Many companies choose to market their products and brands with help from celebrities. This is not a new phenomenon, though, this strategy is something that we consumers start to get used to and the risk that the consumer unconsciously unselects the message grows. A recently much-disputed theory is the use of incongruent marketing. This means that companies uses a marketing message with the objective to not match the consumer?s expectations.

The aim of the study was to examine the reading ability of adultswith intellectual and/or communicative disabilities. The group adults withintellectual and/or communicative disabilities consisted of 66 individuals.One control group consisting of 36 children aged 7 to 12 years and onereference group consisting of 14 adults were used. Participants were given anumber of language and reading related tests. Adults with intellectual and/orcommunicative disabilities had significantly lower results than the adultreference group regarding all tests and significantly lower results than thechild control group regarding phonological processing. There was nodifference between adults with intellectual and/or communicative disabilitiesand the child comparison group regarding word decoding and readingcomprehension.

The mobile revolution is here to stay, and today most people have (at least) one cell phone at home. Some even a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant)as a complement for the simpler tasks at the office, e.g sending e-mail, word processing, browsing the Internet etc. Many business have also given the employees the opportunity to do some of the business tasks inbetweeen customer visits with the help from a cell phone or PDA.Despite all this, the so called Internet connected mobile revolution is often mentioned as a big failure. Maybe because the people in general tended not to use the new technology as much as the companies predicted. This could be because they still haven't learned how it works, or just don't seem to have the need for services provided.After a couple of failures in the development process, almost every cell phone has support for mobile Internet today.

The purpose of this study was to examine if there are gender differences in computer use among the young. Our aim was to find out in what respects boys and girls differ, if at all. The main method of investigation is a literature review. We have also made a complementary empirical study in a public library. The literature studied principally covers computer use at home and in school.

Scholarly publishing has since the introduction of electronically distributed periodicals seen a time of change, mainly in the STM-business (Science Technology and Medicine). The roles of the three main participants in the publication process; researcher, publisher and library are developing into new directions. Researchers themselves are taking a more active part in the discussion, with the boycott list from the Public Library of Science organization as an illustrating example. Reforms are being launched partly as an economical and efficiency issue, partly as an increasing desire from researchers to maintain the control of scientific end result. This Master s thesis examines how the partly conflicting goals of the participants affect the conditions for scholarly publication in an electronic environment.

In a time when economic crises relieving one another, it is especially interesting to study how companies choose to finance their operations. Since there is a lack of studies that include banks, and their capital structures, with the rest of the finance market, it is uncertain whether the theories of capital structure are applicable. Therefore, this essay aims to study whether there is any correlation between the two variables debt-equity ratio and return on equity (ROE) for Swedish corporations on the finance market.In accordance with the theorems that the professors Modigliani and Miller filed, in 1958 and 1961, which describes a clear link between debts, increase corporate value through the tax shield and indirectly increased yields. Although these theorems are the foundation of the modern research they focus on perfect markets. Therefore, this paper has also chosen to place great emphasis on theories such as Trade-off and Pecking-order.

From the customer?s perspective the only reason for a firm to exist is the value it creates. However, a problem within manufacturing companies is that of the total lead time, only a small part can be considered as value adding. It has further been discovered that when working with improvements businesses often sub-optimizes single processes instead of considering what benefits the entire company. Thus, when improving processes and activities it is important to have knowledge about and understand which factors that affect how the flow can be designed.Several studies have been performed with a wide perspective on process flows in order to obtain a more resource-efficient and value added flow.

The park at Svaneholm is a place, the history of which is very little known today and the needfor better knowledge has been the cause of this investigation. The essay is primarily limited tothe time from late 17th century up to the end of the 18th century and takes stand on profoundinvestigations in accessible map-and archive material. The results presented show a manorhill, which during the course of a hundred years was subject to several changes and in bigparts consisted in other than park/garden.Burman related to the manor hill containing a cowshed, a large dam and a parterre garden isix quarters and it is plausible to think, that this establishment generally was built as producedon the plate.In the 18th century the construction is being changed, they go on building at the cowshed andin 1707 there are totally 268 livestock on the farm. In 1723 the garden is represented in amuch bigger scale than on the plate from the 1680:s, but it is not possible to tell, whether it isnew or not.Parts of the parterre garden is remaining during the whole of the 18th century, for the leastuntil it is being squared, but on two of the squares there was built a riding-groundMoreover the cowshed burnt down and was only partially reconstructed.The image given by the archive material is at the same time variegated. The inventory list ongarden tools from 1726 gives an image of gardening more directed to growing and pathshuffling, while the possibilities of keeping the parterres were fewer (e.g.

AbstractThis report was undertaken at the request of the Management and maintenancedepartment of Swedish National Road Authority (Vägverket Region Sydöst) inJönköping.In 1992, the management and maintenance of Swedish roads were laid out onexternal contractors. When putting out a tender for the work, the foundation isfrom a national set of rules which are in constant change. This report is limited towinter road upkeep.The trend in the invitation for tenders is that it is moving from the moreconventional executional demands towards the less controlling demands. Thedownside of functional, less controlling demands is that it is difficult to articulatehow to measure them. The order authority therefore has to find ways to makesure to get what has been paid for.In connection to the invitation for tender of winter road upkeep for 2005, the newset of rules, ATB Vinter 2003 was deployed.The main purpose of this thesis is to see which the big changes in the set of rulesare and how these changes affect the organisation and activities of the contractor.It is also studied how the changes in execution is perceived by road users and howit affects the possibilities of the contractor to come as a newcomer to a new areaof administration.Interviews and examination of sets of rules has led to a list of a number ofchanges that the contractors feel affect their work in any sense.Views from road users that have come in to the order authority have beenscrutinized to see how they have experienced the change.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att öka förståelsen för användning och tillämpning av Event Marketing. Varför företag använder sig av det samt vad eventbyråer tror är företagens motiv. Event Marketing innebär helt enkel att marknadsföra en produkt eller en tjänst genom ett evenemang. Eventet samlar en viss målgrupp i både tid och rum men är på så sätt även begränsad i antalet kontakter som den skapar.Metoden som har använts för denna uppsats är av kvalitativ karaktär. Under arbetets gång har vi genomfört fyra intervjuer som flerfallsstudier.

This is a study concerning the conventions surrounding death and it´s rituals during the latter half ofthe 21th century. The study´s main material is the official magazine of SBF - Sweden´s funeral association ? Memento. By studying the undertaker and the self-image of his services at an intervalof years from 1945 to 2005, one is able to notice certain changes of values concerning what afuneral, a chest and a tombstone really is ? or rather how the meaning of these symbols of death slowly shifts from the ?dignity? of death towards the self-expression of the individual.In the 1940´s towards the 80´s, there is much talk of giving the dead a ?dignified? funeral and burial, and this is how the undertaker defends himself against public critique of his or her´sprofession´s ?trade with death?.

The study which has been made is a qualitative observational study where play forms and participation of adults were observed in two preschools. The word play is defined in the study with an ?as-if? ?nature based on Knutsdotters definition which differs play and activities from each other. The observed play form has been analyzed according to the concept of imitation and imagination play. To get a complete base of the study a few children on some occasions drew what they played or would like to play.Through photographs of these drawings and how the children described and explained what they drew a connection could be made with the children?s play forms.

Bakgrund: E-handelsmarknaden är ständigt växande och människors konsumtionsbeteende har under senare år förändrats. Traditionellt sett är Word-of-mouth en starkt bidragande orsak till konsumenters köpbeslut och idag förekommer också WOM på Internet (eWOM). En typ av eWOM är kundomdömen på prisjämförelsetjänster och då förekomsten av dessa ständigt ökar är det intressant att undersöka hur dessa kan tänkas påverka konsumenter i deras köpbeslut. Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka om och hur kundomdömen av återförsäljare på svenska prisjämförelsetjänster på Internet påverkar andra konsumenters val av återförsäljare. Genomförande: Denna studie genomförs genom insamling av kvalitativ data, dels genom fokusgrupper, dels genom intervjuer med representanter från svenska prisjämförelsetjänster.Resultat: Studien visar att kundomdömen har betydelse för konsumenters val av återförsäljare på Internet.

Numerous studies raise the topic of highly educated immigrants whose education and list of qualifications devalue in the context of the Swedish labour market. However, little is known of those with foreign background who enter into higher education in Sweden. Our study attempts to shed some light onto the value of higher education relative to that of a person?s ethnic background. The background material features nine in-depth interviews of foreign background academics, as well as data extracted from an extensive survey study previously carried out at Växjö University. Initially, the quantitative data showed that students with foreign background, including Swedish-born children of immigrants, had not managed to find qualified work upon completion of studies to the same extent as their Swedish background counterparts.

Syfte: Syfte med uppsatsen är att öka vår kunskap om product displacement samt att utreda den påverkan product displacement har på mottagaren sett ur ett marknadsföringsperspektiv. Pararellt undersöks om fenomenet kan vara en fördel eller nackdel i marknadskommunikationen. Utgångspunkten i utredningen är att varumärkesinnehavare själva använder sig av product displacement.Metod: Denna studie har genomförts med en kvalitativ metod och induktiv ansats. Metodvalet har sin utgångspunkt i den bristande teorin då fenomenet product displacement är ett nytt begrepp sett ur ett marknadsföringsperspektiv. Undersökningen bygger på tjugo kvalitativa intervjuer med mottagare av product displacement samt två respondenter med yrkesanknytning inom marknadsföring.Avgränsningar: Denna uppsats behandlar endast product displacements effekter på mottagaren som i vårt fall är begränsat till studenter i ålder 20-25 år.