The Swedish boat industry is considered quite conservative and subject to only limited development. The purpose of the study is to explain the structure of the boat industry, to analyze and evaluate ways of competing and provide recommendations for developing a competitive strategy. The aim of this thesis is to explain how to be competitive in the Swedish boat industry. To be able to do so three areas are used to deepen as well as broaden the understanding. The three areas within competitiveness we have chosen to highlight are differentiation, individualization and distribution.

Background: Etiquette has become vital in business relationships. In today?s competitive business climate signs indicate that social competence affect whether a business deal is settled or not. This type of competence could be of crucial importance at a first business meeting and it also plays an important role for future business relationships. Business etiquette is therefore, within the world of business, an interesting area to study.Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to clarify what knowledge and understanding companies, listed on the Swedish stock exchange, possess towards business etiquette, their viewpoint on etiquette education and finally to ascertain whether or not those companies perceive business etiquette to be pivotal to success.Methodology: In order to attain our purpose of this essay we found it most suitable to utilize both a quantitative and qualitative research method.

Andelen konkurrensutsatt offentlig verksamhet har ökat i jämn takt sedan början av 1990-talet, och utvecklingen har både sina förespråkare och kritiker. När det gäller de stora partierna inom de olika politiska blocken, är konsensus numera att konkurrensutsättning är här för att stanna, skiljelinjen ligger mer på hur stor andel av den offentliga verksamheten som skall konkurrensutsättas. Även bristen på en genomlysning och uppföljning av konkurrensutsatta verksamheter har väckt kritik. Kostnadseffektivitet är det som förespråkas vid konkurrensutsättning och används som syfte till att anlita privata eller korporativa aktörer etc., för att bedriva en tidigare offentlig verksamhet på ett mer företagsekonomiskt effektivt sätt.Syftet med uppsatsen var att undersöka hur Region Gotland använder sig av konkurrensutsättning och upphandling för att nå en företagsekonomisk effektivitet i sin verksamhet, och jämföra det empiriska underlaget mot tillgängliga teoretiska källor. För uppsatsen har följande två frågeställningar valts som uppsatsens problemformulering: (1) På vilket sätt genomförs konkurrensutsättning för att uppnå företagsekonomisk effektivitet i offentlig verksamhet? (2) I vilken omfattning sker uppföljning av verksamheter för att kontrollera att tilldelade resurser används på bästa sätt?Uppsatsen visade inte på något otvetydigt klargörande när det gäller ekonomisk vinst vid konkurrensutsättning, eftersom uppföljning och utvärdering av upphandlade verksamheter inte sker i den utsträckning som vore önskvärd.

Because of the large economic growth in China there are many companies who have economic interests in the Chinese market. Also in the forest market companies have started to invest in China and the interest for the market is growing. The question is how the Chinese forest market will develop in the years to come? How will China?s entry on the market of forest products affect the global forest market? The purposes of this study are to describe production, consumption and trade of forest products, and China?s possible competitive advantage in the forest industry. The purpose of this study is also to describe how China?s entry on the forest market affects the world market of forest products.

A conference is not only a meeting but an experience as well. The purpose of this study was to analyze and evaluate four conference organizers within the area of Stockholm Sweden, and to identify their range of activities. Studies were made regarding these conference organizers and how they cooperate with other companies to offer a wider aspect of range. The purpose was also to find out how the demand side of the market appears. The demand side of the market could give an implication of how the conference organizers appear from their perspective and how the conference organizers adjust to their demand.

PURPOSE: To investigate to what extent product brand positioning models can be used to analyzecorporate brand positioning;METHODOLOGY: The phenomenon is observed from a positivist epistemological position within a primarilyinductive research design. The research strategy is defined as qualitative, while the method of ethnographiccontent analysis is implemented to analyze primary data;THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE: Product and brand positioning literature; Product brand positioning rhombus;EMPIRICAL DATA: Ethnographic content analysis of brand commercials;CONCLUSION: As shown by the extensive literature review product brands (PB) and corporate brands (CB) coexistin corporate environments. One of key insights of this study shows that product brand positioning(PBP) and corporate brand positioning (CBP) processes can also co-exist in the same corporate environment.Moreover, PBs can be built based on the CB, making the investment in CB a long term return on investment.The study also observes that PBP messages include the ?against whom? attribute, highlighting differentiationin the competitive environment; when on the corporate level, this evolves, and in some cases becomes quitethe contrary, when the concept of ?from whom? or ?by whom? is stressed more than the differentiation amongother CBs in the competitive environment. This stresses the importance of including brand identity elementsin CBP..

In 1995 something happened that radically changed the European football. This was the arrival of the Bosman ruling, a decision made by the European Court of Justice which meant that players with an expired contract could change clubs for free and that the European Union's internal market including the free movement of labour was now a part of the European football. The effects of theBosman ruling are wildly discussed today. Many powerful people in the European football mean that football now is less competitive than before, that there are a small amount of teams that actually have the ability to win any trophies. This bachelor thesis is studying the effects of the competitive forces in football after the Bosman ruling as a case of the free movement in the European Union.

At Saab Aerospace in Linköping, components for measurement systems to the fighter aircraft JAS 39 Gripen are developed. In this activity you sometimes want to record the traffic transmitted on the data busses that connects different sys-tems. This traffic on the data busses is using the military standard MIL-STD-1553. This project has aimed to create a system for recording and sending 1553-data. The system is used on an ordinary personal computer, equipped with a recon- figurable I/O card that among others has a programmable logic circuit (FPGA).

Colour has encountered to be a significant part in marketing, which advantageously can be used in todays competitive market. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze the colours varying associations and present ideas how colours can affect the hotel business. In coherence with the purpose we deveoled the research question, which resulted in following: How can hotels affect their servicescape and identity by the help of colour?The study has a qualitative method that began in an empirical problem that has been tested against theory, which subsequently developed the research question. This implies that our study alternated between induction and deduction.

Title: Competition for small audit firms ? a qualitative study on possible competitive strategies and how the upcoming changes will influence competition on the audit market    Subject: Auditing Tutor: Margareta Paulsson  Authors: Per Dahlström and Martin Holmberg Purpose: The purpose of this study is to develop an understanding how smaller auditing firms use competitive strategies and why. The result aims to work as a support for owners and leaders of audit firms as they make decisions of how to compete in the future. We would also like to explore how smaller audit firms view the change of the mandatory audit, that is, our intentions are also to examine how they think the consequences on the market will be and their view on its affect on the competition of the market.    Methodology: Our methodological approach was characterized by a hermeneutic approach in order to explain and understand why the smaller audit firms do what they do. Our approach is a combination of inductive and deductive as it allows us to develop an understanding of the subject, then gather our empirical data and from that draw valid conclusions.

The furniture retail industry in Sweden has gone trough large changes during the last decades. Today the industry is tough and in the maturity stage where few new companies enter, especially if they do not have a unique offer. The furniture companies have become larger and fewer, the changes have lead to difficulties for smaller and medium sized companies to grow and be profitable.Our purpose is to analyse, evaluate and compare three smaller companies in Stockholm with the intention to find what kind of marketing strategies they are using to survive on the Swedish market. First we interviewed the three companies to see what they do to survive on the market, then we asked 100 persons to fill in a questionnaire to see if they had the same opinion as the companies described.With help from theories we prepared questions which laid the foundation to the empirical part of the essay.The result from this study shows that the three companies differ from each other when it comes to using relationship marketing and placing the customer in the centre. All of them are aware of the importance of doing so, but because of different limits and possibilities they can not fully adjust everything to the customer.

This paper is the result of a study of competition and cooperation in regard to tourism between the five largest municipalities in Norrland in northern Sweden. The municipalities are Luleå, Skellefteå, Umeå, Sundsvall and Gävle. The aim was to study the relation between competition and cooperation between these municipalities. An important theoretical aspect in this study is coopetition, where competition and cooperation occur at the same time. The studies on coopetition in the Nordic kontext is limited and the main literature on coopetition study the relationship between firms. This study however takes a geographical standpoint and aims to fill the gap in the literature on how competition and cooperation are connected to each other between chosen municipalities. To do this the tourism strategies of the municipalities were studied thoroughly. These written strategies provided information about how the municipalities view their competitive advantages and disadvantages and some general information about how they cooperate with the nearest regions. To find out how the municipalities think about competition and cooperation with the other four specific municipalities interviews were made with experts on the tourism field in each municipality. The results show that the municipalities do not have established strategies for how they are to be competitive compared with other specific municipalities. They do not see it as profitable to compete, instead they should complement each other. At the same time however, most of the municipalities mostly cooperate with municipalities in a short distance from them, and due to lack of resources only briefly or not at all with the municipalities studied here..

In a world where digital media is becoming a greater part of people?s everyday and working lives it is plausible to assume that the upcoming generation of pupils expect the teaching media to adapt thereafter. It is this assumption of an increased demand that Natur & Kultur is hoping to be able to meet. This thesis has been a stage in the process of producing digital material in the subject of mathematics for high school students. Specifically the aims of this thesis have been to make a rough description of the largest competitive companies? products within the same market, explore and put together a brief theoretical foundation of contemporary research and produce concrete examples of ideas for digital applications.

Today's unsustainable resource use is influenced by many factors. One key factor isproduction methods and patterns. Trough change of production patterns enterprises can bepart of the solution to a more sustainable society. This case study has analyzed environmentalperformance of the printer company Edita Västra Aros Ltd (EVA), who has gained awards forits environmental work, and what driving forces they have had during this work. The survey isbased on a qualitative method and the collected data consists of documents and staffinterviews, which have been analyzed with content analysis.

Product development is essential for all companies that want to survive in competitive markets regardless of the characteristics of the product that the company sells. Companies that sell products within product categories which can be seen as bad, also need to develop their products in order to remain competitive. If these bad products add a positive attribute, for example that they get organic, a contradiction within the product arises and they get incongruent. This thesis investigates which effects that follow a launch of an incongruent product. The thesis also examines if these effects are affected by the strength of the brand under which the product is launched.A total of 240 respondents participated in an experimental study where product incongruity was manipulated for two different product categories, where one well known brand and one unknown brand were examined in each category.