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 discussion about organic and fair trade products has been a big issue during the last few years. Despite an extensive knowledge about the environmental problems and a willingness to do something about it, the consumers are not always acting that way. Children do imitate their parents and other adults at an early age, so if the role models do not begin to act, think and dress ethically correct, neither will the children. Three problems have been identified out of the discussion. They relate to the questions of how older school children and parents of younger school children are taking sides regarding the organic/fair trade clothes and how existing trends in the society as well as those in fashion contexts influence their attitudes and consumer behaviour.

Titel: Professionell men personlig ? en publikstudie av läsaresuppfattningar om journalister på Twitter.Författare: Carl MalmerUppdragsgivare: JMG, Göteborgs universitet och doktorand Ulrika Hedman.Hedman skriver nu sin avhandling som fokuserar på hur socialamedier har påverkat journalistiska arbetsmetoder och ianslutning till hennes egen forskning efterlyser hon enpublikstudie kring hur läsare uppfattar journalister på socialamedier.Kurs: Examensarbete i Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap vidGöteborgs universitet, institutionen för journalistik, medier ochkommunikation (JMG).Termin: Höstterminen 2011Handledare: Mathias FärdighSid- och ordantal: 51 sidor exkl. bilagor. 19 397 ord inkl. bilagor.Syfte: Att undersöka läsares uppfattningar och föreställningar omjournalister aktivitet på sociala medier.Metod: Kvalitativa samtalsintervjuer.Material: Fem djupintervjuer med människor som följer journalister påTwitter.Huvudresultat:Resultaten visar att respondenterna menar att möjligheterna till interaktion mellanläsare och journalister har ökat tack vare journalisters aktivitet på Twitter.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to research and analyze how the establishment in new markets of small and medium Swedish fashion companies can be made more efficient from a network perspective. Methodology: The researchers have decided to take a phenomenological standpoint and undertake an exploratory study in order to gain understanding of the phenomenon of market entry and the use of networks. The researchers have chosen to undertake a qualitative study and to adopt an abductive approach. Two ?case companies? have been chosen which are Filippa K and House of Dagmar.

Background: Recently, the Swedish food culture has expanded by leaps and bounds. Interest in food and cooking has taken more space in the Swedish welfare state. Products and icons, such as organic free range chicken or Per Moberg have had greater impact on the way we consume food. Consumers have become increasingly aware of what they should and should not be eating. With an increased interest in food, supply and distribution channels have become increasingly important for the major grocery retailers (Board of Agriculture 2011).

Managing credit risk might be the single most important business area for any commercial bank. The assessment of "good" and "bad" corporate clients is a important task for a creditor. A bad debtor is a corporate client with hardships in meeting the continous claims (interest payments) that a creditor requires. One way of evaluating or separating a "bad" client from a "good" client is to assess the propensity for the client to file for bankruptcy. This thesis examines 226 firms in the Swedsh market in the quest of predicting corporate bankruptcy.

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.

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. The consumer wants it to be simple and easy to use, the people under time pressure seeks product with new technology which can save them time..

In this thesis we have examined Västra Götalandsregionens ways to lobby and network in the European Union. Our aim was to examine which kind of methods the region uses to lobby in a successful way in Brussels. We found that the region uses both formal and informal methods of lobbying to gain advantages in Brussels. We also wanted to locate various networks which the region is involved in to more easily have their interests satisfied. We found that they had a lot of different alliances and that it is necessary to be involved in different networks to have a chance to lobby the EU institutions.

The consumer often chooses the store depending on the quality of the fruit and vegetable department. A study has proven that about half of the purchases in this department are impulsive. This gives the store a good possibility to influence the consumer?s behaviour in the fruit and vegetables department. Compared to other products, like pasta or rice, there are few brands represented in the f & v-department.

We investigate the effects of various types of word-of-mouth (WOM) messages on consumer bahavior. The message is varied along two dimensions where one is valence and the other is whether or not it contains an explicit call for certain behavior or attitude change. We use an experiment in the form of a web-based survey. Five different scenarios were designed to represent neutral, positive, and negative WOM. The latter two came in two different versions - one with a recommendation and one without.

This thesis examines effects that occur when consumers are placed in a negative category by the sender in an internet marketing context. The effects studied are attitude towards the ad, attitude towards the media, sense of being monitored and sense of being categorized. The authors argue that consumers will become increasingly aware of the fundamentals of internet marketing and how advertisements online are being directed towards them. Consumers will thus, to a larger extent than today, analyze advertisements and how they have been individually categorized by the sender. This will affect the way advertisements are perceived.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between space and consumer interaction at WEEKDAY, a contemporary fashion retail store in Malmö, Sweden. The thesis is based on a qualitative case-study and has a social constructionist approach. In order to understand the interaction taking place between consumer and environment we conducted observations guided by Kenneth Burke?s Pentad.The retail servicescape at WEEKDAY is conceived as a metaphorical stage where drama unfolds, analysing and defining the retail space using Kenneth Burke?s pentad of dramatism. We concentrate on the use of two terms of Burke?s pentad, the scene and the act, almost exclusively as we investigate how the scene stimulates the act.

Small scale internal consumer tests provide a company with a cheap way to get valuable information regarding their products advantages and flaws. Therefore the demand for possibilities to do this kind of test has increased. This report is part of a new sensory project at Unilever. It presents a method for sensory comparison of the company?s own products with the corresponding competitor products.