The purpose of the essay has been to clarify why and how small companies, whose major resource is knowledge, establish strategic alliances and which opportunities it brings. We have increased our understanding for the concept of strategic alliances through empirical search and through well-known scientist work. The method, which has been used in the essay, is principally qualitative interviews and gathering secondary data from articles from well-known authors. Our study has given that we have found that entering strategic alliances can make growth and by that way create Competitive advantages for the company in question. We also found that there are risks with strategic alliances and the company can protect themselves by legal actions.

The purpose of this study is to investigate and describe what factors are most important to students when choosing training center, and how these factors affect the choice of each training center. We investigated this by performing a qualitative research and a quantitative survey of students at Karlstad University that trains at Friskis & Svettis and Sats in Karlstad. The results show that there are a number of important factors in the total customer experience that affects a student's choice of training center and that they also differ between a premium center and basic center. Our conclusion is that when a total customer experience concept consists of a core, core experience and peripheral experiences well linked into each other Competitive advantages is created, resulting in more satisfied and loyal customers. .

It is important for all companies to be seen on a competitive market. It?s all about positioning yourself so that you?re seen and that you?re are attractive for both customers and employees. A crucial factor to achieve this are how the brand are handle directly by the company it self and by the market. Establishing a brand on the market is not easy and it takes time to establish what the company stands for.

Hedström Tom, Care planning teams. Advantages and disadvantages. Examination work C-level, 15 hp, Malmö Högskola, Health and society, Social works program, autumn semester 2009. The purpose of my work was to find out what the advantages and disadvantages might be with a care planning team from a support administrators point of view. The data collection for this work was done by semi-structured qualitative interviews with five people, all working as support administrators within the social services in the same region and town in Sweden. In my choice of interviewees i have tried to get such a diverse mix as possible when it comes to the interviewees experience in the profession and experience with care plannings.

In order to stay competitive and to be the first choice for customers in a world driven by a high level of competitive advantage, it is important for companies to stay ahead of the competition by conducting thorough market research. Even if this tends to be the case, many products still fail when reaching the market, leaving companies with great losses. The reason for this could be that the development of existing research methods has stagnated, or that they simply lack the ability to find the true answer as to what intentions underlie consumer?s decision making when shopping. Many believe that a new method is desired in order to get a better picture of what customers really think.

The result of this master thesis report describes the advantages and the drawbacks that will arise when implementing an Ethernet based intercommunication system in military vehicles. The report presents a possible solution and describes how different sound applications will be implemented into the suggested solution. The report show that IP LAN in vehicles leads to more advantages than drawbacks. The main advantages are that all kind of media can share the same LAN and that there is a lot of knowledge of this technique in the civil area. The main drawback is about delay.

When the independent upper secondary schools were started in 1992, it meant a change in the competitive relationship for the local upper secondary schools. A reduced number of students during some years ahead, while the number of independent upper secondary schools increase will probably result in tougher competition between upper secondary schools.The purpose of this study is to review and compare financial and performance management between a public and an independent upper secondary school. The dissertation will focus on the now existing competitive relationship between the two types of upper secondary schools.The theory underlying the study is Porter's model - five competitive forces. The model is applied to the local upper secondary school and used to identify competitive factors affecting upper secondary schools. The study is using a qualitative approach with five interviews at two upper secondary schools, one independent and one public, located in the same town.The comparison of financial and operational management of upper secondary schools indicate that the differences are not as great as we first imagined, but that there still are some differences.

It is important for all companies to be seen on a competitive market. It?s all about positioning yourself so that you?re seen and that you?re are attractive for both customers and employees. A crucial factor to achieve this are how the brand are handle directly by the company it self and by the market. Establishing a brand on the market is not easy and it takes time to establish what the company stands for. To be able to succeed with this you need to have a strategy and a strong belief on the brand.

Organic cotton has been in the medias field of vision for quite some time. This interestalso reflects in a growing awareness in the textile industry where more and morecompanies today offer organic cotton in their product range. With this in mind wequestion whether organic cotton has become a viable commercial product. We alsoacknowledge there is a lacking of understanding the complex problems that organiccotton manufacture involves, for example the huge effort and cost required for a transitionfrom conventional to organic cotton farming.The purpose of this paper was to study how textile, ecology and competition today arebeing combined by companies. We wanted with our investigation to find out whethercompanies in the textile industry use ecology as a competitive advantage.

Through the growing use and availability of information technology the dependency of Internet is today increasing. Internet makes ways for a more mobile business communication that cost less. One of the latest applications of Internet technology are intranet and extranet. I have asked myself the question how intranet and extranet can affect companies efficiency and competitive advantage. In order to answer this question I performed a case study at Ericsson and ABB.

Brands are the instruments corporates use to create and communicate brands reputation. Within the different industries for consumer products intangible assets such as brands are known to have great importance for corporate prosperities. When consumers experiences a specific brand symbolizes best possible value for money, the corporate behind it has managed to create a unique competitive advantage that should be to its full potential. Strong brands can pose the difference between winning or loosing on the market. Due to this brands should be considered as cost-effective instruments since they help create financial advantages such as consumer loyalty.

Background: There has been a movement of power towards customers in most markets which puts higher demands upon the customer orientation of organizations to survive competition. In general the opinion is that satisfied customers also are profitable for the organization. Even though a consciousness exists about this connections importance for the organization there exists no prominent economical theory showing how a organization should work with customer adaptation and how management should be shaped for success in this area. In the field of competitive sports clubs a similar trend is discernible since the field is increasingly commercialized.Purpose: The purpose of this study is to adapt The Balanced Scorecard as a model to the demands on management that customer orientation causes and to use the knowledge created during the study to show how customer orientation in a competitive sports club could look.Realization: The study first takes the form of a literature study which emerges into a theoretic development. Above that a case study of Linköpings Hockey Club has been accomplished so that knowledge created from the literature study could be used on competitive sports clubs.

Given that the end-customer has become more demanding, the retailer has to deliver products according to the market demands, which have forced manufacturing companies to constantly search for new opportunities to reduce costs and improve efficiency. It is, therefore important to choose suppliers that are able to compete with the market demands.The market demands in the textile industry have lead to shorter product life cycles, which have caused manufacturers to deliver flexibility with high technology to compete successfully on the global market. To achieve the market requirements the underlying factor is to be aware and optimally use and control time. New technology can have a major influence in the production development, if the company choose to take benefit of the advantages, by optimal allocation of the internal resources the productivity and efficiency will increase, to accomplish a competitive advantage. One way to achieve this is by investing in a Unit Production System.In our thesis we have questioned what the main driving forces for an apparel manufacturing company is when it chooses to invest in new technology.

The BSC is a widely used management tool that is turning the vision and strategy into operational goals. However, after analyzing the criticism received by the BSC, it seems as if its internal focus, rigidity, static-ism and mechanical mindset limits the company?s ability to create a strategy that takes important external factors into account. As we see it, the BSC?s limitations can create a risk for strategic inertia.

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.