Social media has today reached a level of maturity similar to the Internet in the beginning of the millennium. More and more people get involved both on a private and professional level and companies are starting to realize the need to keep up with the new online behavior of its target groups. The Investor Relations(IR) function has for a very long time been carried out by writing reports and press releases, but maybe as times change so will the tools needed to communicate the IR-issues for the companies? The purpose of this paper was to examine the views on and involvement in social media for IR-purposes at the four main banks in Sweden: Nordea, SEB, Handelsbanken and Swedbank. The study was carried out in the form of a qualitative case study in which the banks were analyzed separately with the help of Davids and Venkateshs TAM2-model(2000) and also analyzed against one another.

Title: Social Media ? And customer interaction in smaller firmsSeminar date: 2011-06-10Course: Information Logistics, D-level.Authors: Marie Stenhammar and Ulrika CarlssonAdvisor: Jaime CamposKey words: Social Media, Web 2.0, Co-creation, Viral marketing, Word of Mouth, smaller firmsPurpose: This paper aims to describe the relevance of social media to smaller firms, the challenges and opportunities they face and what strategies they use, in the interaction with their customers.Methodology: The study is qualitative in nature and has an abductive approach. The empirical material consists of in-depth interviews with chosen companies and Internet observations.Theoretical perspectives: Social Media, Web 2.0, Co-creation, Viral marketing, Word of MouthEmpirical foundation: The study takes its empirical base from in-depth interviews with representatives from the small companies and internet observations connected to these.Conclusions: Smaller companies have great interest in social media. They preferably use Facebook, blogs, YouTube and Twitter. Their strategy is mainly to be very active and update their social media regularly.

Computers and business systems are used more frequently in a world where IT gradually is taking over. This is also true when it comes to the real estate valuation process where actors on the Swedish real estate market are using automatic valuation systems for real estate appraisal. But the real estate agents have not yet seen the charm in using these automatic valuation systems for real estate appraisal. Can the real estate agents also use the automatic valuation systems? We developed our three main subjects: the valuation process, an automatic valuation system and the real estate market with assistance from scientific articles.

On the internal market within the EU, freedom of establishment under articles 49 and54 TEU stipulates that companies have the right to set up businesses in other MemberStates. On the internal market there are 27 different national tax law systems whichhave caused obstacles regaring taxation between Member States. These obstacles havebeen shown deterrent when a company enters a new market. One problem area is thelack of cross-border loss compensation for groups. This means that cross-bordergroups is over taxed when they are unable to set of gains against losses.

This report was made for the company HordaGruppen AB to investigate how information security was handled. This report fits in the Master program of Internet Technology at School of Engineering in Jönköping University in Sweden.The question at issue was how you protect your information against different threats. One question was how to make an information security policy and which guidelines you can follow in the Swedish Standard, SS-ISO/IEC 17799:2000.Another question was to investigate the information sources at the company and which threats there are against it.The work begins with a presentation about information security for the chief of information and the chief of quality in the company. The next thing was to do a survey of as thing are at present with a tool from Länsteknikcentrum called ?Infosäkpulsen?.

Trade Unions are finding it increasingly challenging to appeal to employees and all trade unions alike are encountering new challenges to attract and retain members. Additionally a more diversified and educated labor market is creating demands for trade unions to better meet individual needs. The purpose of this study was to explore and analyze the role of branding in Unionen, the largest white-collar trade union in Sweden, and how branding efforts help in attracting and retaining trade union members. The theoretical foundation of this thesis is based on theories related to corporate branding and relationship marketing. Furthermore, the study develops and introduces the concept of member branding in the context of trade unions.

To start a company on the Internet is something that has appealed a lot of people during the last couple of years. Some of the companies have succeeded in their struggle but a lot of companies have failed to live out their ambition. This paper deals with the concept of e-commerce and aims to study whether or not the companies that has succeeded has made use of business models and what other factors that is important that you wont find in any written theory.The paper also aims to study the concept of business models and what a business model consists of. To be able to do this research we have interviewed three different companies that are all active in e-commerce and have survived for at least three years. Two of the companies are classical web shops that sell products to their customers and the last one is a site with articles about hardware and IT business in general.

Purpose/Aim: This study is an analysis of the view on masculinity, male sexuality and creation of identity with the television series Queer as folk as a base. The analysis is partly based on a semiotic analysis of the representation of masculinity and male sexuality from an episode of the chosen television series Queer as folk, and partly based on a thematic analysis of focus group discussions with young men with different sexualities.Material/Method: This study is based on focus group interviews and a semiotic and thematic analysis. The focus groups consisted of three men in three different groups and were chosen on the criteria of gender and sexuality. All groups were presented with an episode of the television series Queer as folk to see how they perceived masculinity and male sexuality. Their discussions were analyzed with a thematic analysis and the television series Queer as folk with a semiotic analysis.Main results: The three analyzed characters in Queer as folk showed different representations of masculinity and male sexuality.

The aim of this thesis is, from a business perspective, to examine how the pharmacy chain Medstop is working with their positioning in order to achieve competitiveness in the re-regulated pharmacy market. This is studied through a theoretical framework that demonstrates five forces that affects the competitiveness in an industry, the five-force model by Michael Porter.The thesis is a qualitative case study where data collection was done through interviews, literature, articles, websites and internal information from Medstop. The data was then complied into the theoretical perspective the authors have chosen for this paper, the five-force model by Michael Porter. This model was chosen because it gives a broad description of the competition a company faces by describing five different forces that affect the competition within a branch. The fact was collected on the basis of the marketing strategy positioning, and the essay is written from a business perspective.Our cunclusions are that the pharmacy chain Medstop are in their initial positioning and has chosen to position itself on the basis of their core values; credibility, safety and security.

Thesis purpose: The aim of this paper is to extend the knowledge of what influences the purchase decision of functional food in the store. By applying the M-R model in a new setting - the dairy department in grocery retailing in Sweden - and adding variables related to health attitudes, the aim is to contribute to existing research concerning in-store purchase decision making and store environment as well as consumer attitudes. Methodology: This thesis employs a quantitative strategy with a deductive approach and data has been collected with questionnaires. Theoretical perspective: Environmental psychology serves as an overarching framework where, more specifically, certain aspects of store atmospherics and some variables concomitant to health attitudes provide the theoretical base. Empirical data: The empirical data consists of customer purchasing a functional food product, Proviva, and this is contrasted with a test group, Bravo.

The vision of this thesis was to create a concept that can be used as a base for amachine construction. The purpose of this project was to use different methods todevelop a concept that on the best way meets the sat up requirements. This projecthas been divided into three stages/parts; principle, primary and the final solutionstage.This thesis has been conducted in collaboration with Västkustägg AB. It is aconstruction project designed to construct a machine that will automatically putlabels on the egg packages. Västkust AB wanted to automate this process.

Vid Lissabonmötet enades medlemsländerna om antagandet av de så kallade Lissabonmålen vilket bland annat innebär att EU skall vara den mest konkurrenskraftiga ekonomin i världen. För att kunna uppfylla dessa mål måste företagsskattesystemet inom EU förändras eftersom EU annars är i sämre konkurrensläge än USA när det gäller att attrahera investerare. Det finns två förslag till en sådan förändring som är mer aktuella än övriga förslag, Home State Taxation (HST) och Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB). HST är ett förslag som går ut på att alla bolag i en gränsöverskridande koncern skall beräkna sin skatt enligt reglerna i den stat där moderbolaget är lokaliserat. CCCTB är ett förslag som innebär ett införande av en ny gemensam skattebas som tillämpas på gränsöverskridande koncerner.

In this interview study I have examined eleven Swedish advertisers and professional communicators and their view of ethics in the advertising industry. The purpose of the study was to shed light on how they see their ethical responsibilites, as well as trying to understand how they reason in regard to ethics as a whole. The main research questions regard the distinction between business and economic responsibilities towards their clients and societal ethical responsibilities, which ethical questions are of importance to them, and how they believe the industry should be regulated.The theoretical framework of the study uses media ethics, social responsibility theory, media accountability theory, and stockholder and stakeholder theory as its base. The study was performed using a qualitative method through interviews and the interpretation of these. The results of the study finds that the consulted advertisers have set opinions of what they themselves would decline to work with for ethical reasons, and has also been able to identify five main categories of ethical issues that they attach great importance to.

The most recent couple of years the boundaries of the world have been erased and we have come to live in a more global environment. It has been even more evident since the European Union has got a more prominent role in the society. It appears as obvious for most of us that we live in a changeable time and that a new, global perspective has been developed. Companies have to focus on the effect globalization and differences in culture have, to be competitive in the market today. Because of that business managers more often can come to work in other countries than their country of origin, it becomes interesting whether these managers adapt their management style or if they continue to work the same way as they did in their native country.This thesis aims to investigate if business managers with a foreign background bring along their national culture when managing a company in Sweden.

Reading and analyzing literature has a long tradition of being an essential part of the teaching of English in Sweden. As the offers of entertainment have increased in popular culture with the introduction of computer games, internet and other media, interest in reading novels has decreased. Literature is still a compulsory part of English teaching and the question is how teachers of today use literature and what kind of literary instruction they use.The aim of this study is to explore and discuss the literary instruction discourse in pedagogical texts, lessons, created by and for English teachers of Swedish Upper Secondary Schools. The lessons have been collected from the site lektion.se, where teachers are able to share knowledge and lessons. The study uses an analytical method based on Norman Fairclough´s Critical Discourse Analysis in order to analyze the lessons.