The report addresses four main tasks, situation analysis of the company's total costs and transportation volume, cost analysis associated with the adjustment of the filling ratio, transport costs for the expansion and new expenses on a combination of expansion with new adjusted filling ratio.  Increasing transport costs for the company was the main reason for the request of the current situation analysis. A survey of the total cost with the actual volumes and transport provider pricing is the basis of the analysis that extends from May 2006 to October 2008. The results show an increase in costs, both overall expense and per cubic meter of transported goods. Volume spreads, trends, and seasonal variations are according to our and the company?s expectations.

It has become increasingly important for businesses today to create a strong customer loyalty tie between their brand and their customers. In most markets today a lot of companies fight for market share and loyal customers. The increased uses of Internet and Internet commerce have made it possible for companies to create relationships with their customers through their websites. The Internet has also opened up new ways for customers to quickly and easily price compare products on price comparison websites. This means that customers have become more price conscious which has lead firms to fall into a price war with the competitors. The purpose of this paper is to examine brand loyalty in the consumer electronics market and go into detail on how web shop role affects the creation of loyalty to companies that are either a shop or do not have an online store. To examine this, a survey was made online and an interview was made with the President on Salesoogle Niklas Rasmusson. The questions and the interview of the questionnaire focused on confidence in online commerce and physical stores.

This report aims to examine how Brunneby Musteri is to update the brand attention for Brunneby Musteri at retail stores. Brunneby wish to assure their brand will catch the customers? eye in the store and therefore get assistance to discover what to improve. The family business Brunneby Musteri (Brunneby) was founded in 1941 and is located nearby Göta Kanal in the county of Östergötland. Brunneby produce products such as lemonade, jam, jelly, marmelade, cider and vinegar.

The objective of this study was to investigate the attitude towards African swine fever (ASF) primarily among smallholder pig farmers but also among other actors along the pork value chain in Gulu district, Uganda. More specifically, the study aimed to investigate the specific challenges facing both farmers and other members of the pork value chain using participatory epidemiology (PE). ASF is a feared viral disease of pigs associated with high mortality, which is endemic in many parts of Africa. The recent history of Gulu district in Northern Uganda can be described as turbulent and the human population has suffered during decades of war and civil unrest. Pig keeping is considered a potential opportunity for business as well as a way of providing more animal protein in the diet. However, this is threatened by ASF as farmers can lose entire herds due to the disease. This study can confirm some previously known factors and risk activities such as the free range system of pigs and movement of pigs and pork during ongoing outbreaks, which make disease control difficult.

Cycle time has a direct influence on number of returnable crates needed and therefore a crucial parameter for cost structure and pricing of the user fec in the pool system.For providing the growing market, number of crates has to increase as well as the utilization of existing crates. To accomplish this aim, cycle time for the whole supply chain has to be fully unravelled and understand.The purpose is to map cycle time and stock movements, to see how, where and when crates are being used in the supply chain. The goal is to make a method of cycle time calculation, together with suggestions of improving the pool system and decrease cycle time.The study has been a combination of qualitative and quantitative research and comprises the three biggest wholesalers in Sweden; ICA, Coop and Axfood. Furthermore have 65 grocery shops, connected to the wholesalers, been investigated and mapped.The study has come to a conclusion that cycle time for an average returnable crate is 19 days. The full-size and half-size crates have a bit longer cycle time, 21-22 days, while Dual Height-crates and shallow haif-size crates have 17-18 days.

The store manager can make great benefits of having an eye on how the staff works towards the customer, because the personnel is an important tool when competing with other stores. This paper is focusing on the part that relates to the staff in the store, which is one of the key tools in the competition for customers after the customer made it to the store. Many stores have guidelines which the staff should follow when they meet with customers. If the staff is too tightly controlled by these guidelines, customers can perceive the first encounter with the staff as artificial and as if the genuine friendliness does not exist. It is important that the staff looks at the individual customer and treat every customer in a personal way and that the staff can see the customer?s needs.

Term: Spring term 2007Study objects: Reitan Servicehandel AB, Vi-butikerna, ICA Sverige ABPurpose: The purpose of this study is to analyse how procurement is used as a strategy to achieve better competitive strength, within the retail food industry.Theoretical: The theoretical chapter illustrates different procurement organisations, multiple and single sourcing, brand equity, consumer behaviour and involvement, Efficient Consumer Response including supply chain and category management and finally Demand Chain Management.Method: For the case studies, three food retail companies have been interviewed: Reitan Servicehandel AB, Vi-butikerna and ICA AB. To illustrate how consumer behaviour influences retail food market, several secondary consumer research studies have been analysed.Conclusions: The results indicate that the procurement organisation can achieve a better competitive strength by a centralised organisation, which make it possible to improve conditions of terms when ordering higher purchase volumes. The sourcing strategies can improve a company?s power within the supply chain. All companies within the study had a very good knowledge about consumer behaviour.

A majority of Swedish consumers have a positive attitude towards organic production and the number of organic products on the market is increasing. Despite these positive trends, there are still relatively few consumers who choose to buy organic produced products. According to statistics, only 3% of the total sales of food consist of organic products. The aim with this essay is to understand what is needed, both from the grocery store and the consumer's point of view, to increase the consumption of organic food. Information has been collected partly through questionnaire with consumers and partly through analysis of sales statistics for a selected numbers of products. Then the empirical material have been analysed in the light of a combination of the Behavioural Perspective Model (Foxell, 1997) and Kotler's Four P:s (Kotler, 2002). Consumer's willingness to buy organic products is influenced by a number of different factors. One important thing is if the grocery store offers a behaviour setting that stimulates the consumers positive attitude and facilitates their possibilities to collect new information. Furthermore, the store needs to offer a broad and well-visualised selection of organic products.

Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to study how the hotel chain Radisson SAS works with prolonged customer relations with their business clients, with other words the clients that have business agreements with them.Methods: This study will contain an inductive approach and qualitative methods. The qualitative research method is in the shape of a deep interview with the sales manager of Radisson SAS and qualitative interviews of chosen business clients to the hotel.Results: The results of this investigation show that business clients are controlled by what kind of agreements their company has.The companies sign agreements with hotels and hotel chains that are able to satisfy big parts of their needs, if not all of them.With the help of flexible solutions, a well known brand, and good relations, Radisson SAS has made sure that their business clients have prolonged their agreements.They are a global hotel chain near transports, and business clients feel secure with Radisson SAS..

Context: In cooperation with ICA, we chose to investigate how much the auditory and visual stimuli in combination affects consumer behavior in grocery store. There are few studies in the area, which gives good practical and theoretical implications.Research question: How much influenced consumers' purchasing, movement and inspection behavior during exposure to auditory and visual stimuli in the fruit and vegetable department of a grocery store?Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze how much the auditory and visual stimuli affect consumer behavior in the grocery store. We do this through a quantitative experiment of our partner?s fruit and vegetable section, where we observe customer behavior in stores.

During the last decades the questions about environment and social ethics, so called Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), have increased in importance. It is in the business world highly important for the corporations to show the public that the company care about these questions. A common approach nowadays is to outsource productions to other countries resulting in that suppliers have a great part of the work with CSR. CSR as a trend is a rather new phenomenon, and therefore interesting to see how the corporations handle these questions and how the approach looks like. The purpose with this study is to show how corporations which are recommended by CSR organizations for their handling regarding these questions approach CSR and how the work look like in the supply chain.

Forestry supply chains are a significant part of the Swedish economy. These supply chains are highly susceptible to storms damage. In late 2013 Sweden was hit by multiple storms. This leads to the possibility to research how supply chains react to the shocks that storms cause. The aim of this thesis is to research the costs that storms increase, the actions that are taken within the forestry supply chain, as well as possible benefactors from storms. This thesis bases on previous work on supply chain mapping and cost theories.

Purpose ? The purpose with this thesis is to examine how items can be distributed between stores inventory and an external warehouse. To achieve the purpose criteria that should be considered, how these can be prioritized and used when distributing items between stores inventory and an external warehouse will be examined.Method ? The study started by an examination of the theory that already exists within the subject. The already existing theory has then been examined in reality, on the furniture company IKEA Jönköping, where a case study with one channel has been performed.

In this study environmental work in the Swedish hotel chain "Scandic" is investigated. Earlier studies point out sustainability and different environmental certificate programs as essential for the housing sector to contribute to sustainable tourism. The purpose and willingness to fulfill such a mission has been investigated by interviewing central actors in the hotel chain. The result shows that there is a desire to be part of environmental certificate programs mainly for the reason to be part of the system and not for the benefit of nature. Sustainable development is understood as being environmentally friendly. Different solutions to adapt and being more environmentally friendly is discussed.

This study is a value chain analysis for timber in East Africa. It was commissioned by Vi Agroforestry, a nongovernmental organisation registered in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania engaged in a rural development program that involves promoting tree planting and enterprise development (Vi Agroforestry, 2012). The purpose of the study was to identify and describe common value chains for timber in the countries where Vi Agroforestry operated. Value chain is a concept and a framework describing how to structure information regarding activities included in satisfying a certain customer need, e.g. procurement, logistics, transactions, production and marketing.