The aim of this paper is to answer three questions about Chuck Palahniuks novel Fight Club. The three questions were chosen because they were widely debated after the release of David Fincher screenplay based on the same book. The questions are: Is the critique on consumerculture offered in Fight Club valid? What does Fight Club say about the relation between man and woman? Can the work be considered fascist? The critique against consumer culture is found valid and not a disguised complaint about the feminization of society. The main female character Marla is vital for Jack as a blueprint for Tyler.

Today, social media is used mostly by people in their private life. However, companies are more and more tapping into the area of social media. To this date, mostly B2C companies have been successful in their social media strategies. This qualitative thesis aims to investigate how B2B companies can benefit from using social media as a means to communicate and build relations with their customers. The medtech industry has been chosen as the object of study.Through depth interviews with people in the medtech industry and social media experts, data has been collected in order to answer the questions of (1) how ready customers in the medtech industry are to receive information through social media and (2) how companies can build the best possible social media strategy.

Some researchers claim that we are witnessing the advancement of becoming a network society, and in spite of the different problems associated with the network form of organization, many cities still choose to engage in different types of networks. On account of that the aim of the study is to examine which expectations Swedish member cities of the network Eurotowns might have, and if their actions in the initial period of engagement in Eurotowns mainly could be explained by ?Logic of Consequentiality? or ?Logic of Appropriateness?.A qualitative research method was used and a major part of the empirical material consists of the information given by the interviewees.Regarding the expectations Swedish member cities have on Eurotowns, the result showed that five main areas could be identified mutual resource exchange, activities, breadth, security and meeting place. The results also showed that the actions of Swedish member cities may vary between ?Logic of Consequentiality?, ?Logic of Appropriateness? or a combination of the both logics.Furthermore the study also provides empirical evidence supporting the previously theoretical criticism expressed regarding the central assumption that the strategic actions of an actor can be regarded as a direct consequence of the mutual resource dependency..

Under de senaste 15 åren har modeindustrin växt och blivit både snabbare och billigare och begreppet fast fashion har etablerats. Fast fashion är en affärsstrategi inom modeindustrin vars mål är att reducera ledtiderna från idé till butik. Strategin syftar till att tillfredsställa kundernas begär av de senaste trenderna på mycket kort tid. Fast fashion branschen kan sägas stå i motsägelse till en hållbar utveckling, då den representerar korta modecykler där kläder tenderar att bli ?slit och släng? varor.

The current trend towards globalisation and democratisation has made the theories of politics in pluralistic societies, and how to make them work, of particular interest and concern. Lijphart's theory of consociational democracy is an important influence in this field. At the same time the importance of civil society in transition studies and democratisation processes has been reinforced over the last thirty years. However, the complex political situation that plural societies face, creates obstacles for a healthy civil society. This thesis is based on a case study of Lebanon, a country with deep ethnic divisions and a government that resembles a consociational democracy.

The aim in the study is to search for a deeper understanding of how parents experience a neurological diagnose of the child and how this affects the parenthood. Parenthood was seen in a systemtheoretical perspective as a social construction. The narrative method was used in two lifestory parentinterviews. The analysis was made from parenthood. The result formed stories about parenthood with children having neuropsyciatric functional disability who even came to be a woman?s struggle.

Could patterns change the way we as consumers feel about a product as it ages and wears down? Why do some products increase their value as they are being worn downand others do not? Could the same affection that increases with your favourite jeans or an old, worn down, scratched and beautiful wooden furniture, be applied on otherproducts with different ability?s and history?The goal was to explore patterns and beautiful aging in products to increase the consumers desire to keep the well used product a little bit longer. Not to prolong the products ?lifetime? from brand new till it?s no longer inhabit their main function, but at that precise momentwhen you as a consumer decides to through it away in favour for a new, updated version. To buy ?new and fresh?.Patterns with different expressions, colouring and size, were explored that increase the value of a product which in this project contained handles and varies of surfaces on casseroles, frying pans, whisks, cutlery etc.

Physical exercise is a trend that continues to grow, especially at the gym, but there are still members that do not use their training card in full. The overall aim of this study was therefore to investigate infrequent member?s experience of their training card. To answer this, focus was on motives to card purchase and perceived opportunities and difficulties of using the training card. The data was collected at IKSU trough a group interview with four managers within the organization, a questionnaire replied by 39 infrequent members and of those 11 individual interviews.

This paper aims to examine how and to what extent, a transition of Sweden according to the principles of Omställning Sverige (Transition towns Sweden), have the potential to contribute to a society with increased happiness.The paper is based on a qualitative textual analysis of the key texts in the Swedish Transition towns movement, Omställning Sverige. In the first part of the study the most important transition principles of Omställning Sverige were identified. Four key principles emerged: An altered view of economics, a spiritual change, a stronger local community and increased awareness. These transition principles were then analyzed through the lens of the scientific fields position on happiness, followed by a summarizing conclusion.The altered view of economics which Omställning Sverige advocates, where sustainability and quality of life are priorities over economic growth, is even necessary to secure our basic physiological needs. Such an economy has also improved conditions for economic stability, high employment and higher efficiency in the sense of happiness promoted in relationship to how many natural resources are used.

Over the last decade, the private insurance market has undergone a stable growth in turnover and growing demand for insurance products in all Member States of the European Union. Therefore, the creation of a single market in insurance will enable consumers to have access to wider choice of insurance products, and insurance companies to gain access to markets in various Member States and compete effectively. The EU legal framework for the insurance industry embraces the Treaty freedoms of services, establishment and capital, the EC Directives and the ECJ case-law. The present thesis identifies numerous factors that hinder the Community insurance market integration and offers possible remedies. The summary of the market obstacles is all-inclusive and reflects the responses to the questionnaires and the Commission surveys.

The study's aim was to examine the professional role of the Special Education Teachers, working with students in socio-emotional difficulties with focus on externalizing behavior. The study is qualitative in nature, based on 10 interviews conducted at four different schools where four Special Education teacher and six teachers were interviewed. The system theoretical perspective was used as a theoretical basis, based on a holistic view of the schools where relationships, interactions and context is of great importance. The Special Education Teacher is a part of the school context and therefore it has been interesting to study how he/she works with socio-emotional difficulties in school activities on organization, group and individual level. The results show that externalizing students becomes a problem in schools today when they influence their surroundings and requires a lot of time regards to needs of both teachers and Special Education Teacher.

Consumer Information Processing (CIP) handlar om hur vi som konsumenter tar till ossoch påverkas av den information som ständigt omger oss vid en beslutssituation. Ämnethar länge varit i fokus för forskning inom marknadsföring då detta naturligtvisintresserar företagen i hög grad. Tidigare forskning hävdar att när vi som konsumentertar till oss av de intryck som omger oss, bearbetas dessa intryck tillsammans med dekunskaper vi har sedan tidigare (bottom-up processing och top-down processing).Studier har visat att information som tilldelas oss kan ha direkt påverkan på våra sinnenoch hur vi upplever en produkt.Denna studie undersökte hur olika typer av tilläggsinformation påverkade konsumentersupplevda smak av vin. Tolv testpersoner studerades i ett experiment bestående av tresteg där olika betyg presenterades på de viner testpersonerna bedömde. Resultatet avstudien visade att kvinnor i högre grad påverkas av negativ tilläggsinformation medanmän i högre grad påverkas av positiv tilläggsinformation..

Companies spend huge amounts on communicating their brand through marketing. Many of these contact areas where the consumer comes in contact with the brand is con-trolled by the company. The brand image is also affected from outside the company. It can be from users, media, blogs etc.Burberry is an example of a company that got in trouble with their brand image after hooligans where associated with their products. If a company with a brand with a strong image is associated whith consumers that are not compatible with the target group the company wants, there is a risk of a negative affect on the brand image.Our purpose is to investigate and describe the phenomenom when a company brandimage is affected by being associated whith consumers not compatable whith, by the company, intended target group.We have chosen a qualitative research where we use a multiple case study.

My essay is an investigation of American Psychos Patrick Bateman. Why is Patrick Batemans identity one so easily described as shallow and superficial? I discuss theese questions from a marxists point of view putting Bateman in the context of Georg Lukács theories of reification. I compare the structure of Patrick Batemans identity with the idea of an reified identity to se how the mechanisms of reification creates the entity that is Patrick Bateman.My conclusion is that one answer to Batemans shallowness is the phenomenon of reification. To get a grasp of how shallowness might be understood I combine the theories of Lukács with Bakhtins idea of the aouthorative discourse.If one look upon reification as an aouthorative discourse and one also presume that human existence is social and verbal the conclusion is that Patrick Bateman cannot exist because of what he is an example of.

To log on to social media has become an obvious part of people's everyday routine. Pictures, videos, opinions, and thoughts are posted and read by people's social networks worldwide. In doing so, the present study chose to examine whether what is posted on social media, as well as what the individuals are exposed to on social media can be related to their motivation and self-esteem. By letting 117 adolescents aged 16-19 answer a questionnaire regarding which social media they are active on, how often they are active there, and what they post on those social medias. By also letting them evaluate how they see themselves, if they compare themselves with others and how motivated they are to physical activity and healthy eating habits, we could see that to those who post pictures, and are exposed to images represent exercise / health on social media have higher self-esteem and driven more by internal motivation to engage physical activity than those who do not.