Research on the power of customer involvement, and in particular recommendation is very resourceful. Many studies have mapped the reasons for why customers are willing to recommend, however they often ignore potential differences among brands and how that may affect these reasons. This study is built on a quantitative survey investigating how consumers interact with brands, depending on category affiliation. The categories used were Bhat and Reddy's symbolic and functional, consisting of three brands respectively where each brand represented a different product type.The evolvement of social media has also transformed the platform of recommendation from physical to virtual and changed the way people connect. Thus, taking the investigation further, potential differences between symbolic and functional brands was tested in different social media platforms.

The objective of this graduate work is to gain a better understanding in how pre-school educators are able to work with music in their pre-school activity to promote child development. We also want to enlighten possible factors for the development of children based on music and to form our own ideas of whether teachers choose to apply music in their didactic practice or not.The point of this essay has been to attempt answering on what importance music makes for children's development and learning in pre-school, and how teachers could work with music in pre-school in order to promote children?s development. Our data consists of six interviews and two observations realized at a pre-school in Södertälje.We took heed from the theories laid out by Lev Vygotsky's which describe four different levels of development that includes educational development in social interaction between teacher and child. Our choice of this theory is inspired by our seeking deeper understanding of Vygotsky's theory´s application to the aesthetic approach in the interaction in meaning making and learning.The result of our study confirms previous theory and research in that music as a form of expression has a major impact on children's development.

Through a sociocultural perspectivethe purpose of this study is to investigate how preschool teachers look at quality development in preschool and how they perceive their participation in this development.I have used a qualitative method based on five interviews with preschool teachers from three different parts of Sweden. I used an interview guide with open questions. The interview answers were categorized in themes based on the responses which were most frequent. In the result I have been using an analysis based on these themes. The result showed that the preschool teachers consider that the leadership style affects their work.

Skalväggar består vanligtvis av två betongskivor 45-75 mm tjocka med en luftspalt emellan. Skalen i väggen hålls ihop med armeringsstegar. Luftspaltens bredd beror på väggens totala tjocklek och gjuts i på plats. Målet med detta arbete är att undersöka skalväggens egenskaper då luftspalten inte ingjutits med betong. Om skalväggen visar sig ha god hållfasthet och bärförmåga kan den börja användas istället för massivväggar.Beräkningarna för bärförmågan utförs delvis med FEM program (Finita Elementmetod program) och delvis med kompletterande handberäkningar.

The aim of this study is to investigate how employees in consulting companies develop their competence in order to perform their daily work. The focus is on informal competence development. The theoretical framework consists of theories concerning learning and competence development in working life, theories on organizational change and evaluation, a well as professional reflection. The methods applied are narrative research and interviews based on the assumption that knowledge about reality is only obtainable through language and communication.The main results show that competence is developed through experience, social interaction, communication and dialog with co-workers and customers. The post-modern conceptions of the rapid (technical) development and need to be up-to-date has a strong hold on the informants apprehension of working life, as does the notion of not having enough time for all the competence development they would like.

The purpose of this study is to understand and get increased knowledge about what it means to see artists as brands. What are the typical assets and what kind of advantages and disadvantages are distinctive when it comes to applying a brand perspective on artists. Brands are an important part of our lives today, and the benefit of seeing a company as a brand has made that not only big companies are interested in building brands. Beyond companies even persons now want to become brands. The new perspective in seeing persons as brands is interesting and something that made us curious to investigate.

During the last decade working with competence has emerged as a more strategically important area. Today the human resources in a company are considered a competitive advance and the HR-units play a significant role when it comes to HR-management. Different motives for investing in strategies that promote competence development and learning also exist. The purpose of this paper was to examine how the process of competence development was managed at a large global company. The empirical material consisted of four persons who were interviewed and the analysis of the material was inspired by grounded theory.From the analysis four major themes or core factors emerged as central to the interviewed persons' understanding of the competence development process; solid preparatory work in relation to competence development, communication, awareness of responsibilities and finally the taking action and evaluation of the action.

The competition between the Swedish municipalities has increased as the world has become more globalized, which means that they need to become more attractive for sustaining sound finances and not to find themselves to have a downward trend. One possibility to show the attractiveness of a place is by using place marketing and therewith attaining a stronger brand position. There are 20 suburban municipalities in the county of Stockholm, of which six are multicultural or are having a minimum of 20 percent immigrants among the residents. These immigrant areas are segregated based on class, income and culture. Problems associated with these areas have historical aspects that dates further back than modern immigration does.

The current election is causing a debate in the Swedish media. The parties are trying to convince voters by spreading interesting and informative messages through different kind of media. Social media has emerged as a new way of reaching voters. All the current parliamentary parties have implemented this communication channel into their marketing strategy. People have both admired and judged the channel´s applicability in election campaigns.

Abstract Title: Enabling Smart Research and Development through Knowledge Conversation Seminar date: 2005-06-08 Course: Master thesis in business administration, 10 Swedish credits (15 ECTS) Authors: Andreas Johnsson, Johan Rosendahl Advisors: Lars Bengtsson Key words: Knowledge management, Knowledge conversation, Research and development, Ba, Trelleborg Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to create a model that shows how knowledge management aimed at research and development processes can be used and how the theoretical fields can be connected. Methodology: The thesis is based on abductive perspective where empirical and theoretical material has been mixed to create a foundation for the analysis. Theoretical perspectives: Theories concerning knowledge management and research and development have primarily been used. These have been complemented with material about team structures and incentive systems. Empirical foundation: The empirical material is based on semi structured, mostly qualitative interviews and strictly quantitative inquiries performed at Industrial Hose within the Trelleborg group.

The consumer of today is bombarded by an increasing number of commercial messages, which makes it harder and harder for brands to cut through the clutter. Because of this, new methods are developed and introduced to the market every day. One of the most widely discussed of these methods is guerrilla advertising. Even though the method has received numerous praises there are not any academic proofs supporting these arguments. The authors, of this thesis, have examined if guerrilla advertising is more or less effective compared to traditional advertising and what the reasons for the result are.

Denna rapport redogör för skapandet av varumärket Deco Retro. Samt den tillhörandedesignprocessen för att skapa en visuell identitet och profil för varumärket. VarumärketDeco Retro togs fram som ett undervarumärke till Kitsch Sweden AB som behövde ettvarumärke som passade deras nuvarande och framtida produkter. Deco Retro ska bidra meden stärkt identitet och värde för de produkter som ska säljas under varumärket. Designarbetetkring varumärket strävade framförallt efter att kommunicera den idé, identitet och de värdensom under projektet tagits fram för varumärket, samtidigt som det ska ha bidragit med enestetiskt tilltalande grafisk design.

The purpose of this Master Thesis is to analyze what suitable hardware platforms there are on the market in order to build a low price control and information system for mobile applications, called small display module. The thesis will be underlying material for making a decision for further development. The result of the thesis consists mainly of a Windows CE kernel and a schematic for a CPU card, on which it would be suitable to build the display module. Another major part of the report is the introduction of different techniques that could be of interest when designing a processor based system. The processor architecture that was chosen is the x86.

This master thesis is a study of how city cemeteries can be used and contributes to a socially sustainable urban development. Today sustainable development and sustainable urban development is something that more or less every organization is working with. Therefore it is also relevant to integrate our cemeteries in this work so that they can become a part of the sustainable urban development process.The thesis gives a basic understanding of sustainability as a concept and also defines socially sustainable (urban) development. The work then immerse itself in various types of park structures and how the relationship between the human individual and the public space work, to satisfy the needs that different people have.The literature study that has been made is also the base for the design of the walking interview that has been made for the two city cemeteries. The cemeteries that where studied where the Assistens cemetery in Copenhagen and the Eastern cemetery in Gothenburg.

Process standardization is a topic that has generated a lot of research and literature. At first, the focus was on production; today processes are used in all different kind of business areas.The aim of this study has been to analyze how processes can be applied on development businesses and how IT systems affect the result of the process. To accomplish this, we have asked questions such as what standardization is in a development process? Why are the processes standardized? What difficulties can appear with standardization? And how the IT-systems affect the result of the process?To answer these questions, we have preformed a case study on Saab. Saab is a well know Swedish company who are working with a project called the GMS-project, where they develop processes to cover the whole company´s business areas.The literature gives the reader an understanding of processes and standardization.