Many companies are currently working to optimize and streamline their processes and production lines to achieve higher profitability. In increasingly competitive markets, companies are working to find solutions to increase the value of their production with such a small use of resources as possible. A tool used to accomplish this is the Lean management system. Lean comes from the production system that Toyota has been developing since the early 1900's, The Toyota Production System (TPS). The Lean philosophy helps companies, by working towards continuous improvement in its operations, to achieve higher customer satisfaction, more efficient production and ultimately higher profitability. Many companies are working to implement Lean in their organization. But there are many who fail to implement a complete change towards Lean.

Business across the Internet has increased in recent years and most companies that are selling trips have increased their sales online. Many companies that are selling trips strive for customers to receive and experience a personal service online. The meeting between the client and a webpage service system on the Internet should work. Service encounters are an essential part of the contact between customer and company and play a big part in how the first impression is perceived by the customer. To understand how a service encounter works, meeting face to face, companies need to understand how customers perceive that meeting.

Syftet med examensarbetet är att utifrån ett kundperspektiv undersöka hur kunder upplever e-tjänster i energibranschen. Examensarbetet har använt webbenkät som datainsamlingsmetod. Då all insamlad data inte användes skedde ett dataurval. Den utvalda datan har sedan analyserats med hjälp av befintlig teori för att finna upplevda problemområden och förbättringsförslag. I den teoretiska referensramen redogörs vad en e-tjänst är samt vilka faktorer som är viktiga vid skapandet av en e-tjänst.

The thesis is aiming to investigate what happens in the customer-service worker interaction when the service worker is wearing religious attributes. In order to operationalize this the Muslim head scarf, hijab, is chosen as stimuli. Reviewing previous research and theory in this field, it is clear that people have a preference for people that they perceive to be like themselves, this is referred to as homophily. Further on, the study investigates the ethnicity dimension of the service worker customer interaction. Theoretical areas of attractiveness and color are also investigated.

AbstractThe banking industry has during later years gone through several technological changes (Svenska Bankföreningen 2014). These big changes have led to several advantages seen both from a customer ? and corporate point of view. Advantages in easier usage, increased availability and more competition have made the banks more cost effective at the same time as the customer is being offered better prices. Even though the advantages seem to weigh over the disadvantages there are still those who thinks that things where ?better in the past?.

In this master thesis outage statistics covering tree years from two distribution grids are analyzed with the purpose to deduce which factors yield outages. The statistics are extensive therefore allowing in-depth analysis of both customer and system related factors. From this starting point and as a model of explanation energy not supplied is studied as the consequence and the measurement of the inconvenience caused by outages. Different methods for calculating energy not supplied are developed and studied and put in comparison to the method used in Network Performance Assessment Model, which is the Swedish frame work for regulating electricity distribution.Analysis of the outage statistics show a relation between the type category of customer and outages that can be deduced to the variance and the density associated with that customer category. Prioritization of different customer categories is elevated also in this aspect.

The manufacturing industry is currently in a short-term downturn while the competition is increasing. The result of this is that companies must find new ways to bring out their products. Traditional competitive strategies, such as low pricing, is not sufficient today as the customer is inquiring something more than just a good product. Higher demands are presented on an accurate, well functional, communication between customer and companies, as this has become an important strategic factor in achieving long-term profitability.The aim of this independent project was to analyze and evaluate the communication process between a company and its sales companies.In order to illustrate this process, a case study was carried out at Alfa Laval, their sales companies and employees at their distribution center in Tumba. In order to see the differences in attitudes between the management, the sales companies and the employees regarding communication and involvement a gap analysis were used.The theoretical part of the study considers theories about business mission, communication, involvement, quality and creating value.The result showed that a smaller gap exists between the sales companies and the management while a slightly larger one exists between the employees and the management.

Background: Performance measurement as a management control tool has received considerable academic attention. As the number of inter-organisational relationships, such as customer-supplier relationships, increases, there is a new scope for performance measurement as a management control tool. In order for a company to assess the effectiveness of its supplier relationships it has to define, measure and evaluate variables that are critical for the success of the relationship. The role of management control, and thereby of performance measurement, has increasingly been discussed in theory. However, empirical research in this area is still somewhat limited.

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is a genre of computerized systems which allows system development corporations to efficiently and more easily manage, maintain and handle the applications lifecycle. These ALM systems have a wide variety of tools which can be integrated to enable and support collaborative work, while they act at the core of the organisation. Todays ALM systems support flexible system development methods throughout the entire development process. This paper focuses on a case-study of a Swedish business- and technology corporation and their use of two ALM systems with an aim to unravel the differences between these systems and their functionality to serve as a basis for decision making regarding their utilization of best practice with their ALM-Systems. Meanwhile we studied their approach to ALM systems to see if they were using them according to the initial idea of ALM systems.

Abstract?Understand the customers value in use ? A multiple case study of three industrial companies? or ?Förstå kundens bruksvärde ? En multipel fallstudie av tre industriella företag? brings out the problem that it is easy to assume, what the value is for the customer.The questions asked for this thesis are:? How does the companies in focus, gather information about what effects the customers value in use?? How do the companies use this information in their business?The purpose is to examine how some industrial companies gather information about the customer?s value in use, on the bases from the five activities from Porter and how they can use this information.Three semi structured interviews were made for this investigation, with representatives from Atlas Copco Rock Drills, IL Recycling and Johnson Pump.The conclusions are that to gather information about the customers value in use, the company must work close with the customer. This information helps the company to improve their products, services and their relationships..

Thesis purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to determine how a technolo-gically enhanced shopping tool, synergizing eCRM tech-niques with personalized promotion at the point-of-sale, can increase customer loyalty by considering perceptions of current grocery retailer loyalty programs in Sweden. Methodology: An exploratory research was undertaken in the light of a qualitative method collecting primary data through focus group interviews. Theoretical perspective: The major considerations regarding theoretical aspects, for this thesis, can be addressed by Behavioral/Attitudinal loyalty and Relevance of Promotion. Empirical data: The empirical data, in regards to primary data, was ga-thered based on four focus group interviews. Conclusion: The conclusions of the thesis imply, that in order to make a loyalty program successful, it needs to firstly be conven-ient for the customer; easy to join, and provide an easy and time efficient display at the point-of-sale.

Title: The customer?s contribution to the innovation-process ? a study of using customers to discover latent needs. Level: Final assignment for Bachelor Degree in Business Administration Author: Robert Klein Supervisor: Agneta Sundström Date: 2014-06 Aim: The purpose of this study is to gain enhanced understanding of what knowledge costumers contribute with in an innovation-process lead by a producer of goods, and how that knowledge is used to fulfill latent needs. The area of research has formerly described which results customer-involvement lead to, but have been scarce in describing how results are produced. Method: From a qualitative onset, a case-study collecting data through observations and interviews capturing customer knowledge contributions, and producer use of fetched knowledge has been conducted. Data has been analyzed using a grounded theory approach. Results have been processed in several steps in which material has been categorized and enriched continuously. Result & Conclusions: Customer-knowledge is broken down into market-knowledge, everyday-knowledge, and specialist-knowledge, which all are significant to a producer of goods.

Mobile TV ? is the introduction on the Swedish market about content and customer relationship? This study explores and defines key factors of decisive importance for the introduction of mobile TV in Sweden, using the TAIDA model. In order to summarize and analyze the factors, four interviews with key actors have been carried out. The answers have been compared to generate the two different criteria that are used for presenting four different scenarios. The purpose of the study is to constitute data in the decision making process.

Title: The customer?s contribution to the innovation-process ? a study of using customers to discover latent needs. Level: Final assignment for Bachelor Degree in Business Administration Author: Robert Klein Supervisor: Agneta Sundström Date: 2014-06 Aim: The purpose of this study is to gain enhanced understanding of what knowledge costumers contribute with in an innovation-process lead by a producer of goods, and how that knowledge is used to fulfill latent needs. The area of research has formerly described which results customer-involvement lead to, but have been scarce in describing how results are produced. Method: From a qualitative onset, a case-study collecting data through observations and interviews capturing customer knowledge contributions, and producer use of fetched knowledge has been conducted. Data has been analyzed using a grounded theory approach. Results have been processed in several steps in which material has been categorized and enriched continuously. Result & Conclusions: Customer-knowledge is broken down into market-knowledge, everyday-knowledge, and specialist-knowledge, which all are significant to a producer of goods.

Due to the harsh competition among Swedish food retailers, in-store marketing is a crucial component in the stores marketing strategy. In an attempt to differentiate among its competitors, COOP Sweden has begun to use concave store shelves. Although the food retailing industry is one of the most studied, no research has been conducted on the concave store shelves. The objective of this study is to describe how these shelves effect the customer perception of the assortment, their experience of the store environment and their buying behavior. An S-O-R framework is used as an overall basis in order to outline the effects investigated in this paper.