This thesis focuses on RM and customer relationships and tries to answer two research questions: how firms can retain customers and how to generate profitable customer relationships by using relationship marketing. We conducted case studies on JOB media, a company in Luleå, and Polardörren, a company in Öjebyn, Piteå. Our research has revealed that in many ways our case study companies conform in major ways to the theory in this particular area. However there are differences between how these two firms go about in regard to customer retention and establishing profitable customer relationship. We have discovered that JOB media, which is a service company is more inclined to maintaining close and long-term relationships with its customers.

The aim of this thesis is to analyse and if possible improve the communication, mainly seen from a pedagogical perspective, between the IT company (Nostratic) and their clients in a first meeting. The analysis covers the preparation part, communication during the meetings, the technical terminology used during the meetings as well as the follow up of the meetings. Due to the lack of research within this area and the lack of personal experience on my part, the conducted study has been explorative with the use of qualitative methods. Although my first aim was to put emphisis on the pedagogical part of the communication, I found while conducting the study that there were other areas of higher importance to analyse in order to improve the customer meetings. Unfortunately the company went bankrupt in the middle of my study which resulted in me not beeing able to try out the potential improvements.

Research in the FMCG sector shows that in-store atmosphere has a great impact on customer attitude and behavior. Despite this, there is a lack of knowledge regarding how the atmosphere influences the customer in a fashion store setting. The purpose with this paper is to investigate if and how visible in-store atmospherics influence customer attitude and behavior in a fashion store setting. We also investigate if behavior and attitude is affected by the customer's expertise and the purpose of the visit. The study takes place in two different fashion stores within the same fashion chain.

We are two students of Horticulture management with marketing profile, now doing an extended course in Business Leadership within horticulture and agriculture. During our 2 years of studies we have used the same company once before, and this project is an expansion of a previous piece of work. We decided, in agreement with the company, to use an inquiry for our study. For this we have contacted 290 of the company's already existing customers. The primary purpose of the survey is to analyze the service offered by the company.

Syfte: Vårt syfte med uppsatsen är att med hjälp av enkäter och de kriterier som finns i teorin undersöka hur långt de medverkande företagen har kommit i deras framgång gällande Customer Relationship Management. Metod: Vi har gjort en kvantitativ enkätundersökning där vi har tillfrågat 30 företag i Ronneby. Vi har sedan analyserat detta utifrån diagram som vi har fått fram i Excel. Slutsatser: De flesta företagen i Ronneby är bara i början av CRM och de kan med enkla medel komma mycket längre.

Today endless choices exist for a customer in the grocery store in terms of information, products, brands and prices. Consequently, it is important for retailers and brand owners to gain insights in how they can manage to break through the clutter to reach the customer. Displays that include some kind of motion element are assumed to possess an attention grabbing ability, which is a necessary first step in influencing the customer?s decision making. Therefore we have explored whether so called dynamic displays are efficient in grabbing attention and influencing customer behaviour.

Servicescape is a research area within service management which processes the effect that the environment has on the service experience. The purpose of this essay is to find out how servicescape, with focus on the ?background music?, affects customer behavior in a clothing retail store. Through manipulation of the background music?s tempo the essay aim to explore to what extent this part of the servicescape a) affect the customers approach and avoidance behavior, b) is affected by customers with a hedonic or utilitarian shopping behavior, c) affects pleasure, arousal and dominance perceptions for the customer, and d) how the servicescape is perceived.Key words: Servicescape, approach-avoidance behaviour, pleasure, arousal, dominance, hedonic-utilitarian behaviour..

The aim of our thesis is to study and analyze the components and features a brand should have to provide a solid foundation for brand building. Furthermore, we show how brands can make use of trends in a brand establishment.This paper is written from a qualitative approach. Through both structured and semi structured interviews, we obtained valuable information from our respondents. Our frame of reference and empirical foundation are linked together through an abductive approach which has resulted in our analysis and conclusions.A trend brings with a set of emotional characteristics, which companies can?t influence but must adapt to.

This study examines the eWOM effect, more specifically: how customer reviews effects consumers. The study is based on a modified version of the Regulatory Focus Theory which describes consumer behavior using consumer consumption goals. The purpose of this study was to examine how positive and negative customer review's influence consumers when analyzing products that are equally characterized by two consumption goals: promotion and prevention goals. The authors combined quantitative (questionnaire) and qualitative (focus groups) research methods with the sample selection for both research methods being based on students of Södertörns University. Results indicate that negative customer reviews have a stronger influence on consumers than positive customer reviews when analyzing products that are equally characterized by the promotion goals and prevention goals.

Over the last couple of years the airline business has gone through some turbulent changes, which has meant that customer loyalty has been affected. It?s no longer certain how or why customers are loyal to an airline, although the companies now use more and more complicated loyalty programs to keep their customers.The purpose of this essay has therefore been to examine what makes customers loyal to a service business, and what is the extent of their loyalty.To be able to answer these questions, a survey about costumers loyalty were accomplished. The results we received show that availability is the most significant issue for customers of SAS, and satisfaction is the minimum requirement for the customer. But to be able to attract loyal customers the airline has to offer them more..

In the late 20th century there has been some changes in the public sector. These changes are described as New Public Management. When ideas from the private market is transferred to the public sector, for example to regard citizens as cus-tomer. Central in this paper is the use of term customer in the Swedish public sec-tor. There are two questions in the paper; which possibilities has a disappointed customer to effect the public sector, and what may happen with democracy, the common good, when the citizen becomes a customer?To answer the questions I study two different cases, Svedala kommun and the tax department, Skatteverket.

The purpose of this thesis is to clarify the connection between word-of-mouth and viral marketing, to identify properties of and strategic ways to implement viral marketing and to examine how a company can influence the customers? perception of the brand in social media.This purpose served to answer our research question: How can companies deliberately create viral marketing?To answer this question we based our study on a qualitative method where we conducted eight interviews with different people, all with experience in our research field. We focused on our respondents? own opinions and were more interested in their personal experiences rather than the market in general.In our last chapter our analysis clearly demonstrates that companies can deliberately create viral marketing. This is possible if companies create material that appeal to and that triggers the costumer to share.

The web has a broad affect on the global economy and can among other things be used for web based information systems (WIS). These systems have grown from being used as a market platform to support all activities in the work of an organisation of today. To survive in a turbulent competitive environment, companies must start to cooperate with their customers instead of just collaborate with them. Can an IT-consultant company use a WIS as a tool for keeping in contact with existing customers to attain this cooperation? A WIS could strengthen the relation between customer and supplier and through that have a possibility to increase the customer use since it can facilitate business processes and imply that services can be offered in a new way.

This paper is a degree project on the C-level, 15 points at University West, Department of Business and IT dept. Informatics. This study is about agile methodology and its impact on IT projects. Requirements management is a process within an IT project, where customer has certain requirements that must be met by an IT system. The difference between the traditional and agile development is in the requirements management process and it can cause problems in a project.

The purpose of this thesis is to see how small differences in a store can affect the customer behavior. The changes consist of auditory and visual sensory cues. Since many companies today makes a lot of changes in their styling element, but without knowing how it really affects the customer behavior we thought it would be interesting to see by doing an experiment at IKEA. The study is therefore based on a quantitative research method, where theories have been described and from which hypotheses have been derived to test the theories. The experience took place at IKEA during two weeks where 5732 observations were made.The result from the experiment is that the sensory cue sight makes individuals spend more time in the environment but not creating attention.