Multi-brand portfolios are characterized by comprising many brands in the same product category. Companies that have chosen to organize their products according to this strategy are facing both possibilities, such as expanding the accessible market size, and challenges such as how to organize the brands, their individual roles and their relation and position to the other brands in the category to maximize revenues. To address these aspects of multi-brand portfolios, I have investigated four product categories where multiple brands are represented at Mölnlycke Health Care, Unilever, Fagerhult and L?Oréal; how the multi-brand portfolios are organized, how the segmentation, positioning and product differentiation are done and what advantages and disadvantages that are associated with this strategy. My conclusions are that multi-brand portfolios can be organized in many different ways and to become successful, they have to be set in relation to the company?s whole brand architecture.

This master thesis work was done by two students at Machine Design at KTH for Lesjöfors Stockholmsfjäder AB. The task was to develop a calculation program for gas springs. The program is going to ease the selection of gas springs for a given case of a lid that should be opened. The program is going to be used internal by sales people at Lesjöfors AB in Sweden and internationally. The program is therefore written in English.The program was developed in Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Express Edition.

The purpose of this report is to come up with possible improvement suggestions to the distribution central at Götene Stål & Verktygs AB (GSV). GSV is a wholesale dealer located in Götene. The company doesn?t produce anything it self, it buys in products and sells them to customers.The distribution central at GSV is the place where the products comes in and gets ready to deliver.To come up with possible improvement suggestions we started with process mapping over the main process and the distribution centre process. The main process here is from the point where the customer gives GSV an order to the point where GSV deliver the order.Our result shows that the major problem in the distribution central at GSV is the big volume differences in the incoming goods.

ProblemThe manufacturing industry is a mature industry where the profit margins are small and the competition is hard. This makes it hard for both manufacturers and resellers to gain market shares and reach reasonable profit margins only by selling products. Therefore Swecon who is reseller for Volvo Construction Equipment tries to find alternative methods and ways to increase their profit. An alternative source of income could be to develop the range of services that are connected to the ground products.PurposeThe purpose of the thesis is to examine how Swecon in southern Sweden can improve their offers of existing services connected to the ground product and investigate the demand of new such services.MethodThis study is based on a qualitative study of five of Swecons local offices and five of Swecons customers. The empirical framework is mostly based on personal interviews but in some cases information was retrieved by using phone interviews.

Hög arbetstillfredsställelse är viktigt för alla anställda, men förutsättningarna för detta varierar beroende på olika faktorer. Personal inom tvångsvård, LVM arbetar nära klienterna, vilket kan påverka personalens upplevda arbetstillfredsställelse. Undersökningens syfte var att undersöka vilka faktorer som påverkar arbetstillfredsställelse hos personal inom tvångsvård. En enkätstudie gjordes med frågeformuläret QPSNordic med 81 deltagare (40 män, 41 kvinnor) samt en intervjustudie med 8 personer (2 män, 6 kvinnor). Resultatet visade att personalen på den öppna avdelningen hade en signifikant högre generell arbetstillfredsställelse än personalen på de låsta avdelningarna, vilket antagligen beror på skillnader i rollförväntningar, men kanske även större personligt utrymme på den öppna avdelningen.

Sammanfattning Syfte Syftet med vår uppsats är att studera vilka faktorer i interaktionen mellan personalen och dess kunder som är nöjdhetsskapande i tjänsteföretag som präglas av; ? Begränsad påverkansmöjlighet på slutprodukt, exempelvis nätverksorganisationer med många ´ inblandade aktörer, ? Få och/eller sporadiska kundkontakter, exempelvis till följd av ett ökat utnyttjande av teknologi och självbetjäning. Utifrån detta ska vi konstruera en egen Kundnöjdhets-skapande interaktionsmodell och jämföra den med befintliga nöjdhetsskapande modeller. Metod Som metod för insamling av vårt empiriska material använder vi oss av Nöjdhetsskapande Handlings-Metod. Det empiriska underlag som ligger till grund för denna uppsats är uteslutande resenärernas egna berättelser om nöjdhetsskapande handlingar vid interaktionsutbyte med tågpersonalen på Kustpilen.

All inclusive travel has become a popular way to travel abroad. When tourists pay for everything in advance their need for contact with the local people will be reduced. The consequences of this can be dissatisfaction from the local people as they are left out and do not share the financial benefits created by tourism. During the purchasing cycle of an all inclusive travel, it is possible that the tour operator can influence a sustainable development.The aim of this paper is to compare how a large and a small tour operator in their purchase of all inclusive holidays interacts with local players to create sustainable development, thereby creating a surplus value to the customer. The hypothesis is that the amount of knowledge and application of this knowledge regarding sustainable development differs in the purchase process between large and small tour operators.This paper was carried out as a case study.

The purpose with this essay is to study how a micro enterprise builds a brand. This because the current situation makes it difficult to stand out from the vast amount of marketing messages available in the market without having an extensive marketing campaign. Small companies do not have the opportunity to put a lot of recourses as money into marketing as the large companies do. Neither do they afford to repair a brand failure.Brand building is a process that constantly is in progress in a company, large or small. To make this process concrete we have chosen to study the four factors; brand awareness, perceived quality, brand associations and brand loyalty.

Elderly patients experiences of palliative care ? a rewireThe purpose of this paper was to study elderly patient?s experience of palliative care with present knowledge as starting point. The questions were; what criteria do the elderly, dying person think is most important to fulfill in palliative care? and how satisfied is the elderly, dying person with the palliative care that are giving to him/her? The information were collected by a data based search trough science magazines and technical literature. Four relevant studies were found; Costello (2001), Heyland (2005), Wilson (1999) and Formiga (2004).

Elderly patients experiences of palliative care ? a rewireThe purpose of this paper was to study elderly patient?s experience of palliative care with present knowledge as starting point. The questions were; what criteria do the elderly, dying person think is most important to fulfill in palliative care? and how satisfied is the elderly, dying person with the palliative care that are giving to him/her? The information were collected by a data based search trough science magazines and technical literature. Four relevant studies were found; Costello (2001), Heyland (2005), Wilson (1999) and Formiga (2004).

The overriding purpose of this graduate thesis is to evaluate if municipalities and county councils can deviate from the legislation of public procurement during procurement of customer choice agreements within the health and social care area. The intention of this Quasi-market is to provide the users with competition in terms of quality rather then the general principal rule of economic value.My conclusion results in a legal situation without rules of general procedure. So far the authorities make their own regulation in the field of customer choice agreements. The problem lies within the authorization of new contractors and their right to make an appeal against resolutions made by the authorities social care divisions.One solution is to legislate within the present law of public procurement. Another way to solve the problem is to create a lex specialis apart from the present public procurement regulation..

Background: Etiquette has become vital in business relationships. In today?s competitive business climate signs indicate that social competence affect whether a business deal is settled or not. This type of competence could be of crucial importance at a first business meeting and it also plays an important role for future business relationships. Business etiquette is therefore, within the world of business, an interesting area to study.Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to clarify what knowledge and understanding companies, listed on the Swedish stock exchange, possess towards business etiquette, their viewpoint on etiquette education and finally to ascertain whether or not those companies perceive business etiquette to be pivotal to success.Methodology: In order to attain our purpose of this essay we found it most suitable to utilize both a quantitative and qualitative research method.

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.

The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the societysystem in Austria has influenced the library system. The aim is toanalyse in what way these influences have changed during thegrowth and development of the public library system and how it isdisplayed in each separate library branch. The focus of myinvestigation has been the municipality public libraries in Vienna,and mainly the three libraries in the third district of the city. Themethod I have used is literature studies, examining and analysingsource material from the internal archive of the public libraries inVienna. I have also used the qualitative interview method in orderto examine the situation in the selected libraries Rabengasse,Erdbergstraße and Fasangasse.As there is no common library law, there are significantdifferences in the library structure in different parts of Austria andeach municipality decides how they want to prioritize the libraries.Since the public libraries of Vienna are well organized together inBüchereien Wien, the library structure in the separate librarybranches is coordinated.

Purpose: To find out in what ways signs of healthier varieties in store, affect and possible change, customer behaviour. Methodology: The study has a positivistic view on the world. The research is conducted by an abductive approach using theory and empirical data alternately. Both quantitative and qualitative methods have been adopted in order to see changes in customer behaviour as well as explain it. Theoretical perspective: The study is based upon theories in the areas of customer behaviour (buying behaviour and decision making) and the store environment that could affect that behaviour (total merchandise process and point of purchase communication).