The furniture retail industry in Sweden has gone trough large changes during the last decades. Today the industry is tough and in the maturity stage where few new companies enter, especially if they do not have a unique offer. The furniture companies have become larger and fewer, the changes have lead to difficulties for smaller and medium sized companies to grow and be profitable.Our purpose is to analyse, evaluate and compare three smaller companies in Stockholm with the intention to find what kind of marketing strategies they are using to survive on the Swedish market. First we interviewed the three companies to see what they do to survive on the market, then we asked 100 persons to fill in a questionnaire to see if they had the same opinion as the companies described.With help from theories we prepared questions which laid the foundation to the empirical part of the essay.The result from this study shows that the three companies differ from each other when it comes to using relationship marketing and placing the customer in the centre. All of them are aware of the importance of doing so, but because of different limits and possibilities they can not fully adjust everything to the customer.

AbstractDespite that e-business nowadays is established scepsis against it amongst consumers exists. We, as consumers, suppose that this skepticism is caused by bad communication from the e-business companies. This has lead to our suggestion that some con-sumers refrain from e-business because of bad communication or deficient trust.Our purpose with this paper was to investigate factors of communication between companies and consumers within e-business (B2C) from the consumers? point of view. We thereby have drawn conclusions regarding consumers? choice of e-business company.

Hypotes:Ett kollektivbaserat belöningssystem fungerar ej som motivationsfaktor på ett stort tillverkande företag inom verkstadsindustrin. Syfte: Med detta kandidatarbete vill vi bidra till ökad förståelse och kunskap om den inverkan ett kollektivbaserat belöningssystem kan ha på de anställdas motivation. Metod: I studien har den kvalitativa metoden använts och problemet har studerats utifrån de anställdas perspektiv. Vi har genomfört en fallstudie och vårt fallföretag är ett stort tillverkande företag inom verkstadsindustrin. För att samla in vår empiri har vi valt att använda semistandardiserade djupintervjuer. Slutsats:Vår studie bekräftar hypotesen. Denna studie, anser vi, har medfört en ökad förståelse för de svårigheter som finns att med ett kollektivt belöningssystem motivera samtliga anställda. Följaktligen anser vi också att det ökar kunskapen om de svårigheter som finns att utforma ett belöningssystem som ger önskvärd effekt.

The logistic business Svenska Retursystem AB was founded by the Swedish retail sector in the year 2000, and their introduction of a grey plastic crate to the supply chain for perishable goods changed the situation for the swedish horticultural sector. The new system revealed several challenges to be tackled by all actors, from the small family firm to the bigger organisations. Whereas the initiative comes from the customer himself, from the horticultural sector ?s point of view, a refusal of the new packing is a hard decision to take. It is however interesting that a comparison between the two systems, shows in favour of the corrugated board boxes, not only concerning environmental aspects but also for economical and ergonomical reasons.

The aim of this study is to look how the Social Service has handled custody issues. The study has a legal and social aspect with a purpose to investigate how the law affects the social administration as well as the family. During a period of one year a quantitative and qualitative study was performed within the social administration in a nearby community. The study focus is partly on the relationship between the law, family and society. The main questions have been: Which one of the parents, mother or father, did in fact get the custody and why? How has the children?s point of view been reported in the inquiry? A child needs a well organized everyday life in a preferably conflict free environment.

Business valuation is something that has been more general and discussion around this subject is very common. The discussions often revolve the various principles and procedures that a business appraiser can apply when a valuation of a business should be done. When there are different evaluation methods there are also resulting in an assumption that there are not so easy to create a complete objective business value. The individual evaluator choice of method will determine the result of the business value. The global world for each business has been more uncertain and turbulent/changeable which have tended to exacerbate the work for the evaluator to determine a business value.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine Skogsstyrelsens event Skogens Dag as an information channel by looking at information use and information behaviour during the communication process of the event. This is done by examining the aims of Skogsstyrelsens information distribution during the event in relation to its outcomes. The evaluation is focused on long term effects on the target group and it is restricted to Skogens Dag in Borås 2005. The question this thesis intends to answer is: How does the event Skogens Dag function as a tool for information distribution? The theoretical background gives an account of the communication process as well as the relevant aspects of marketing, social marketing, campaigns and public relations, as these are communication attempts that can use an event as a medium.

Outsourcing is today a common phenomenon among businesses in most industries. The term outsourcing means transferring the responsibility of performing a certain function to an external supplier. There are usually certain methods to investigate the effects and the outcome of a function that is performed by the company itself. When this function is performed by an external party, the complexity of the function will increase.This leads us to our purpose: Based on different theories clarify how a company ensures a desired effect out of marketing when this function is outsourced to a certain retail- and advertising agency.In this essay we have defined us to study one of Sweden´s leading mobile operators who have outsourced their sales management to a retail- and advertising agency. To get an additional point of view, we have included one of the mobile operator´s intermediates, which is a selling agent whose sales function is led by the retail- and advertising agency..

The use of marketing research panels are a more and more frequently used source of information for studies within many different branches. The purpose of this report is to investigate the demographic composition of panels and compare it with the population of Sweden, a possible change in behaviour of respondents, and if the source of recruitment is the cause of possible differences in study results. The study was commissioned by Norstats Linkoping office. Sources for the data material include Norstat?s recruitment process and their two main panels with different recruitment sources.

Problem formulation: Recent results from the European Food Information Council?s consumer research on nutrition information and food labelling revealed that most consumers have little understanding of the nutrition information found on food products, feel that there is little authority regulating these matters and wish for a more trusted source of information and regulation and lastly it was found that consumers accept their limitations and have little motivation to even read or learn about nutrition information. Thus what are the reactions of the various legal authorities to this problem? How are food retailers and producers responding to the needs of the consumer? How are consumers then reacting to these two players in the industry and the changes they are making?Purpose: The purpose of this research is to gain new perspective and a better understanding of relationship between consumers, companies and legal instruments in relation to nutrition and health claim labelling of food products. Method: The nature of this multi-disciplinary research has led to the study of all three areas, business administration (containing consumer behaviour) and business law, which are contained in this paper.

Syfte: Att kartlägga drivkrafter och ekonomistyrning i mikroföretag samt att statistiskt undersöka sambandet mellan mikroföretagarnas drivkrafter och deras användning av ekonomistyrning. Metod: Studien har en kvantitativ ansats med en undersökningsmetod i form av enkäter. Sammanställningen av det empiriska materialet har skett med hjälp av SPSS och har därefter analyserats. Teori: Den teoretiska grunden har kategoriserats och benämnts vilket vidare har skapat underlaget till den empiriska studien. Teorierna om drivkrafter kommer främst från tidigare studier gjorda av Elmlund, Johannisson och Lindmark. Dessa tre teoretiker har genom tiderna bidragit till en ökad förståelse för småföretagande.

In today's changing environment, an increasing number of companies are realizing thebenefits of analyzing business information and thereby stay competitive. By making use ofdecision support systems, known as Business Intelligence (BI), organizations are expected tocollect and process business data and thus get more out of their business.Nowadays it is not enough for organizations to have access to corporate data inside officewalls, they must also be able to bring the information "on the go", which has been thefoundation for the progress of mobile BI solutions. As the mobility increases and thecorporate data leaves the office, new risks arise, which is one reason as to why manycompanies hesitate at the idea of introducing mobile BI solutions.In this paper we explore two security aspects in the area of mobile BI solutions. Our researchquestion is as follows: How does security aspects affect a company's decision to acquiremobile BI solutions? The survey was conducted through interviews in cooperation with thefirm Optivasys, exclusively dedicated to the BI solution QlikView.A significant part of the theory we studied describes security as critical; however, ourresearch suggests a solution on how companies can manage the security aspects.

Syftet med uppsatsen är att skapa ett teoretiskt kunskapsbidrag där vi identifierar och kartlägger hur de olika litteraturområdena sammanfaller och samverkar i avseendet värdebildande aspekter inom ett industriellt nätverk. Studiens syfte är även att bringa klarhet i huruvida Sölvesborgsregionens fiskoljeprojekt är möjligt att genomföra samt att definiera eventuella hinder. Uppsatsen har två separata frågeställningar. För att besvara dessa har vi angripit den första frågeställningen, avseende de teoretiska litteraturområdena, utifrån en deduktiv ansats. Den andra frågeställningen, gällande fiskoljeprojektets genomförbarhet, har vi angripit utifrån en induktiv ansats.

Bakgrund: Synen på kvalitetsutveckling har förändrats genom åren. Förr arbetade hantverkaren i en naturlig närhet till sin kund och kunde lätt anpassa varje produkt till de särskilda behov och önskemål som denne hade. Denna närhet försvann dock i och med att man byggde upp en storskalig industriell masstillverkning, där organisationen präglades av kontrolltänkande, specialisering och anonymitet. Utvecklingen har gått vidare och idag bygger de kvalitetsorienterade organisationerna på engagemang och motivation från personal, kunder och leverantörer. Tillsammans samverkar de för ständig förbättring av verksamhetens alla delar, vilket leder till resultatet att man får nöjdare kunder, medarbetare och partners samt ökad effektivitet.

Öland?s Business Office is on the verge of developing a strategy for the island?s future tourism. Before any work with developing Öland can be carried out, it is essential to gain an understanding of how the place is perceived today.The purpose of this essay is to study the island?s current image and make recommendations for how the place brand could be developed.The methods used are literature studies and qualitative group interviews. The participants have been inhabitants of Öland and returning visitors from the Kalmar region.