Today's consumer society has led to never-ending choices in terms of brands, products and prices in an endless variety of shops. The retail industry is a very complex industry that includes many different types of sales channels and many different types of products. A consequence of this trend is that brand owners today face difficulties in understanding how their products are being evaluated and difficulties in knowing which final cause that make a consumer willing to by their product is hard to figure out. The industry is very diversified, which means that for a company to really understand their position and their role on the market it requires that the company put a lot of effort and also a lot of money in the process of trying to figure it out. We will with this paper try to explain a small piece of that understanding and we hope to get results, which contribute to the further research in this area.

My main purpose with this paper of John Steinbecks Of mice and men is to both analyze the long-lived structures and the unique individual destinies of the novel. I employ the method of the historical Annales-movement and use three divided levels in my analysis to try to capture these high structures and low moments of humanity in Structure, Konjuncture and the Individuality. The first level, Structure, is used to see how long-lived almost invisible geographic structures set the human act of condition. The second level, Konjuncture, is easier to grasp in understanding of time and embraces for example economic structures as the industrialism. The last level of Individuality is the fastest in time and easiest to understand but in the long run also the least important.

The Swedish production of biogas was 1,5 TWh 2011. About half of the production was used as vehicle fuels. The cost for upgrading biogas depends on the size of the biogas plant and its gas production. If the gas flow is low the cost will be high. However, further development of existing upgrading technologies or development of new ones, have good potential to decrease the upgrading cost for small scale biogas plants.

Those who have invested in apartments, i.e. tenant-ownership, within the city centre of Stockholm have gained a higher than expected return on investment due to a buoyant real estate market. During the latest twelve-month period, the prices have risen more than 20 per cent in the city of Stockholm, resulting in an increased wealth together with a higher debt burden among investors. The aim of this thesis is to investigate which factors determine the prices from a micro perspective, and to what extent. An attempt is particularly made to estimate the degree of capitalization of the monthly fees; a factor which has turned out to be important according to other studies; but also to construct pricing models in order to set target prices for apartments.

The amendment of a law which is expected to come may well have a significant impact on the Swedish real-estate broke market. The law change will probably have an effect in the number of ways real-estate brokers will compete as a result of the increasing variety of services offered. In order to gain competitive advantages brokers must be at the forefront in the development regarding the changing market. To do so requires that the company chooses an appropriate range of peripheral services that are profitable. The problem is to choose the ?right? services to convey. The purpose of this paper is to describe the services that are in demand for transmission and how the agents can work to meet the demand of this new market.

Background and problem: Corporate Governance is a well-known phenomenon which has been the focus of plenty of research where the board of directors and the CEO have been regarded as important actors. What's affecting decisions regarding these actors has been debated whereas media has been pointed out of having an impact. To decide whether or not media can affect Corporate Governance have shown to be problematic whereas it exists divergent views regarding this. At the same time this relationship is more explored in other contexts than the swedish one, although this one is considered suitable for this. Consequently there is a motive for examining medias impact on Corporate Governance in Sweden. Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to explain if media has an impact on Corporate Governance at an overall level.

AbstractDelta Terminal owns an outdated industrial building which they now rent out to businesses. This property currently has a high energy con-sumption and therfore it is desirable to improve the efficiency. In ordet to reduce the energy consumption within the industrial building enve-lope, the heating systems and lighting are being investegated. A good building envelope emits less heat and thus reduces the energy consump-tion. An energy audit is a tool used to determine the energy loss.

Foreseeing future changes in economic activity is of up most importance to a wide array of actors. The time lag in the presentation of official GDP statistics means that to somewhat accurately capture a tendency of where the business cycle is heading one need turn to qualitative sentiment indicators such as Purchasing Managers? Index (PMI) and official sentiment indicators for valuable clues. This thesis uses in-sample and out-of-sample methods to evaluate how well PMI and official Business Tendency Surveys (BTS) in Sweden and Denmark fair against the year-on-year growth rate of industrial production. Moreover, various Swedish regional sentiment indicators get examined and a case study of the indicator for the Öresund region is performed.

Equality is a central aspect within development work. All development work is expected to be influenced by a gender equalty thinking, and these directions are distributed by the Department of Foreign Affairs, through Sida to Forum Syd and down to the very grasroot level, through Forum Syds local cooperation organisations. The essays question of research is a reflection over empowerment, with other words how international organisations influence other societies understanding of the society dynamics. This aspect triggered my interest for the subject, aswell as the link between aid, equality and men, and how these factors are in need of eachother. My study is mainly build on theoretical starting points, and not on earlier studies.

- ABSTRACT ?Title: Winners of the Web ( Webbens vinnare)Number of pages: 35 (including enclosures)Author: Lydia KellamTutor: Else NygrenCourse: Media and Communication Studies CPeriod: Fall Semester 2006University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information SciencePurpose: The aim of the research paper was to see Internet and the digital techniques impact on marketing communication and consuming behavior on the Web. By understanding the relationship between marketing communication and consumer behavior my intentions were to comprehend how consumer behavior on the web could be understand. The purpose of this paper is to understand how different marketing activities on the Internet are followed by consumption.Material/Method: By using focus group interviews I wanted to study how individuals act on the Internet. How different activities such as communication and participation on the web could lead to consumption on the Internet.

This thesis concerns to investigate renovations of existing buildings aiming at enabling energy efficiency, from a conservation and restoration perspective. This includes performing case studies of three projects in the Gothenburg area where renovations has been done and an analysis of directives raised by the EU and later implemented by the Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning, Boverket. In addition to these, regulations enforced by the Swedish law, related to the topic, have been considered.The investigated projects in this case were the housing cooperative Välten in Brämaregården, the Solar Buildings in Järnbrott and Gårdsten as well as Katjas Gata 119 at Backa Röd. In order to measure and compare the results of these projects a comparison between the pre- and post-restoration energy consumption have been performed. To capture additional perspectives the grading system Operation Kungsörn has been applied.Regarding the comparison of energy consumption the renovation of Katjas Gata 119 was found preferable but showed in my view lacking attention to the cultural heritage of the area.

Background: The majority of the occupational accidents and work-related diseases at Swedish workplaces occur due to poor ergonomics during lifts and transportation of objects. The most common consequence of poor ergonomic conditions is low back pain (LBP) and the risk of developing LBP increases as the mechanical loading on the intervertebral disks grows. This study has investigated the biomechanical loading in the low back during two different types of patient lifts. The first lift (lift A) is developed by Modern Arbetsteknik (MA) and the second lift (lift B) is a common lifting technique among care workers. Objectives: The aim of the study was to identify any advantages or disadvantages with MA?s lift, regarding shear and compression forces in the L5/S1 disc.

Purpose: This study aims to examine the price transmission among ADRs (American Depositary Receipts) and their underlying shares, US market index and Hong Kong market index. We will attempt to capture how a shock in the home market is transmitted to the foreign (and vice versa). In addition we will attempt to assess the relative weight of each variable in the system generating unexpected variations of its own and other variables and at what speed the shocks are absorbed.Methodology: ADF unit root test, Johansen?s co-integration test, Granger causality test, VECM, impulse response, variance decomposition Empirical foundation: Five Chinese ADRs listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Each ADR represents a specific industry.

This study investigates how Arabic-speaking students in Sweden use syntax and prepositions in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), and how their writing is influenced by Swedish grammar and Arabic dialects. The focus is on identifying systematic patterns of cross-linguistic influence and variation between different groups of learners. The data consists of written translations by 30 students in grades 7?9 who receive mother tongue instruction in Arabic. All students translated the same Swedish source text into MSA, and the translations were analysed with attention to syntactic structures and the use of prepositions. The theoretical framework draws on transfer theory, interlanguage theory, and the interdependence hypothesis, complemented by perspectives on multilingualism and diglossia. These frameworks make it possible to capture both external influences from Swedish and Arabic dialects, as well as internal processes of second language development.

Background and problem: Corporate Governance is a well-known phenomenon which has been the focus of plenty of research where the board of directors and the CEO have been regarded as important actors. What's affecting decisions regarding these actors has been debated whereas media has been pointed out of having an impact. To decide whether or not media can affect Corporate Governance have shown to be problematic whereas it exists divergent views regarding this. At the same time this relationship is more explored in other contexts than the swedish one, although this one is considered suitable for this. Consequently there is a motive for examining medias impact on Corporate Governance in Sweden. Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to explain if media has an impact on Corporate Governance at an overall level.