Due to a growing interest in communication in today?s society the demand for equipment that is used in communication networks increases while the competition between companies that produce this equipment grows. To meet the increasing demand and at the same time having a competitive product development many companies use some effective product design, such as the modular product design. When a modular product design is used it?s good to compare different module configurations for a certain product and to simplify these comparisons some tool can be used.

The use of entertainment in various kinds of business events has recently increased in popularity among Swedish firms. Often, stand-up comedians are hired to entertain the employees or customers during these happenings. Generally, the firm invests a considerable amount of money in this service and is furthermore willing to pay a premium for a famous comedian. Although the market for this type of service is fairly large, the knowledge of the motives behind the investments is yet limited.A grounded theory study is carried out exploring the purpose of the entertainment as well as the rationales behind the preference for a famous comedian over an unknown. Two general types of contexts (internal and external) are identified and a number of objectives related to each type are distinguished.

This study is a first attempt to try to understand what the variables could be that make the person responsible for the grave sign up for grave gardening services by the church or to maintain the grave by him- or herself. There has been almost no research done within this subject. This study has been made by a qualitative research method and interviews have been performed with both persons responsible for the grave who have gardening services made by the church and with those who maintain the grave by themselves. The characteristics that are affecting consumer behaviour and the buyer decision process are presented in the theoretical part of this study. That is done so it can be seen if a comparison between the results of the study and the basic theoretical concept is possible, resulting in an understanding of how the costumers think and argue about this question.

Genom vår undersökning ville vi ta reda på om SALSA, Vodafones data warehouse tillgodoser användarnas informationsbehov. Som stöd för vår analys jämförde vi befintliga teorier inom områdena information samt data warehouse, med tillämpning i verkligheten genom vårt referensföretag. Undersökningen har utförts genom skriftliga intervjuer samt enkäter, där två olika undersökningsgrupper ingått. Den ena gruppen har utgjorts av SALSAs utvecklare och den andra av SALSAs användare. Den hypotes som vi arbetat med är "SALSA tillgodoser användarnas informationsbehov" med underfrågorna "Vilka krav kan användarna rimligen ställa på SALSA?", "Vilken information saknar användarna att få fram från SALSA?", "Vilka förslag på förbättringar gällande SALSA har användarna?" samt "Räcker användarforum för att framföra användarnas synpunkter på SALSA?". Då vi analyserat och bearbetat materialet från enkätundersökningen samt besvarat våra frågeställningar, har vi verifierat vår hypotes.

The work with this paper began with a belief that the permission aspect plays acrucial part when it comes to consumers perceptions of marketing through E-mailand SMS - especially when it comes to advertising that is received through a devicethat the consumer has a strong personal relationship with. The questions to beinvestigated was: "How do users of computers and mobile phones feel aboutadvertisement received through E-mail and SMS?" and "In what way does the usersrelationship to the computer or mobile phone affect how they feel about theadvertisement?". The study was based on a questionnaire as well as an analysis of theresponses in combination with previous research on the subject.The results showed that the majority of the respondents from this papers surveywere found to have a negative attitude toward advertisement through both E-mail andSMS. However, the respondents turned out to have a slightly higher tolerance foradvertisement through E-mail than towards advertisement through SMS.

Problem formulation: What factors influence the customer?s choice of bank? How is the customer loyalty towards the customer?s current bank?Purpose: The main purpose is to see what factors are definitive to the customer?s choice of bank and how strong the customer loyalty is towards the bank. It is also interesting to see whether customers who are satisfied with their current bank may still consider switching to something else.Method: The method is both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection, with main focus on a quantitative survey. The qualitative part consists of interviews with a smaller focus group to receive a deeper insight of the consumer?s thoughts regarding the main purpose and problem formulations.Conclusion: The main factor when choosing a bank is recommendations from family or friends.

Background: The importance of creativity and innovation is frequently stressed in modern literature on management. The significance of innovation gives entrepreneurs the reason to prior to the commencement of a relationship with a venture capitalist, obtain necessary insights regarding the influences such a relationship may have, in terms of innovation. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to scrutinise the influence of venture capital firms on their portfolio companies regarding their ability to be innovative. Delimitations: The intent is to study the impact of a venture capitalist from the viewpoint of its portfolio companies. In other words, what the portfolio companies have perceived as changes is our main area of concern, rather than what the venture capitalist has perceived as change.

To identify and evaluate apple cultivars is not an easy task, since the taste and appearances of the fruit are affected by where the apple tree grows. At the Balsgård new apple gene bank there is a unique and interesting collection of over 260 different cultivars from all over the world. To find out if these cultivars are consistent with previously published descriptions, the fruit was evaluated for some of the cultivars. Among the evaluated cultivars some were selected that could be suitable for cultivation and/or fruit breeding. A few cultivars were in addition analyzed at a consumer evaluation at the Kivik apple market where visitors could vote for the most beautiful apple and the best taste.

Almost every day newspapers cover companies and brands in crisis. This should worry companies as negative publicity has been shown to have a great influence on consumer perceptions on brands. In addition, brand crises have been shown to be contagious, meaning that they also affect consumers? views on other similar brands. This study aims to investigate spill-over effects of one brand crisis to another within a product category.

Sweden is known to be one of the world?s most equal countries. Nevertheless, out  of  Sweden?s 262 listed companies, only seven  of  them  has  a  female  president, which  is  equal  to  3,4  percent. To  counteract  these  numbers  there  are  several  possibilities.  One  arrangement  that  is  highly  controversial     is  affirmative  actions.  But  there  are  other  options,  for  instance  more  and  more female  networks  are  starting  to  rise  and  many  of  them  also  offers  a  mentoring  program  where  the  mentee  gets  the  opportunity  to  learn  from  someone  with  more  experience.The  purpose  of  this  study  is  to  examine  what  difference  the  female  network  Q80,  with  focus  on  its  mentoring  program,  is  doing  for  the  mentee.  As  an  underlying  purpose  the  study  is  also  examining  what  visions  and  attitudes  the  management  and  the  mentors  is  communicating  within  Q80.  The  focus  is  mainly  on  the  visions  of  Q80,  menas  mentors  and  business  exceeding mentorship.  A  survey  has  been  carried  out  among  mentees  from  three  different  seats of mentoring  programs  where  they  have  answered  19  different  questions  regarding  their  time  as  a  mentee.  Furthermore  interviews  have  taken  place  with the management  of Q80  and  two  mentors.  The  results  are  analyzed  based  on  theories  about  gender,  women  in   management,  leadership,  mentoring  program  and  organizational structure.  The  result  shows  that  Q80i  as  a  source  of  inspiration  and  a  support  for  the  category  of  "career  women"  with  its  core  mission  to  strengthen  the  participation of  individuals  on  a  personal  level  more than  to  work  to  even  out  the  gap  in  the  Swedish  labor market.

The purpose of this study is to analyse how the local governments have implanted the new public health policy, which Sweden adopted in April 2003. The new health policy stakes out a new direction for national public health policy. Instead of focusing on diseases the new public health policy focus in factors that determine health.Important factors to study are the role of central steering from the central government. The method used is a case study of three Swedish local governments. The main material used is interviews and different policy documents within the area of public health.The conclusion of the study shows that the local governments are fairly satisfied with the steering of public health policy by the central government.

Retail marketing is a field with many different enbranchements. Some of these can be considered relatively well explored, while the lack of knowledge concerning others is almost total. For example, the existing knowledge regardng the possible impact that non-musical sound can have on the customer can be considered non-existent. With this in mind, the intention with the thesis was to closer investigate how non-musical sound can influence the customer's decision process and attitude in and to a grocery store. The authors started out with theories on associative networks and automatic processing.

Store windows, as many earlier research studies indicate, is an important factor of the store atmosphere to attract customers into the store. In this study we have narrowed it down and chosen to focus on how different contexts of the store windows will effect customers' evaluation. The purpose is to find out how the context of high creativity and low creativity combined with different time aspect in store windows will affect store image, attitude, entering decisions and purchase intention toward the store. The results are based on a quantitative study where we did an experiment and a field study. The result shows that higher level of creativity is better than lower level of creativity in certain aspects.

The consumer of today is bombarded by an increasing number of commercial messages, which makes it harder and harder for brands to cut through the clutter. Because of this, new methods are developed and introduced to the market every day. One of the most widely discussed of these methods is guerrilla advertising. Even though the method has received numerous praises there are not any academic proofs supporting these arguments. The authors, of this thesis, have examined if guerrilla advertising is more or less effective compared to traditional advertising and what the reasons for the result are.

Luleå kommun är en organisation som länge har jobbat med att kompetensutveckla sin personal och utveckla sitt eget arbete med kompetensutveckling. Då Luleå kommun även är en stor organisation med över 7000 anställda i olika fält så är det även av intresse för kommunen i sig att deras personal håller en hög kompetensnivå. Luleå kommuns strävan efter att utveckla sitt arbete med kompetensutveckling har lett till att de valt att testa nya modeller. En av de modeller som kommunen valt att testats bygger på ett nätverksbaserat verktyg. Testet av verktyget har genomförts av en grupp personalspecialister samt andra organisationer via deltagande i ett projekt kallat CLN (Collaborative Learning Networks).Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur Luleå kommuns personalspecialister har upplevt CLN projektet och det nätverksbaserade verktyget, samt skapa en djupare förståelse till vad ett sådant verktyg kan medföra till kommunens kompetensutvecklingsarbete.