoring companies in the study, it is concluded that the best and most effective strategy for marketing through podcasts is to weave advertising in the conversation and therefore increase the credibility and disturb the listener as little as possible.

The overall purpose of this study has its starting point in theories about the consuming society and its advertising. I have examined what kinds of methods that are being used in TV-commercials for beauty products, to influence the consumers. To study advertising, a semiotic method, symbolic interactionism and other theories which discuss symbols and influences, have been used. Six different TV-commercials for beauty products have been examined.The results from this study indicate that the advertiser apply to feelings such as, happiness, a sense of satisfaction, status and success, to affect the consumers behaviour. The findings in this research are discussed in the light of different theories which deal with the significance and the meaning of symbols..

Fifty employees at a local industrial company answered a questionnaire about coping strategies and personality traits. One purpose of the study was to investigate if officials and public employees used different coping strategies in stressful work situations. Another purpose of the study was to investigate if there was a relationship between the personality traits of the officials and the public employees and their chosen coping strategies. Ten Item Personality Inventory and Brief COPE were used to examine personality traits and coping strategies respectively. The results showed a difference in exhibited personality traits where conscientiousness was higher among the official employees than the public employees.

This paper is about advertising on the Internet using banners. Together with Embryo Webbyrå we have tested a lot of different ways of advertising on the online newspaper of Göteborgs-Posten, gp.se. Two of the web bureau?s existing clients, Resia and Recip, were chosen for the ads and the whole campaign lasted a period of four weeks.By comparing our banners with the consideration of format, color, placement and content we wanted to find an answer to how the most optimal banner would look.Our test result shows that visitors rather do not want to click on a banner, although we think that we have seen some interest and curiousness from visitors in the banners content. Even when the visitor does not click on a banner, the message might be put in mind for a future purchase or act..

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate 7 different search strategies for content-based image retrieval with respect to retrieval effectiveness. The strategies are based on different levels of resolution implemented by the Haar transformation. The result of the study shows an improvement in both mean average precision and mean recall in strategies based on lower levels of resolution..

Image editing software offers unlimited possibilities to alter an image. Provided that digitalinnovation is not altogether positive, it is important to develop knowledge of its negative sides. Thispaper examines the use of digital image processing from a critical IS perspective. Throughqualitative interviews with professional retouchers, the study provides a picture of their ethicalrelation to the software they use for retouching images in advertising. Though, it turns out that thecustomers who order the retouching holds responsibility for what is altered.

Web 2.0 represents the next generation of creating interactive applications on the Web. The purpose of this thesis was to develop a service tailored to Web 2.0 technology, where users can post ads for free. The platform is an advertising system specially designed for animals. Surveys and interviews have been done; the result is that today?s advertising services on the Internet are not interactive and user-friendly.The users have the possibility to adapt different part of the system to their needs, such as choice of themes.

The aim of this study was to investigate what formative assessment means and get information about how teachers? assessment practice in formative assessment can look like, based on five key strategies. I have observed five teachers in grade 4 to 6 during a week of their mathematics teaching. Formative assessment is assessment for learning and has the purpose to support students? knowledge development.

Title: The representation of gender: A semiotic study of Tom Ford's Gucci campaign 2003 and Frida Gianninis Gucci Campaign 2013.Number of pages: 73 (79 including enclosures)Author: Sara AndréassonTutor: Anne-Marie Morhed Course: Media and Communication Studies D (2IV091) Period: VT 2013 University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Informatics and Media, Uppsala University.Purpose/ Aim: The aim of this study was to examine the representation of gender in advertising that has both men and women as the primary audience. The aim of the study was to investigate how Gucci has chosen to represent men and women in their advertising campaigns 2003 and 2013.Material/ Method: A semiotic analysis was performed by using three images from Gucci's spring/ summer campaign for Tom Ford in 2003, and three images from Gucci's spring/ summer campaign for Frida Giannini in 2013.Main result: The results showed that there was a clear difference between Ford and Gianninis ways of representing women and men in the two advertising campaigns. The women in Fords campaign 2003 are presented as sexual objects and represented by the male pornographic imagination and portrayed as sexual eye-catchers while the men are portrayed as addicted to sex. Frida Gianninis advertising images is a contrast of Ford pornographic portrayal of women. Giannini presents women as confident individuals while the man is represented as feminized and androgynous in his appearance. .

Our findings show that depending on the contextual setting and what sort of merger an organization goes through, the identity strategies will differ. We see that symbols and values are two objects of relevance in our case companies? identity strategies, but that there are differences in how they are being used. There is consensus around the fact that values are important to have, however their meaning to each organization differs and it has also proven to be dependent on what position you possess in the company. We have developed a four-fielder in order to further illustrate our findings.

Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka vilka effekter två olika läsförståelsemodeller, Reciprocal Teaching och Transactional Strategies Instruction, har på elevers läsförståelse. Den metod som användes i studien var kvalitativ textanalys som applicerades på 7 forskningsartiklar. Resultatet visar att modellerna gett effekt, i olika åldrar, länder och grupper. Detta resultat visar att Reciprocal Teaching och Transactional Strategies Instruction är effektiva modeller att arbeta med för läsförståelseutveckling..

AbstractTitle: Art influences in today´s advertisingimages ? A qualitative study of advertisingimages and work of artNumber of pages: 46Author: Sanna OlssonTutor: Else NygrenCourse: Media and Communication Science CPeriod: Autumn 2009University: Division of Media and Communication, Uppsala UniversityPurpose: The purpose with this composition is to analyse how art has influenced todays advertising images, to see wich influences that can be descovered.Method/Material: Since this is an imageanalys the main material has been consisted of advertising images, a total of seven. In addition, art images have been used as comparative material. The advertising images have been strategically selected, however they are modern and aestetically appealing. A number of questions have been formulated wich is the basis of the analys.Main results: Primarily the study found that art has influenced today?s advertisingimages in different ways.

Trading based on technical analysis has its roots in the U.S. financial industry where it has long been common practice, in Sweden however the trading style has not had the same impact. Based on the results from the preliminary study we believe this is about to change and that the topic therefore requires further studying. Several online stockbrokers today provide information and tools for technical analysis to their clients. As the list of indicators to use for creating strategies is so immense it is interesting for an investor to know what actually could be the basis for a profitable investment strategy.

In today's society, consumers get in touch with hundreds of advertising messages a day from companies. It is up to the consumer to choose the messages they want to listen to and ignore the ones they want. Today, there is an advertising saturation and this has implications for both producers and consumer. Companies must be innovative and come with fresh ideas to get us consumers to pay attention to their particular message.  It is through the marketing that companies have an opportunity to spread their message.