The purpose of this master thesis is to present a model that illuminates the important factors when deriving technical information from market data within a company. For companies to be able to become and stay competitive in the market, product quality is an important factor. Whilst good product quality leads to customer satisfaction and loyalty, lack of quality brings costs in service and replacements. To improve product quality, the developers need information and knowledge about what quality issues affect existing products. Most companies gather data from market about known issues, but in order eliminate known quality issues in new products; this data has to be transformed into information and knowledge.

One of the most distinguishing features for companies today is that they must have a close collaboration and keep up a good relationship with their suppliers. This is important for the companies chance of survival and for them to compete in their markets. This essay will discuss the subject of Scania?s long-term collaboration with their suppliers. The purpose of the essay in this case study is to analyze if a long-term cooperation with a supplier is of essence upon renegotiations of continued collaboration.

User comments:Availability and Utilization in Online News Affiliated with Local Daily PressAuthor: Susanne AlmgrenSupervisor: Mats EkströmConstituent: Dagspresskollegiet (Annika Bergström/Ingela Wadbring)Course: Term Paper in Media and Communication StudiesTerm: Spring Term 2012Pages/word count: 91 pages / 38 334 wordsObjective: To examine the users availability to the user comment feature and how theusers utilizes the user comment feature in the context of an online news site affiliatedwith local daily press.Method: Mixed methods approach, content analysis and discourse analysisMain result: In this context, three out of four news stories (76.5 percent) has beenallocated with the user comments feature. The highest availability to the user comment feature was found in news themes covering sports and entertainment, followed by financial news. News stories lacking the user comment feature weremainly found in news themes concerning crimes and accidents. The user comment frequencies are not normally distributed along news stories. On the contrary, 62 percent of the news stories did not get any user comments at all.

The strategy when you change the visual part of the brand identity is often referred to as Corporate rebranding and is seen as a good way to show that a company has undergone a change. Despite high risks and high costs, this strategy has become more common and there are companies today who make the choice to change an already well-known graphic profile. This phenomenon is what underlies this essay?s problem statement: Why does a company with an already well-known graphic profile choose to change it and how does the process behind the change occur? In what way have the company?s customers recognized the change and how has the company?s image changed in this context? The purpose of this essay is therefore to explore the process that occurs when a company in the sport and fashion industry changes its visual identity and to explore how the company?s customers have perceived the change.To fulfil the purpose of the essay a case study was carried out on a company?s Corporate rebranding process. The company that was chosen was the Swedish sports retail chain Stadium Sweden AB who decided to change its graphic profile even though their logo was one of the two most recognized in their field.

AbstractThe object of this study has been to analyze how companies within the music industry can successfully market their artists, this due to the complexity of today?s marketing environment, where technology has rapidly changed the way of communicating, and therefore contributed to a highly competitive market. The vast change of technology has resulted in several possibilities as well as difficulties breaking through, what could be seen as, a media sorl. Our purpose has been to outdo how companies market, as well as which factors that are vital, for a successful promotion of their artists. To be able to carry out our aim, we have created one key question; How can companies within the music industry market their artist to make them reach success?We have used a qualitative research approach for this study, this to be able to generate more depth concerning the chosen topic.

In recent years the construction industry has been exposed to increased time pressure which has resulted in a higher amount of wastage. Today 35 % of all construction projects in Sweden is "wasted". Time pressure has risen due to increased competition on the market, with more actors entering the construction business, therefore profit margins decreased which has led to a more pressing need for decreasing the amount of wastage.Bravida is Scandinavia's largest supplier of installations and provides specialist services in electrical installations (heating and sanitation), and ventilation. Mahdi Bawaqneh's task was to investigate where, how and why wastage occurs in the company's projects and how to prevent such wastage. The thesis covers the subjects of lean production, communication in projects and planning of projects.

In Sweden there is no legal regulation for the obligations and responsibilities between the contracting parties within the construction, civil engineering and installation sector. To clarify uncertainties regarding the liability, actors from theses sectors have agreed upon a voluntary regulation, called the General Conditions of Contract.When insurance companies want to enter the Swedish construction insurance market, they face a regulatory framework that not only regulates the construction market, it also imposes requirements on terms and conditions that must be included in the construction insurance. These terms are perceived as ambiguities and create difficulties and inhibit the ability for these insurance companies to offer competitive insurances. One of the terms that create these difficulties is the guarantee period, which is period of time starting from handing over the construction project to the employer, during this period the contractor still has the responsibility for the construction project. The guarantee period regulated by the General Condition of Contracts differs from the international use of the term both in length and in content.

As a result of today`s competitive situation, the demand on the rapid development of research has increased. Both universities and companies are realizing the importance of a functioning and well-developed cooperation. A close collaboration and communication between universities and the business community has in many studies been shown to be very important for business development and knowledge transfer. The purose was to examine how communication and collaboration between universities and industry can be developed and strenghthen on the basis of innovative thinking. In order to initially identify the perceived problems the authors studied how communication and cooperation manifests itslelf today between the two parties, what does not work and how the existing tools for communication and collaboration look like today.

ProblemThe manufacturing industry is a mature industry where the profit margins are small and the competition is hard. This makes it hard for both manufacturers and resellers to gain market shares and reach reasonable profit margins only by selling products. Therefore Swecon who is reseller for Volvo Construction Equipment tries to find alternative methods and ways to increase their profit. An alternative source of income could be to develop the range of services that are connected to the ground products.PurposeThe purpose of the thesis is to examine how Swecon in southern Sweden can improve their offers of existing services connected to the ground product and investigate the demand of new such services.MethodThis study is based on a qualitative study of five of Swecons local offices and five of Swecons customers. The empirical framework is mostly based on personal interviews but in some cases information was retrieved by using phone interviews.

This study examines regional integration in Africa with a focus on the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, COMESA. COMESA, with roots that go back to the beginning of the 1980?s, is one of the largest and most diverse areas for regional integration in Africa and has currently 19 member countries. The goal of the COMESA co-operation is to become a fully integrated area by the year 2025 that will merge into the African Union (AU). AU will then, in turn, create a fully integrated African continent in a not too far away future.

ABSTRACTCourse/level: Enterprising and Business Development, Bachelor Thesis, AUT2012, 2EB00ETutor: Magnus ForslundAuthors: Linn Danielsson & Alexander OlofssonKey words: Strong diversity, Consistent Corporate Culture, Core Values, Corporate Strategy,Definition of Diversity, Working with Diversity, Management, Standardization.Title: Diversity or Corporate Culture ? A case study on the paradoxical relationship betweendiversity and corporate cultures in corporations and organizations.Background: Diversity and corporate culture can in various ways result in corporate andorganizational advantages. While diversity promotes innovation, creativity and companydevelopment corporate culture possesses advantages such as efficiency, community and unity.Diversity and corporate culture seems to create various benefits that are both beneficial forcompetitive advantage.Problem discussion: I would be beneficial for companies and organizations to maintain bothdiversity and corporate culture since they complement each other. However, diversity andcorporate culture have different purposes and benefit in different ways. The question is howtwo such different strategies can meet.Question for research: How does diversity and corporate culture co-exist in corporations andorganizations?Purpose: The aim of this study is to create further understanding for the co-existence betweendiversity and corporate culture in corporations and organizations.Method: The study is made qualitatively with a hermeneutic approach and based on a casestudy on two corporations within the real estate industry.

AbstractLean production has become one common concept within industries to make the work more effective and to meet today?s hard competition. A challenge for Chinese production is the threat from new low cost countries. It will become very difficult to succeed to produce to a lower cost than these countries; this led to that Chinese companies must develop new strategies, according to Lee and Zhou (2000). This will put China in front of new challenges and new strategies can be needed to retain their strong competitive advantages.

The purpose of this paper is to study and describe the occurrence and conditions of aesthetic subjects and choral singing in Swedish upper secondary schools 2014. The paper is based on seven recorded individual interviews with three music teachers, four principals and one director of education in three upper secondary schools in Sweden. The study uses discursive psychology and the interviews were analysed with focus on music teachers and school leaders interpretative repertoires and rhetorical strategies and how they use the language to legitimate aesthetic subjects in an upper secondary school context. In the most recent upper secondary school reform of 2011 the aesthetic subjects are no longer mandatory. Today there are different ways to provide opportunities for the students to participate in music activities but since the government no longer decides how it shall be implemented it is up to the management of each school to determine the activities.The statement made by the informants are interesting in relation to the status of music subjects, but due to the limited scope of the paper, no general conclusions can be drawn.

För att en elitidrottare ska prestera optimalt under träning och tävling, är det viktigt att hon/han har en adekvat kosthållning. Särskilda näringsrekommendationer för idrottare har framarbetats. Bland annat har Svenska Olympiska Kommittén utarbetat en kostpolicy för elitidrottare, som belyser vikten av näringsintag före, under och efter fysisk aktivitet, samt hur dessa intag bör vara sammansatta näringsmässigt för att idrottaren skall kunna prestera och återhämta sig optimalt.Syftet med detta arbete var att se hur kost- och vätskeintaget såg ut bland elitorienterare före, under och efter tävling, i förhållande till gällande rekommendationer. Även livsmedelsval samt deltagarnas resonemang kring kost- och vätskeintag i samband med tävling studerades.Studiens urval baserades på 15 elitorienterare (8 män och 7 kvinnor) som deltog i orienteringstävlingar i Ronneby under påskhelgen. Orienterarna fyllde i en mat- och vätskedagbok under totalt fyra dagar, två dagar före respektive under tävlingshelgen.

Title: Strategies for competition ? a study of the Swedish contact lenses market.Authors: Pernilla AArskog and Annika Lange.Background: As a market gets more mature and the competition increases, it is more important for a company to apply the right strategic perspective. There are four fundamental strategic perspectives for a service-oriented business: a core product-, a price-, an image- and a service perspective. This study is a about service management and take its point from the theories from the Nordic School about strategies for competition, customer value, perceived customer quality and customer loyalty.Purpose: The main purpose with this study is to analyze and evaluate how the actors at the Swedish market of contact lenses should compete to gain further competitive advantages.Method: The study includes four qualitative interviews with two traditional opticians and two Internet based businesses, but also a survey with 106 contact lens users is included.Analysis: In the analyse part of this thesis it was concluded that the traditional opticians conception about their customer not agrees with what the customer evaluate as important. Many of the customers have thought about changing their optician, and besides that do not recommend their optician, and can there for not be categorize as loyal customers.