Term: Spring term 2007Study objects: Reitan Servicehandel AB, Vi-butikerna, ICA Sverige ABPurpose: The purpose of this study is to analyse how procurement is used as a strategy to achieve better competitive strength, within the retail food industry.Theoretical: The theoretical chapter illustrates different procurement organisations, multiple and single sourcing, brand equity, consumer behaviour and involvement, Efficient Consumer Response including supply chain and category management and finally Demand Chain Management.Method: For the case studies, three food retail companies have been interviewed: Reitan Servicehandel AB, Vi-butikerna and ICA AB. To illustrate how consumer behaviour influences retail food market, several secondary consumer research studies have been analysed.Conclusions: The results indicate that the procurement organisation can achieve a better competitive strength by a centralised organisation, which make it possible to improve conditions of terms when ordering higher purchase volumes. The sourcing strategies can improve a company?s power within the supply chain. All companies within the study had a very good knowledge about consumer behaviour.

This research aim was to examine the relationship between the choice of lunch dish, level of education, gender and age of the participants. The understanding of diet and it´s influence on health was also of interest to the research, as was cooking interest and travel habits. The goal was to demonstrate how these factors affect the adult individuals in their choice of lunch. A questionnaire was filled in by 99 guests in a chosen restaurant. The results show that many of these factors influence the choice of dish, especially those related to gender.

The subject of sms-loans is examined by using primary and secondary sources?. This form of credit is formally independent from other obligations with a very short credit period and the amount of the loan is low. This form of credits is applied by mobile phones and on the internet by several companies, some of them are presented in this essay. These type of creditors do not come under any sanctions from the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority as is customary for other creditors, they only need to register.

This thesis provides the first test of the effects of ?advertising talk?, i.e. comments, discussions and opinions about advertising. Despite its prevalence quantitative research on advertising talk has been scarce and this study is thus an attempt to fill in some blanks. Hypothesizing that advertising talk will enhance consumer-perceived advertising value as well as purchase intentions and that the effects are more pronounced for talk generated by consumers as compared to marketers, I use a fictional campaign to measure responses in an experimental study.

Background: Trust has been a foundation of commerce since the very beginning. Trust can in the traditional commerce be built by face-to-face meetings, this is not possible at the Internet. Although, trust ought to be important even for the commercial business relation at the Internet and crucial for the consumer to use this communication channel. Purpose: The purpose of this master thesis is, from a consumer point of view, to study and analyse the importance of trust using e-services. Demarcation: The thesis is focusing trust using e-services, from a consumer point of view.

Syftet med denna studie är att mäta och analysera detaljhandlares uppfattningar om konkurrenshot utifrån fyra olika hypotetiska valsituationer, ett Choice Experiment. Urvalsgruppen bestod av cityhandlare inom ett geografiskt definierat område i Gävle stad i Sverige. Resultatet indikerar att cityhandlare uppfattar konkurrens mellan marknadsplatser i viss utsträckning. Dock indikerar resultatet att konkurrens uppfattas inom marknadsplatsen i högre utsträckning i jämförelse med konkurrens mellan marknadsplatser..

A couple of hundred years ago half of the earth?s surface was covered by forest. Today, only half remains and every year an area the size of Nepal is disappearing. Deforestation, together with the burning of fossil fuels, is also one of the reasons for the increasing greenhouse effect. Another relatively unknown problem for the world?s forests is the trade with illegally harvested timber.

The purpose of this paper is to fill the gaps in current research on trade shows. The business-to-consumer aspect has been greatly ignored by academic theorists. We are aiming to make an exploratory study into during-show promotion practices. We will also create a continuation of the Hansen (1999) framework. In order to analyze "during-show promotion" two business-to-consumer trade shows; the ITB in Berlin and EuroHorse in Göteborg were visited.

The purpose of this essay is to study how parents of children with disabilities young people make their choice of support and service LSS. The study takes its lead from questions designed to determine which interventions parents use for their children. What parents think about today's choice and if satisfactory, or if they have other wishes. It is also about how parents experience the freedom of choice and participation in the selection of interventions. Furthermore how the parent discuss the topic of choice from childhood and parental perspective.

AbstractThis essay is about what rights that a consumer has, after it?s been to a beauty-shop getting a treatment somewhere on her body. We were interested to see what kind of regulations that could be useful if a problem occurred after or during treatment. There are several risks with these treatments.The last decade these kinds of treatments have increased, due to people being vain and so aware about there looks. We started to investigate what type of rights the consumer generally has when it?s about a service.

A study based on the consumer buying decision process to discover the typical use of the Internet in the consumer buying decision process when buying clothes. The matter is researched through an Internet survey which discovers how the consumer use the Internet in each step of the buying decision process by using predetermined options. As a result, the conclusion is that people most commonly use the traditional alternatives in the buying decision process of clothes. However, information about a product is often collected on the Internet, mostly on different webshops. The main reason, for people to buy clothes on the Internet, is that the consumers consider it is more convenient and time saving.

Many companies today are investing in various computer-based tools to support their planning, decision making or communication processes. However, end users are often reluctant to accept the available information systems, which mean that these investments are extremely risky. Understanding why users choose to accept or reject an information system has proved to be one of the most challenging problems in this research area. Previous studies have focused on users' beliefs and attitudes regarding use intentions, but the results have, however, been both mixed and incomplete. In this study, I have used the Swedish youth? s use intention of mobile banking and a quantitative study was performed based on five different hypotheses derived from previous studies.

Several studies show that the clinical reality in psychiatric care does not correspond to the demand of consumer participation from a variety of policy documents that has been produced recently. Studies also show that there is a lot to do in improving, patients with sever mental illness, becoming more involved in their own care. The nurse has a central role in this work. The Norwegian nursing theorist Jan-Ka?re Hummelvolls holistic, existentialistic model for psychiatric nursing were used as theoretical ground.The aim of this study was to examine how nurses in psychiatric outpatient units, caring for patients with psychotic disorders, experiences consumer participation.Qualitative phenomenological method was used.

The thesis aims to increase our understanding about parents reasoning about the elementary school choice by studying which factors parents perceive as important during the decision making process and also by giving meaning to Pierre Bourdieu?s concept of capital through the parents perspective. The empirical material comes from seven BNIM-interviews made with parents, which has been analyzed according to the thematic field analysis.The results show that the parents are not especially concerned about making an active school choice. Stability, closeness, friends, rumors, development and adaptability to the reality are the factors that are perceived as the most important in the decision making process. The school choice has a limited meaning as an investment in social capital, from Bourdieu?s perspective.

This essay is a qualitative study on quasimarkets in the field of home-help service. The main purpose of the study was to describe and analyze the function of costumers choice from elderly persons point of view. The quasimarket in home-help service of Solna stad has served as an example. The questions raised in the study concerned the elderly costumers opinion of the information about the different producers, what had influence on their choice, their attitude towards the freedom of choice, and their ability to act as consumers on a quasimarket.The method used was qualitative semi structured interviews. A majority of the elderly consumers appreciated the possibility to choose producer of home-help service.