Our common future involves many important challenges. People and nature need to improve the relationship in order to reach an ecologically sustainable development. In a society where consumption of products steadily increases, the consumer awareness about social and environmental issues connected to the products becomes an importent factor. More and more companies choose to work more actively with these issues and more and more products get labelled by some of the eco labelling organisations. From the cradle to the gate means that a study has been done on a part of a products life cycle.

The purpose of this thesis is to outline an appropriate model in order for companies to successfully act and compete physically as wholesalers at the same time as acting on the virtual market by selling directly to the end consumer. The approach of this thesis is hermeneutical and abductive with elements of hypothetically deductive approach. Our research has a qualitative research strategy based on case studies and interviews as well as on secondary data. Interviews were conducted with the case company JaymJay Wear AB as well as with other companies, so called mini cases. The secondary data consists mainly of textbooks, web sites and journals.

A challenge faced by marketers is to make their products stand out in today's cluttered marketplace. Recently, a new approach to attract attention has been observed - brands communicating their products by making fun of other brands. This way of parodying a competitor, or even an unrelated brand, is a risky but potentially effective way to increase attention. Brand parodies walk a fine line between being humorous and clever, or coming off as offensive. Furthermore, parodying another trademark poses legal considerations.

Objektet för min studie är Pow-Wow, en grupp som arbetar mot rasism och mobbning på en svensk grundskola. Syftet med uppsatsen är att genom en kvalitativ undersökning titta närmare på hur Pow-Wow, har startats, genomförts och utvecklats. Utgångspunkten är att liknande grupper som arbetar mot rasism är sällsynta i svenska skolor. Därför är det speciellt intressant att titta närmare på hur det kommer sig att Pow-Wow startades på skolan och varför verksamheten har kunnat överleva så länge. För att kunna besvara dessa frågor har jag intervjuat skolans nuvarande rektor, skolans före detta rektor, de två lärare som arbetar med Pow-Wow och en elev som var med under Pow-Wows första år.

The purpose of this thesis has been to explore in what ways Franz Kafka?s ?The Metamorphosis? can be read as a story of gender. By bringing together Judith Butler?s theory of materialization and Lennard J. Davis?s crip theory I have spoken of Dismodernity as the domain of abject bodies that have been repudiated by (post)modern societies as untintelligible and dysfunctional.

Floor signs in stores have become a more common phenomenon during past years. The problem is that the knowledge about these signs is limited and the actual effects are unknown. This lack of knowledge can have a negative impact on store performance and marketing efforts. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of floor signs on consumer attitude and behaviour. The study was conducted in two grocery stores, where the movement pattern of 39 501 customers was recorded over a four week period.

The aim of this study is to provide an investigation of an ?old? political phenomenon that over the recent years has enjoyed a considerable revival across Europe. This study about nationalism is mainly based on empirical second hand source material from literature and articles providing us with both a historical as well as a contemporary insight in this ideology. This study shows us the complexity and the difficulties that the academia is facing regarding nationalism due to the dynamic nature of the ideology, in the sense that it simply means different things to different peoples in different cultures across different points in time. The study is conducted by using a phenomenological, qualitative and inductive method of gathering and interpreting information.  A handful of books have formed the foundation through the gathering of relevant empirical information, along with articles from both scientific publications as well as the mainstream media. The data have been studied and laid out to make key points regarding nationalism and the theory behind it clear for the reader.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the educational opportunities that exist within hip hop music, i.e. to highlight the possible strengths and opportunities in informal learning. The aim was to answer the following questions:In what way do young people acquire knowledge through music?How can hip hop music affect language learning / vocabulary?How can hip hop motivate and support young people in school?The study was based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with six youths, three hip hop directors and a well-known researcher who has investigated that Hip Hop pedagogy.The results show that there are many benefits of learning that takes place in the context of hip hop music; from my informants? statements one can accordingly see the role of hip hop music plays in the absorption of knowledge. The conclusion is that hip hop music can lead to alternative learning about politics and society, as the music often deals with various social conditions and policy issues.

This essay attempts to examine the discourse of the Sweden democrats in relation to thevalue system of the Swedish national school.To analyse the political texts I use discourse analysis and especially the method and approachconducted by Judith Lee Bacchi. Bacchi focuses on the construction of a problem in variouspolitical discourses. When performing this kind of analysis the main question is (accordingto Bacchi): ?What is the problem represented to be??I find that the Sweden democrats construct the ?migration politics? and the ?multiculturalpolitics? that is guiding the society as the cause of most problems in our society. To solvethe ?problems? they promote a nationalistic and a cultural racist discourse especiallypinpointing the ?Muslims? as being a problem.Since the Sweden democrats are striving to implement their discourse in the society andschool, and since their discourse already are reproduced by solar students in the classroom,I find it important to examine the essence of their particular discourse and contrast it withthe current value system of the Swedish schools.I don´t find the nationalistic and racist discourse of the Sweden democrats to correspond tothe value system of the Swedish school, mainly due to their strive to create alienation, andby labeling individuals in a reductive manner, instead of using apparent differences as asource for democratic discussions in the classroom.

The concept of brand equity emerged inthe eightiesto justify the long term value of marketing investments. Brand equity signify the value that a brand adds to a product and is the result of the marketing of a brand. One of the most widely used strategies to enhance brand equity is to do a brand extension, which means that a firm uses an established brand to introduce a new product to the market. At worst, a failed brand extension can damage the brand equity, which Vinjamuri (2008) claims that the brand Axe is currently in danger of doing. This January Axe launched an extention including products for both men and women for the first time and Vinjamuri claims that this can disappoint Axe´s former target group (men between 14 and 27 years old) (Newman, 2012). In this thesis Axe´s brand equity among the extensions target group (men and women, age 14 to 27) in Sweden is studied to find out if the brand extension is likely to affect the brand equity in the target group.

Det finns både nationella och internationella lagar och överenskommelser som ligger till grund för stridskrafters användande. Det finns också politiska styrningar från regering och riksdag om hur verksamhet ska bedrivas i form utav handlingsregler, som ligger till grund för Försvarsmaktens Rules of Engagement. Det finns alltså två dimensioner som Rules of Engagement kan reflektera: en politisk och en legal.Syftet med detta arbete är att synliggöra vilka begränsningar och möjligheter sampelet mellan politiska intressen och rättsliga grunder sätter på den taktiska handlingsfriheten. Frågeställningarna har besvarats utifrån en fallstudie på ubåt 137 grundstöttning utanför Karlskrona. Som teoretiskt verktyg för att möjliggöra analys har begreppet taktisk handlingsfrihet använts.Resultatet av denna uppsats är att den legala dimensionen är från början redan given, förankrade i sedvänja, traktat och internationella överenskommelser.

This study was made in collaboration between Umeå University and Västerbotten sportsfederation. The study was aimed to find out how the municipalities are working with variousissues in the sports field. A subject of interest for this study was to see if the municipalitieswere implementing strategies in the sports field on determined goals by using policydocuments. Our study focused mostly on kids and youth that participate in organized sports inVästerbotten. Other aspects of interest in the study were economics in sports, how youthsports should be organized, and segregation in sports due to financial factors.

This thesis examines art exhibitions, literature events and music events in public libraries in Sweden. The aim is to study which event occurs most in the libraries in Sweden. I also examine who takes responsibility for the events, who the libraries engage, how much the events cost, and how often the libraries have the events. I also study Swedish cultural politics in purpose to see if the libraries follow the aims and directions decided by the Swedish government. One aim of the Swedish culture politic is to give every citizen in Sweden the same possibility to experience culture, no matter where they live.

This study is based on an ongoing debate regarding the Stockholm Stock Exchange, which centers around the possible abolition of quarterly reports. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this debate by examining how the relationship between financial reports and stock price correlates. The study's methodological approach is based on the Capital Market Research frame-work in which an ERC model and an extended model are used to measure the relationship. Three hypotheses were formed to categorize the direction of the study, these categorizations treats the differences in impact between quarterly and annual reports on stock price, as well as differences in impact as a casual effect of company size and seasonal sensitivity. The results of the study show that quarterly reports have a stronger impact on the share price than annual reports.

During the last years a discussion has emerged around problems with Swedish state boards trying to influence the public opinion and even political bodies through different kind of information efforts. Several observers inside and outside the academy have studied how state boards increasingly use information as an instrument and also how political bodies increasingly have given such instructions to state boards. This essay put those studies into the context of both information political history and previous theoretical interpretations in that field of research.The analytical tool consists of four ideal typical ways ('state opinions') to arrange relations between the state and the citizen. Some critics focus on problems with too much political steering and how political majorities uses state boards to spread ideological propaganda. Others highlight problems with autonomy and bureaucratic organizations taking initiatives by themselves to spread normative information.