After the deregulation of the Swedish pharmacy market customers can be lost due to stock-outs. Optimization of pharmacy inventory levels has thus become increasingly important. To minimize inventory costs while considering the cost of shortages the latter must be estimated. However, the shortage cost is very difficult to compute. Thus, the aim of this paper is to estimate the pharmacy-specific shortage cost parameter and its relation to other inventory costs.

This report is the result of a master thesis carried out by the author, student at the Royal Instituteof Technology(KTH). The task was performed as a product development process at a companycalled Ameibo AB, located in Stockholm. It is the final task of the studies at the Master'sprogramme Design and Product Realization. The report is structured in a chronological order anddescribes the methods used, the implementation of these methods and a presentation of theresults given from these studies.Ameibo is a company located in Stockholm, distributing films on the internet. The aim of thismaster thesis was to investigate the possibilities of entering the market for portable devices.

Today a lot of consumer and media interest lie in food production. Food is something everyone of us has a relationship to hence foodstuff and their making is a topic of current interest.Cattle?s rearing is one of many factors that have begun to play a bigger role when consumersare selecting beef from the shops? meat counters. This may well be a result of productdiversification and greater investments towards marketing. Many cattle rearers considerseveral grounds for added values being linked to their products and consumers are becomingmore aware of these primary sector related added values.

Abstract The growth of supra-national organizations, such as the European Union, has been a recent trend in today?s global environment, which has challenged traditional marketing concepts and product cues. One such cue that is significantly challenged is the 'origin cue'. An origin cue is conceived to be a socially constructed notion that consumers use to discern where goods come from and to accordingly evaluate products with. The origin cue is often predominantly materialized in the public sphere by a 'made in' labelling scheme.

The market of electronic commerce is under constant growth and change. New technology makes it possible for the consumer to obtain digital products in a quick and easy manner. Record companies adjust more and more to this ever changing environment. The purpose of this thesis was to evaluate how Swedish retailers of MP3 work with bundling strategies. A case study was conducted on two Swedish retailers, CDON and Homedownloads.

In June 2013 a debate concerning the consumers? right to a label of origin on food packages was held in the Swedish parliament (www, Riksdagen, 2014). The debate was sparked by some food scandals where labelling was falsely used, claiming something that was not true ? the horse-meat scandal, frozen strawberries infected by Hepatitis A, pork sold as beef, etc. These cases were not only wrong in terms of food safety, but also fraudulent and threating consumers? right to fair origin labelling.

Background: In the martial art of Muay Thai, techniques are used with hands, elbows, knees and kicks. The contestants are divided into different weight classes and experience levels. The Swedish martial arts association has decided that techniques with elbow are not allowed in B-class. Why is it so?Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate whether the martial arts delegation decision to restrict techniques with elbows to the head in the B-class is justified.

In this essay we have approached the problem with retailer brands that copy marketing leaders to get consumers attention in the storeshelf. We have sought to explore how much a designed package would change the consumers opinion of a brand and if this effect is different depending on if the brand is a retailer brand or a market leader. Also we sought to find if this effect would be greater with a salient color on the package. We made a quantitative study and with regression analysis we found that a designed package did have effect on the consumers opinion of the brand, and that the design with the salient color made the biggest effect..

The aim of the study is to describe and analyze bank officials' views about what auditors will do. The main motivation comes from the government?s proposals that the audit duty will be abolished and it can lead to that bank officials in a bigger extent can influence the audit?s formulation. It can also lead to that a consumer audit becomes reality. The study covers a sample of 302 bank officials where 153 have participated through a survey questionnaire.

Marketing communications have earlier been conducted via traditional channels. Today companies have discovered the possibility of doing much of their marketing communication in cooperation with the web at relatively low cost. This development has led to the ability for small businesses to compete with large companies independent of geographic location. The purpose with this thesis was to examine how small businesses use their website in marketing communications with their customers in the consumer market. In order to reach this purpose we have conducted interviews with five small businesses in different business trade with varying degrees of website usage, located in Piteå and Luleå.

Background: The growth of the venture capital industry has given birth to new relations between investors and entrepreneurial firms. Venture capital firms are by definition investors serving as an active partner which implies a deeper relation between investors and entrepreneurs than has been the case previously. This new situation leads to a number of questions. Do venture capitalists really act as active partners with a long term interest in the venture? Do they add any value besides capital? How important is their influence in the portfolio company's decision making process? Purpose: The purpose of this study is to give a deeper understanding of the relation between venture capital firms and IT companies in the start-up phase.

GCM is a product information management system which handles data for consumer packaged goods. GCM was developed during the middle of the nineties and was acquired by Prevas AB in 2004. The GCM application relies on the services provided by the organization GS1, which supplies global specifications and validations for trade items across several sectors. GCM is updated regularly due to the frequent changes in specifications from GS1. However, the overall graphical user interface design has not been redesigned during these years.This dissertation studies possible improvements for the webpage that handles product data in GCM.

This study is made in cooperation with the insurance company, Skandia. Skandia is a part of Old Mutual group?s Nordic division and is one of Swedens largest insurance companies with a total of 1.9 million customers. The company offers traditional life assurance, unit-linked insurance, private healthcare insurance and banking services. Insurance companies such as Skandia operate in a highly competitive environment.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and investigate how the consumer-oriented commerce can be developed and integrated to the brand Västervik.This thesis has a qualitative approach and we have done a case study of the Swedish city Västervik. We have performed interviews, with eight selected respondents who have different backgrounds, but with competence in different problem areas that we investigate in this thesis.We have, in this qualitative thesis, found aspects that Västervik should consider if they want to succeed with an integration of commerce in the brand. We have through a model found common facets that commerce and tourism shares and which Västervik should consider in the process of branding the city.The results of this thesis are presented in chapter six, there we also have featured reappearing tendencies that consider the development of commerce and how the commerce could be integrated in the brand Västervik..

Marketing communications have earlier been conducted via traditional channels. Today companies have discovered the possibility of doing much of their marketing communication in cooperation with the web at relatively low cost. This development has led to the ability for small businesses to compete with large companies independent of geographic location. The purpose with this thesis was to examine how small businesses use their website in marketing communications with their customers in the consumer market. In order to reach this purpose we have conducted interviews with five small businesses in different business trade with varying degrees of website usage, located in Piteå and Luleå.