A buyer of a new car is often offered a various selection of warranties. A warranty can e.g. exist in the form of an extended new car warranty. However, some manufacturers demand that the car has to be serviced by an authorised repairer for the validity of an extended warranty. In the thesis I analyse whether such a contractual term is incompatible with today?s legislation and I argue for when such a term is to be seen as unfair.

Effects of climate change, urbanization and global homogenization are resulted in the degradation of land and losses of natural habitats. Ecological design integrates nature into urban environment by respecting natural ecological principles and processes and creating resilient urban biotopes which also can be used by local urban communities. The aim of the thesis is to answer the research questions: How ecological design principles can be applied for re-design of Toledo Riverfront (with requirements of the design competition)? and What is the ecological design in landscape architecture? I participated in the USA design competition with the aim to create a vision and redesign of Toledo Riverfront in Ohio State, USA. The site is located in the south point of Lake Erie. As a result of a long industrial activity, riverfront of Toledo had been transformed into inaccessible and abandoned brownfields. In my proposal I applied ecological design principles on three scales: the city of Toledo by reinforcing of ecological connection and creating green corridors along the river; the intermediate scale by suggesting public parks along the river front and on the fine level by proposing detailed design including remediation of the site and use of dredged material.

Swedish school system is today victim of facing competition. Today sees the school leadership the students like customers whom they depend to operate their school. But I have asked myself, what will be the new students see and how much this spectacle in both money and time that project will cost for the municipality and school teachers. The question is if whether the school will be better when the competition becomes school or just better marketed? I'm interested in how clearly ideologies emerge in schools brochures if we study them at critically and analytically way.

?Re:Regional? is a diploma work by Sanna Alm and Ylva Hedin, for the Master?s Programme in Spatial Planning presented at the Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona, Sweden. ?Greater Helsinki Vision 2050 ? International Ideas Competition? was the starting point of this study. The competition was launched the 15th of December 2006 and the closing date was the 31st of May.

In this thesis the marketing strategies of two public libraries have been explored and studied.The public library of Kalmar participates in the project GÖK which partly is a marketing project. The public library of Kalmar thereby differs from the public library of Trollhättan which is not involved in the project.The main aim of this thesis was to focus on their marketing strategies and see if there were any differences. The thesis was also concerned with the customers and their experiences of the quality of the services offered by the public libraries of Kalmar and Trollhättan, including the customers' perceptions of the operative marketing, and finally if there was a connection between marketing and customer-centered quality. Qualitative methods as well as quantitative methods were used for the collection of information .The preliminary assumption that Kalmar had a more explicit marketing strategy has been confirmed in the study. However, the customers at the public library of Trollhättan were more satisfied with the total quality of the services offered.

From a view of health strategies and techniques this thesis wants to throw a light on how the individual in its"health thinking"is governed. A thinking that, according to the author, can lead to a new way of governing as in municipal activity, an activity whose focus is on health and ill-health. The study is done whit a theoretical approach of power, with qualitative interviews as method and analysed from a perspective of Governmentality. The object for the study is Socsam and Rehabrådgivarna in Finspång. Socsam is a local project, and their main task is to create cooperation between health- and medical services, social services and social insurance.

As the football industry develops into a highly competitive commercialized industry, football clubs must step up and improve their business strategy. This study focuses on the famous Italian club AC Milan, a club with many international titles but with declining revenues. The purpose of this thesis is to study how AC Milan can generate higher revenues by comparing its marketing and business strategy with the most profitable clubs in the world, the benchmarking partners Real Madrid and Manchester United. By using a benchmarking model, following the five steps of this process, conducting observation studies, an interview and examining secondhand information, gaps between the clubs were evaluated and analyzed. These evaluations became together with chosen theoretical references, the basis for the improvement suggestions and conclusions shown by the authors.

Corporate governance intensified due to the corporate scandals in the USA which led to a new law the so called Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX).In 2005 the "Svensk kod för bolagsstyrning" (The Code) was introduced. The main purpose of The Code is to strengthen the confidence in Swedish companies quoted on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. The Code focuses on the working process of boards. The rules set by The Code places higher demands on the board.  Among many other duties the board has to establish long term operational goals and strategy.

The purpose of this study has been to investigate the extent of listening in a debate in the Swedish media. If the debaters listen to each other in a complex issue such as religion's place in society and if a debater who has a high degree of listening initially already in problem definition phase, has more possible solutions than the one that has a lower level of listening. The results show that there is a listening in all the articles, but the articles that have a broader definition of the problem also have a broader problem solving, than the articles that have a more narrow definition of the problem.The articles with a broader definition of the problem and a broader problem solving, have a predominantly agonistic debate strategy. Even if the debate rhetoric is primarily designed to win over the opponents, there is partly a genuine listening and an interest in finding new possible solutions. But despite that the opponents? arguments are mainly used to present the authors own arguments, the authors? intentions seems to be predominantly honest.

The Swedish oligopoly system that prevailed within the provision-industry has during the latest years subsided. The competition on the market has increased when new participants were given the opportunity to enter the Swedish market. Today the provision-industry is characterized by different foreign participants. Among these new participants one can find Lidl and Netto, who have entered the market enable to provide the Swedish people with an inexpensive range of products. In pace with the growing rivalry the benefits favor the consumers whom are being given several options to choose between.

This thesis project focuses on the need for better tools for analyzing competition for forest fuels in Sweden, in particular how policy measures may influence the market and involved actors in different regions of Sweden. Raw materials from the forest have for long constituted important inputs in the Swedish forest industry. Today some of these raw materials are increasingly used as inputs also in bioenergy production, largely driven by bioenergy promoting policies, and there are signs of increased competition for forest fuels which may have various and uncertain effects on the industries in question. The thesis project explores the possibilities to adapt previously used forest sector equilibrium models into a new model suitable for analysis of Swedish forest fuel markets, called the Swedish Forest Sector Trade Model (SFSTM). The approach takes into account regional differences in supply and demand for 23 types of products produced and/or used by eight types of producers, plus consumers, in five different regions (four Swedish and one international).

Many? luxury? companies? within? the? fashion? industry? today? choose? to? extend? their? brands downwards? in? order? to? reach? new? customer? segments? and? hence? increase? their? profitability.? A? brand? extension? strategy? that? leverages? the? core? values? of? the? luxury? brand? is? a ?new ?possibility ?for ?luxury ?brands ?to ?position ?themselves ?towards ?a ?broader ?customer ?base.?? Meanwhile? there? is? a? risk? that? the? extension? dilutes? the? image? of? the? luxury? brand? and? has? a? negative? effect? on? the? company? in? the? long? term.? Thus? a? tradeoff? exists? between? becoming? more? accessible? and? maintaining? the? exclusivity? of? the? luxury? brand.? The? objective? of? this? thesis ?is ?to ?investigate ?how ?luxury ?brands ?that ?perform? downward ?brand ?extensions ?to? reach? new? markets? can? succeed? with? this? strategy? without? diluting? the? brand? image.? This? is? achieved? by? studying? the? perceptions? of? the? new? target? segment? towards? the? extension? of? luxury? brands.? The? results? of? the? study? show? that? the? risk? of? brand? dilution? is? minimized when? the? core? values? of? the? luxury? brand? are? transferred? to? the? brand? extension? while? the extension ?at ?the ?same ?time ?is ?successfully ?targeted ?towards ?the ?specific ?customer? segment..

The purpose of my study is to give a good picture of what social media really is and how companies can make use of it, in their marketing strategy. It gets more important for every day that companies fully understand how social media works and how to act in the new digital channels. To be an updated marketer today, you need to fully understand social media and how it can be implemented in the company marketing strategy. This study gives you a snapshot over todays situation in the area of social media marketing.I have interviewed four different persons, who I believe have a great competence and are highly qualified for this kind of study. All of the interviewed persons work with social media marketing at a daily basis.

Background: Many authors consider knowledge to be a significant source for competitive advantage. Replicating companies found their competitiveness on an ability to leverage its knowledge base by replicating its business model in new contexts, a process often referred to as the McDonalds approach. Several authors emphasize that an efficient method for knowledge transfer may increase the risk for imitation. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine in an explorative manner how strategies for replicating complex knowledge systems are employed and developed. Furthermore, our ambition is to explore the notion of replication strategy.

A company may use different accounting techniques to adjust accounting information and thereby attract investors. Big Bath Accounting is defined as a strategy used to make changes in the financial statements and reduce the results further when the companies expect negative results. This phenomenon has been observed empirically and occurs when including CEO change and negative results. The aim of this study is to test whether there is another factor affecting Big Bath Accounting, namely remuneration of the CEO. The CEOs should, by changing the accounting information, be able to influence their compensation.