Direct marketing is an area within marketing that is growing rapidly. Many companies has realised the benefits of using direct marketing, such as receiving direct response from customers and gaining a better customer relation. The growth within direct marketing means that traditional mass marketing today face harder competition than ever. This thesis examines and look in to three well recognised Swedish companies use of direct marketing. Our main purpose is to establish how companies spend their marketing budget between direct marketing and traditional marketing activities.

This study's main aim is to contribute with an insight regarding how employees of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) experience religion as a component of development work in religious contexts. The study focuses on whether or not religion is given enough space within Sida's development work and if the policies of Sida are enough to cover the needs in religious contexts. To answer these questions we have interviewed six employees of Sida which holds experiences of development work in religious contexts. The results show a lack of knowledge and encouragement of these questions within Sida and that the interviewees experience religion as a complex concept. The study also shows that the interviewees find policies, methods and tools within Sida as inadequate to cover the needs of religion in development work.

Purpose: My purpose of this study was to examine the factors that motivate Swedes to travel to Egypt and Thailand. To answer the question, I have used two questions.What are the factors that motivate Swedes to travel to Egypt and Thailand?What is the motive for Swedes choose to travel to destinations such as Egypt and Thailand?Method: The method I am using  is the qualitative method. The qualitative method has been processed through interviews of Swedish travelers, the Swedish travel agencies as well as Egypt and Thailand tourist agencies specializing in trips to Egypt and Thailand via phone and e-mail.Theory: The theory I am using are motivators and push-pull factors in achieving an understanding of the factors that influence choice for Swedes to travel to destinations such as Egypt and Thailand.Empiricism: The goal was to get a much more qualitative data from the response from the Swedish travel agencies, Egypt and Thailand tourist agency and Swedish travelers who have traveled to both of these destinations.Result: What I have come up with in my study is that the factors that motivate Swedish travelers to travel to Egypt and Thailand, is the warm climate, sun and sea, culture, variety, the cheap price situation and that there are activities for different age groups. This has led to the heat in both Egypt and Thailand has attracted Swedish travelers to travel to both destinations.

This report is about a couple of specially chosen peatlands in eastern Uppland, Sweden. It concerns their development between the year 1922 and 2012. The historic fact originates from a large investigation of peatlands in the south of Sweden made by the Swedish Geological Survey, SGU, in the 1920?s. To be able to choose peatlands an analysis in GIS were made, in which we were able to find locations good enough for our field investigation. During the field investigation we bore to find nice peat cores that later went through several analyses in a lab.

This is a qualitative study about Art transformation and commodification in the digital age. The study applies a rhetoric analysis with the aim to understand how art sellers, gallery owners and entrepreneurs take part in this transformation process through their websites? presentation texts ?about us?. The analysis is related to communication theories but it is also inspired by other theories such as Gramsci?s hegemony theory and Bourdieu?s cultural critical theory.

The purpose of the study is to highlight educators' preferences and attitudes towards tablet in preschool by describing the use of this digital tool in the preschool educational activities. The use of tablet in preschool is in the study looked upon as a phenomenon. The description of the phenomenon is built on the analysis and interpretation of educators' statements about it. The research questions focus on the following aspects: educators' attitudes towards the tablet and its use in pre-school educational activities, the tablet's current area of use, the culture surrounding the use of this digital tool and the educators? statements about advantages and disadvantages of tablet's use in preschool.

The aim of this thesis is to study young people's views on support, knowledge and change. The eight participants in this interview study are between 14 and 19 years old and they share the experience of growing up in a family where a parent is a substance misuser or mentally ill.Childhood sociology has been used as a theoretical framework. The main finding is that emotional and practical support based on the young person's needs and knowledge based on the ideas of empowerment and agency promotes change. The four most important insights according to the young persons are: My parent has got a problem. It is not my problem.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the conflict of interest between shareholders, life insurance companies and insurers in stock life insurance companies operated on a mutual basis from an agency-theoretic perspective. Further, this thesis aims to explore from an ownership-theoretical perspective, why this conflict of interest exist. A qualitative research has been performed and the empirical data is foremost based on interviews with persons from the life insurance industry and public prints. The study concludes that the stock life insurance company operated on a mutual basis has two principals whose interests are in conflict. History has shown that stockowners? interests have been prioritized on the expense of the insurers.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the significance of the national assessment in highschool education, including what the teachers express about the new instructions currently coming from the Swedish National Agency of Education, concerning a more central control of grading the national assessments. This study also covers the teachers individual responsibility when it comes to grading the national assessments. The purpose of the national assessment is to secure that grading and the education level in the country is equal. This is a qualitative study useing the method of a group discussion intervju (focusgroup intervju). Five highschool teachers took part in the discussion with questions that had been decided beforehand.

This study intends to examine teacher´s thoughts and perception of esthetic activities at preschools. I have chosen to restrict the esthetic area to the significance and function of clay to the teachers and children. On the basis of the belief that children can, and need access to a variety of ways to express themselves, we used the interviews to take part of teachers work and thoughts concerning clay, and the esthetic work. I have in this qualitative study addressed four questions: How do the teachers use clay in preschool activities? What do the teachers think about clay as a tool in the educational work at the preschool? Are the teachers working from the perception of children?s rights to express themselves in different ways and with the help of different tools? What function does clay fill for the children?I have interviewed eight teachers and taken part of both older and more recent theories around children and the creativity in esthetic contexts.

Natural and environmental issues are everyday parts in preschool but when educators shall consciously work with sustainable development they tend to stop at recycling and what is necessary to be done for achieving the Grön Flagg-certification. I have been observing various preschools and noticed that sustainable development is flawed, often because of the teachers lack of interest, knowledge and in some cases both. Out of this grew an idea of making a project that could help the teachers see how the work with the subject in a fun and educational way can become a part of the preschools everyday routine. I made a tutorial booklet with basic facts and activities relating to sustainable development and the three questions in my report were how much knowledge and interest the teachers initially have, if the tutorial booklet could help the teachers to produce new knowledge and interest for the topic and if it turned out to be easier for them to provide educational activities within the subject. There were three departments that participated in my survey and the methodology of collecting data was an anonymous survey with the teachers' own comments in response.

This master thesis is based on the sociocultural perspective. A qualitative research study was conducted to investigate children's attitudes towards reading, texts and libraries.The theoretical background is constituted by ideas from the new sociology of childhood, literacy-studies and reader-response theory.The study was conducted with 23 children, 13 girls and 10 boys, participating in focus groups.The results of the study reveal that children's literacy-activities in school are strongly influenced and limited by adults. Children's interest in pictures and non-fiction-reading do not correspond to the school institution that favors traditional media and fiction. The study also reveals a gender division between children's literacy-activities that tends to grow with age. All the children in the study regard libraries as book-houses and wished for libraries that combine activity and serenity.The thesis shows the importance of being aware of, and engage in, children's reading-interests and reading-practices if the reading stimulating activities in schools and libraries are to be successful.

Test is an area in system development. Test can be performed manually or automated. Test activities can be supported by Word documents and Excel sheets for documenting and executing test cases and as well for follow up, but there are also new test tools designed to support and facilitate the testing process and the activities of the test. This study has described manual test and identified strengths and weaknesses of manual testing with a testing tool called Microsoft Test Manager (MTM) and of manual testing using test cases and test log templates developed by the testers at Sogeti. The result that emerged from the problem and strength analysis and the analysis of literature studies and firsthand experiences (in terms of creating, documenting and executing test cases) addresses the issue of the following weaknesses and strengths.

This study is about fourteen-year-old boys, who are not interested in reading. It deals with what thoughts and feelings some boys have around books, reading and libraries. Further the study investigates the boys' leisure activities and their making of identities. The study is built on interviews among twelve boys in a secondary school. The result is compared to earlier reports and research.

For the success of universities, it is very important that the personnel are well motivated through internal marketing. The purpose of this report was to identify which activities universities uses to motivate their teaching and researching personnel and how the activities are valued by this group of employees. The study was conducted in the form of a case study. One interview with the chief administrator at Luleå University of Technology was conducted, and a questionnaire was sent to all the teaching and researching personnel at the same university. The result indicates that Luleå University of Technology uses many internal marketing activities to motivate their employees.