The purpose of this thesis is to gain a holistic understanding of who are the consumers of fortified health food products; moreover to highlight what are the characteristics of the consumers who are likely to purchase these products. This thesis employed a quantitative strategy with an inductive and a grounded theory approach. The data was collected from a research company. Existing theories in the area of functional food were not possible to find. Considering that the area is new this seems plausible; however, previous studies provided insight for substantive framework.

Over the last 25 year IT development has greatly influenced the waycompanies are managed, the tremendous growth in the information society has made a huge amount of information extremely accessible. This has resulted in the problem of information overload where the large amount of information can affect the quality of a decision basis collected by a controller.The purpose of the study is to examine how a controller is affected by information overload and how this influences the decision basis. We intend to highlight the important elements to represent a high quality of information.A survey was conducted through a case study within a global affiliated company in the packaging industry. An adductive approach has been applied with a qualitative research method. Collected empirical material from interviews has been put into relation with existing theories.The case study indicates that there is no relationship between the problem of information overload and flawed decision basis.

Abstract Title: A conjoint analysis of packaging attributes. How can the attributes of a product?s packaging best look like to attract the consumer? Authors: Linda Granberg & Helena Niklasson Supervisor: Jan Svanberg Department: School of Management, Blekinge Institute of Technology Course: Bachelor?s thesis in Business Administration, 15 credits Purpose: The purpose is to find out how visual and technical attributes on product packaging affects the consumers tendency to want to buy the product. Method: Conjoint analysis and a quantitative survey. Results: When developing a package for a food product we?ve reached the conclusion that it is most important to have clear product information on it.

This study investigates whether auditors affect the tendency to report correct taxes for small companies. Since November 2010 the smallest companies in Sweden are no longer obliged by law to have an appointed auditor to perform the former yearly audit. The auditor shall during the audit, amongst other tasks, investigate whether the audited companies follow Swedish law, and report them if they do not. The presence of the auditor might influence the actions of companies to act according to law, and reduce errors in the reporting. Errors regarding tax reporting will result in a revised tax decision if detected by The Swedish Tax Agency.

This thesis provides a comparison of the old Planning and Building act (PBA) from 1987 with the new PBA, which entered into force in May 2011. The essay consists of a descriptive part that presents the regulation of both laws. The new PBA consists of several differences compared to previous regulation. This thesis will, however, primarily be centred around the regulation regarding building permit appeals and the possibility of building permit, to gain legal force.In the old PBL, there were no regulations that result in a building permit decision could be made effective. Instead, a building permit could, long after the decision had been made, be over-challenged.

Corporate Social ResponsibilityThis thesis intends to exam the strategic use of Corporate Social Responsibility within fifthteen different companies, classified/divided into three various industries. The aim is to compare the three different industries, to look for disparities and similarities in their use of CSR. The disseration looks into both variance and resemblance in the use of Corporate Social Responsibility between the companies within the same branch of trade and between the industries.The industries of intrestThe three industries that the study has focus on is consumer, manufacturing and service related industries. Where the consumer industry is classified as companies with direct sales towards private consumers, the physical citizen. The manufacturing industry is classified as companies that manufacture products but that does´nt sell their products directly to the regular consumer.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate what kind of motives where behind the long term decisions for the Swedish military defense in 2000 and 2004. This leads to the questions that the essay is meant to answer; 1. Were the motives behind the two decisions for the Swedish military defense of economic character or an adjustment of security and defense policy? 2. Was the parliament united in the two decisions and if they were not, why? 3.

The starting point for this thesis has been the great process of change that Swedish municipalities now arefacing due to the political directive of offering full-time employment to all part-time employees. The aimof the research is to create a decision support model for Swedish municipalities, which simultaneouslyintroduce the offer of full-time employment and an internal personnel pool. The factors that mayinfluence the personnel?s choice of employment level and the quality of the outcome, thus the financial result,are we also aiming at explaining. The empirical observations were found through secondary data as well asobservations from the municipality of Göteborgs Stad.

In 1998 Sweden accepted the Treaty of Amsterdam which contained a development of the common foreign and security policy (CFSP) towards a European security and defense policy (ESDP). This thesis aims at studying the decision making process behind the Swedish foreign policy decision to further develop its security policy within the European Union. The purpose is to explain which factors and conditions that did affect and influence the Swedish foreign policy decision. The research applies foreign policy analysis, a theoretical perspective that analyzes both domestic and international conditions using different levels of analysis. The research methods being used has been qualitative as well as quantitative, complemented by interviews, since the research is a process tracing case study.The thesis conclusion is that the Swedish decision is explained by several factors.

Health and convenience trends dominate the food industry and retailing business of today. The health consciousness is spreading while appealing product attributes concerning taste and packaging also are increasingly important. At the same time, the competition is growing fierce in the Swedish market with hard discount formats and niche concepts who also are trying to provide the market with perishables. Therefore, the pressure to lower prices is increasing making economies of scale and rationalization progressively more important. In 2004, ICA launched private label meat packaged in a modified atmosphere. Consequently, many stores went from in-store cutting-up and packaging to selling centrally packaged and distributed meat. ICA is now developing a concept with fresh fish in modified atmosphere packages and needs to increase the knowledge about the market and the consumer.

A majority of Swedish consumers have a positive attitude towards organic production and the number of organic products on the market is increasing. Despite these positive trends, there are still relatively few consumers who choose to buy organic produced products. According to statistics, only 3% of the total sales of food consist of organic products. The aim with this essay is to understand what is needed, both from the grocery store and the consumer's point of view, to increase the consumption of organic food. Information has been collected partly through questionnaire with consumers and partly through analysis of sales statistics for a selected numbers of products. Then the empirical material have been analysed in the light of a combination of the Behavioural Perspective Model (Foxell, 1997) and Kotler's Four P:s (Kotler, 2002). Consumer's willingness to buy organic products is influenced by a number of different factors. One important thing is if the grocery store offers a behaviour setting that stimulates the consumers positive attitude and facilitates their possibilities to collect new information. Furthermore, the store needs to offer a broad and well-visualised selection of organic products.

The goal an purpose of this essay is to study the diffrent points of view that Swedish priest within the Swedish Church have on the Topic of same sex marriage. I will use qualitative interview as method of choice to get answers for my questions.The results of my study reveal that same sex mariiage has been a dividing issue between the different participants. Those in favour of the church´s decision to legalize same sex marriage consider love to be the most importent reason for marriage, while those who oppose the decision consider marriage to be a holy sacrament that is not easily changed..

When contemplating entering an alliance the rationale behind the decision should differdepending on the size of the companies involved as well as on other important factors. The importantfactors influencing the decision are related to the resource pooling potential of the alliance,the power structure along with the business network the companies are a part of. Theanalysis has shown proof of a need for cooperation if one wish to succeed in the telecommunicationindustry and it has also determined which resources that are deemed to be most important toget in touch with, for our study object, to facilitate its access to the market. Those resources aredefined as a direct channel to the customer, funds/capital and the access to relevant businessnetworks. To get in touch with these lacking resources, three alternative approaches has beenproposed; all of them involving a strategic alliance decision.

Title: Globalization ? Meeting a new market Author: Anna Nubäck Supervisor: Anders Nilsson Institution: School of Management, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola Course: Master in business administration, 15 credits (FED006) Purpose: The purpose of this essay is partly to create an understanding of the decision to establish a branch in Japan and especially to look at if and how the Swedish company in this study has adjusted its corporate culture to suit the Japanese market. Method: Data is collected thru a number of semi constructed interviews. A first telephone interview was followed by an interview made face to face that was also followed up by interviews performed over telephone. E-mails have been used to clear and correct collected data.

Following the implementation of IFRS with yearly impairment tests, the question of correlations and causalities between impairments and investors? decision making is gaining interest in academia. This essay will study the relationship between significant goodwill impairments, communicated on the Nasdaq OMX Stockholm webpage between the years 2005-2009, and the impact those announcements have had on investors? decision making. Furthermore, the causality behind the impairments will be in focus.