Background: The business market today is characterized by tough competition amongst the competitors to capture consumers? interest and money. One marketing tool companies can use to achieve this is the company?s image. The customer buys not only a product, but also the image that the company or the product is associated with.

Drawing from the theoretical foundations of the ?critical theory? of the Frankfurt School and the media ethnographic ?cultural studies? approach of the british Birmingham School, this study attempts to sketch out a media theoretical overview of the contemporary state of media culture. Using the term convergence culture as the foundation, this study offers a theoretical background to the two contemporary streams that are the significant and distinct tendencies of convergence culture: intermedial convergence, its contemporary state and historical tendencies that can be traced back using the past media theoretical approach of the Frankfurt School, and cultural convergence, its contemporary state and historical tendencies, which lineage in a media theoretical context can be traced back to the british ethographic ?cultural studies? field. Using contemporary drama serials to identify and pinpoint these two stream, this study shows how intermedial convergence expresses itself today through media conglomeration in terms of branding, product placement and marketing as the result of the ?completed? convergence between screen culture and popular music as the current defining state of commodity culture.

The structural rationalization of rural firms in Sweden has led to many new creative ways of developing companies. The agriculture sector is characterized by the need of capital in form of buildings, labor and inventory. The rationalization process has led to free capacity in rural firms when new technology make buildings and inventory not longer necessary for the production process. To get a better cost coverage this free capacity can be used to start-up new business areas that help the rural firm to growth.The study aims to identify factors that motives entrepreneurs in rural firms to develop new business areas. The purpose is also to analyze driving forces that lies behind development of rural firms and the forces that support or not support development in rural firms.The study is built upon five cases that all can be categorized as firms with different size and orientation.

Title: The auditor?s recommendations to small businesses in the choice of K2 and K3Authors: Christopher Dimovski and Dennis Carlsson Published: Spring 2014 Background: The background of this study is the introduction of the new K-regulations. For small businesses, there is a possibility to choose between the rule-based K2 and the principal-based K3. It becomes mandatory to apply the K-regulations from 2014. We want with this study understand and explain the significance of the auditor and its recommendations to small businesses in the choice between K2 and K3. Aim: The aim of this study is to describe how the auditor makes recommendations to small businesses in the choice between K2 and K3 and through that create an understanding of what influence the auditor have when it makes recommendations and at the end contribute to the building of models. Formulation of problem: How can we understand and explain the auditor?s recommendations to small businesses in the choice of K2 and K3?Methodology: We have used a qualitative method where we have interview eight auditors.

Human Resource Management (HRM) consultants are becoming more common. Simultaneously there is a lack of HRM in small and medium enterprises (SME?s). SME?s states neither to afford, nor have the time to perform HRM in their business.This thesis is a Working Scholarly essay based on qualitative method, based on ten semi- structured interviews.

Foreign invested SMEs have recently become increasingly interested in China. The enterprises are in this report categorized as second wave companies since they follow the footsteps of previous pioneers, of which mostly were larger companies. The ambitions of the SMEs are either to sell products on the ever expanding Chinese market or to utilize the potential of low cost production for global markets. The existing literature is fragmented and solely based on the experience of larger companies. We believe that SMEs are facing new and different challenges, and thus a new generic theoretical frame work is desirable.

Genom en enkätundersökning till konsumenter har vi kommit fram till att det är lägre kostnader, bättre information och bättre täckning som är de optimala faktorerna för 3G-operatörerna att kunna locka till sig fler konsumenter. .

Bakgrund: Kunders inköpsprocess skiljer sig mellan industriella marknader och konsumentmarknader. När organisationer gör inköp handlar det ofta om stora belopp och komplexa produkter. Relationen mellan det köpande och det säljande företaget brukar vara tätare än vid vanliga konsumentinköp. För att den säljande organisationen ska förstå hurde mest effektivt ska erhålla kunder är det nödvändigt att identifiera de olika faserna i kunders inköpsprocess och undersöka vad som påverkar kundernas beteende vid inköpet. Syfte: Vårt syfte med denna uppsats är att beskriva hur SMHIs kunders beslutsprocess ser ut vid inköp och vilka faktorer som påverkar denna process.

Utifrån Canvas analysmodell, hur ser Fantastic Franks E-business ut? Hur är synen på E-business hos en liten nischad fastighetsbyrå?Syftet med denna studie är att analysera Fantastic Franks E-business genom Canvas analysmodell och analysera hur differentiering genom E-business påverkar företagets framgång.Genom intervju med ledningsgruppsrepresentant från Fantastic Frank samt med fastighetsmäklare på Fantastic Frank applicerades företagets affärsmodell på modellen Källor till värdeskapande i E-business företag. Denna metod användes för att undersökningens syfte att se hur Fantastic Frank differentierar sig genom E-business skulle kunna undersökas.Nyckelresurser, nyckelpartnerskap och nyckelaktiviteter är de viktigaste blocken inom Canvas analysmodell för Fantastic Frank, för att de ska kunna erbjuda en värdeproposition och differentiera sig. Andra fastighetsbyråer börjar erbjuda liknande tjänster med bostadsstyling och Fantastic Frank bör vidareutveckla sin tjänst. För att skapa värde bör Fantastic Frank utveckla relationer med kunder som köpt eller sålt bostad genom gemensamma intressen inom inredning/design.

AbstractMaster thesis of one year in Business Administration, Swedish Business School at Örebro university,Marketing, HT 2011.Authors: Grunér, Linus and Malm, Ludwig Tutor:Pia Lindell Title:Brand building and creating relationships ? A study of a small business in the B2B market Keywords:Brand building, business relationships, SME, B2B. Problem:How does a small business in the B2B market work with brand building and creating relationships? What critical factors can be identified regarding the process of relationship-building and brand building within the context of a small business in the B2B market? Research objective:The purpose of this study is to use existing research to create understanding for how a company in the B2B market is working with relationship-building and brand building. The study also aims to identify any critical factors concerning the process of relationship-building and brand building.

Apple has since their launch of the Iphone series created a billion dollar business with the market place Appstore. Third-party apps have disrupted the mobile industry, attracted a high number of developers and set the standard for the industry. Despite success, this market has yet not been the topic of any academic study, a fact that makes this thesis important. Under the assumption that apps can be regarded as a service, traditional service marketing theories have been applied with the research goal to map existing business models, evaluate revenue potential and understand best practices of marketing techniques. A series of qualitative interviews with representatives from the difference business models, backed by secondary data describing the domain shows how the Appstore has evolved over time and which marketing practices that appear successful.

Business incubation is an important force of economic development but relatively unheard of in organization theory. This is partly due to the fact that in organization theory, meta-organization or the organization of organizations has been neglected or left lagging as much theorization has been focused on organizing individuals. With the growing number of business incubators, and meta-organizations in general, the need for understanding a relatively new type of organization is prevalent.This case study of the business incubator Global Business Labs Botswana (GBL) aims to clarify the organizational differences among meta-organizations and traditional organizations on a case level, as well as explain the underlying factors for these dissimilarities. With respect to the nature of this case study no general conclusions are drawn from the results. The inference, however, is that the organization of GBL and its incubated companies differs from the traditional organization in five elementary aspects: the weak hierarchical structure, the operational autonomy of its members, the strong focus on recruitment processes, the member identity and the lack of formal sanctions.

AbstractTo benefit the economic growth of a country, it is important for the inhabitants to make the decision to become business owners. Sweden today, apart from the rest of Europe, is facing a growing problem. The numbers of companies are growing, but the numbers of company owners are not. As a result of this, the employment is not able to develop under the same conditions, when the opportunities of employment decrease. Research shows, that the interest for owning a company among the Swedish youth has increased.

Problem: On the basis of the franchisees role and how he look up on his role in his business, should one like the Swedish Law applies characterize the franchisees role as the role of a contractor?Purpose: The purpose with this research is too survey the franchisee in his business and how he looks upon his role as a franchisee and see if this like the Swedish Law states be characterized as the role of a contractor.Methodology: By doing a proportional stratified selection within the the Swedish Franchising community, nine semi structured interviews has been made. The empirical foundation of these interviews has been concentrated and analysed with the support of the chosen theories. The result of the analysis has created the conclusion.Theoretical perspectives: The research is built up of three angels of approach; the role, the business and the economy within the franchisee and the contractor. The three approaches aim too illustrate the role of the franchisee, the franchisees role in the business and the economical effects in franchising.

Quality can be defined as the ability of a business to satisfy their customers? needs and expectations. Total Quality Management is defined as the way to prevent, appraise and improve the entire organization to increase the product quality. In order to systematically increase quality in an organization, there are different quality systems in use. One example is process management, which is to divide the activities of processes.