Background: As Porter?s diamond (1990) suggested, the business environment highly influences firms? strategies. Today, most of the companies have to decide their strategy depending from a worldwide business environment. Yet, strategy researches and the growing importance of marketing for business success also show that customer dimension must be taken into consideration. On some markets and in certain industries, the offer is much higher than the demand and then, companies need to attract customers.

Being able to predict the future had been an invaluable competitive advantage for any corporation. Forecasting is a vital part of any business, hence a good forecast allows enterprises to invest in a beneficial way. However, there are several ways to prepare forecasts and the forecast methodology can vary. An industry that is dependent on forecasts is the energy industry. By predicting consumers' energy consumption, Swedish energy companies can hedge on the Nordic power market Nord Pool.

Very often the interesting variables are explained by several underlying variables and in statistical analyses it is common to study the relationship between variables and groups of variables. Because of this multivariate analysis is commonly used in both science and industry. There are two problem with both univariate and multivariate analyses. One is when the variables are correlated. The other is when the number variables of exceeds the number of observations which makes the matrices algebra used in the analysis impossible to execute.

Title: Competition for small audit firms ? a qualitative study on possible competitive strategies and how the upcoming changes will influence competition on the audit market    Subject: Auditing Tutor: Margareta Paulsson  Authors: Per Dahlström and Martin Holmberg Purpose: The purpose of this study is to develop an understanding how smaller auditing firms use competitive strategies and why. The result aims to work as a support for owners and leaders of audit firms as they make decisions of how to compete in the future. We would also like to explore how smaller audit firms view the change of the mandatory audit, that is, our intentions are also to examine how they think the consequences on the market will be and their view on its affect on the competition of the market.    Methodology: Our methodological approach was characterized by a hermeneutic approach in order to explain and understand why the smaller audit firms do what they do. Our approach is a combination of inductive and deductive as it allows us to develop an understanding of the subject, then gather our empirical data and from that draw valid conclusions.

Title: Brand loyalty and switching behavior ? A case study of the Swedish ketchup market Authors: Marcus Andersson Mattias Hedblad Tutors: Björn Bergenståhl, (Professor) Department of Food Technology, Engineering and nutrition, Division of Food Technology, Lund University Frans Melin (MBA PhD) Department of Business and administration, Lund University Ragnar Sjögren Johansen, (Marketing Manager Sauces) Procordia Food AB Problem: The market for daily groceries is mature and the competition has become tough. For the manufacturers to be able to grow they have to compete for the existing consumers. The problem is for the manufacturer to protect its consumers and still be able to gain consumers from its competitors. Purpose: Our ambition is to study consumers brand loyalty for daily groceries, with the purpose to understand how loyalty starts, how it can be strengthened, and how it can be broken.

Today there are various methods to use when euthanizing horses. Earlier the use of free or captive bullet was the most common method, but in recent decades this has changed and chemical euthanasia is now considered the most common method. The chemical euthanasia has in Sweden been dominated by the use of barbiturates. Somulose® entered the market in the beginning of the 90?s as an alternative to previous chemical euthanasia.

Scania is among the leading companies in the heavy vehicle industry. Scania also assemble engines for their trucks and buses, as well as to external marine and industrial applications. Wrongly assembled parts leads to quality problems, which makes it important to secure that the assembly is correct. To do this Design For Assembly (DFA) is used to describe how parts should become easier to assemble. Scania?s production unit for engine assembly has had a working method for DFA in the shape of a checklist, which is not used.

På en alltmer konkurrensutsatt marknad har det blivit viktigare för företag att aktivt arbeta med att värna om kundrelationer. Ett vanligt sätt att arbeta med att värna om befintliga kunder och locka nya är genom lojalitetsprogram. Dessa ämnar uppmuntra till återkommande köp genom att erbjuda kunder olika typer av förmåner för att de är kunder hos företaget. Inom cafébranschen används dessa i olika utsträckning då vissa cafékedjor använder dessa och andra inte gör det. Idag ställer konsumenter höga krav på att företag ska arbeta med hållbarhetsfrågor. Därmed är det viktigt för företag som arbetar med detta att kommunicera ut det på lämpligt sätt.

Consumers are facing a wide selection of brands trying to get their attention. An increasing amount of corporations are incorporating non-traditional media in their marketing strategies as an attempt to build relationships with their customers. However, along with the new opportunities to enhance consumer emotions about the brand, social media has brought along new risks for corporations to face. This paper investigates the consequences of different ways of handling such electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) crisis on Twitter. Furthermore, we investigate potential differences depending on the credibility of the source that sent the message.

This study covers reading comprehension and the introduction of the "Tell me" approach as proposed by Chambers (1993) to a group of teachers in a Swedish F-3 school. Five teachers got to use the method for three weeks and were interviewed before and after the experiment to analyze their current ways of working and reactions to using the method in everyday tutoring. The result from the first interview showed that all of the participants had been using methods to improve the children?s reading comprehension prior to the study, but no one had tried the "Tell me" approach. After trying the method throughout the test period, all of the participants were positive about the methodology and showed an interest in continuing the use of it.

Background: To be better able to meet the new competition, companies are seeking new competitive advantages, wich is forcing them to review and, in time, change both working methods and corporate structures. This has led to an increased interest in the development of strategies within the field of Knowledge Management. Objective: The objective of this thesis is to improve understanding of how learning in a company occurs over internal boundaries and to investigate whether individuals need to be motivated in this regard. We also aim to give recommendations as to how this can be developed. Furthermore, we will work out a model that explains the learning process.

Trots att stress tidigt i livet kan leda till ohälsa i vuxenlivet finns det förhållandevis få studier av psykobiologiska aspekter av stress bland ungdomar i Sverige. Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka sambandet mellan självrapporterad stress (n=412) och salivkortisol (n=278) hos friska skolungdomar i årskurs 8 och 9 i två Stockholmsskolor. Vidare undersöktes könsskillnader och skillnader mellan årskurser i självrapporterad stress respektive salivkortisol. Data samlades in via ett självskattningsformulär som mäter generell stress samt genom salivprover tagna vid fem tillfällen under en dag. Resultaten visade på ett signifikant samband mellan självrapporterad stress och salivkortisol (r=0,29) vid en tidpunkt.

Proteins are vital to all cells in the body. They consist of long chains of amino acids. To be able to study the amino acid composition of a protein it is necessary to hydrolyse it, followed by separation and quantification. When the protein is hydrolysed, in this case ß-lactoglobulin, the protein is divided into individual amino acids. The method that traditionally has been used to hydrolyse proteins takes 24-72 hours to complete.

New method for measuring road quality- A statisticalstudy of the relationship between road quality andsocioeconomic development A new tool with implications for road maintenance has the potential to yield statistical data for road quality in a large number of regions. This thesis investigates the possibility to develop a method, from this data, for evaluating the effects of road quality on socioeconomic development.The thesis is essentially divided into two parts. Part one looks to qualitatively establish the link between socioeconomic development and road quality and the second part focuses on how to develop a method for evaluating the effects of road quality on socioeconomic development. A method was devised using categorical data and a multinomial regression model. This method provides a comprehensive overview of the complex relationship between a variety of different variables.

This study is based on an inductive approach where the collected empirical data has been categorized in themes on which we have based the discussion in this paper. Using a qualitative method, nine appropriately selected respondents were questioned with an unstructured interview guide. The transition to a society characterized by interaction has caused a greater part for bilateral communication between consumer and consumer but also between consumer and company. The increased usage and integration on Internet has resulted in so called social media channels. User generated material is published on these media channels which leads to discussions about companies, products and services.