Background: Once upon a time the most important resources in an economy were tangible goods. Historically, Swedish company culture has been dominated by engineering and techni-cal innovation has been the focal point. Today, Intangible values drive product development and form a company?s differentiation. Intangibles have therefore become the most prominent resources in a company.

For many years, I have tried to understand why students end up in difficulties in mathematics. As a future teacher, it is extremely important to have knowledge of the various factors that leads to difficulties in mathematics. As a teacher it is obvious to meet the students who find mathematics a difficult subject, and, therefore it is necessary to have a broader knowledge of how to respond and support these students. According to Ahlberg, number of students with mathematics difficulties is increasing every year, therefore, it is important to help students and organize a supporting school environment that promotes and encourages learning (Ahlberg 2001, p. 104-105).

The aim of this project is to examine the needs and problems that exists amongst homeless people and to develop a solution that will help them in their everyday life. Since the homeless are a relatively large vulnerable group i Sweden, their everyday lives could be made easier in many ways.A clear definition of the target group is put together to create a good starting point. What state and help orginazations do to help the homelss and the society?s view of the homeless is also relevant and has been documented. Four personal stories have been put together to desicribe cases of clear problems existing in everyday life.Several interesting problems has been defined from the research and acceptance in the communtiy, desire to be seen and heard and a lack of confidence were the main needs.

The aim of this thesis is to get an idea of how service companies set their prices. The method used was a case study approach, which was conducted at three real estate companies. The study showed that when setting their prices, the main aspect is their own costs. However, we have found that several other aspects play a big role when setting prices on services in real estate business such as individual customer behaviour and market competition. We have also found that the real estate companies charge very similar prices.

The issue of honour related problems in schools are important social problems in Sweden. It?s not unusual that honour related problem has had serious consequences before any action has been inserted by society. Sometimes the efforts made by society have had no impact whatsoever due to them being inserted too late. We can conclude based on our literature and our interviews, the importance of prevention.

Since energy simulations are used to verify that projected residential buildings will reach the current energy requirements it is important that the results are reliable.This report investigates the extent of uncertainty in energy simulations, estimates the causes of the uncertainty and its economic and environmental consequences.The method used in this report is based on three validation methods; empirical validation, analytical validation and comparative validation. The analysis was carried out for five multi-family dwellings in Uppsala with installed meters for energy measurements. One of these objects, Klockarlunden, was studied in more detail than the others.The results show that the deviations are between 10 and 29% for the studied objects, which means that the uncertainty is estimated to be at least 29%. All simulations underestimate the buildings need of energy. The simulation for Klockarlunden can predict the energy consumption to be within the range of 46-98 kWh/m2year with 90% confidence level based on the current uncertainty.

The aim of this thesis was to study elderly people?s experiences of and approach to their usage of home care services with tax deduction. The aim was also to describe how elderly people reason about their underlying motives of using home care service with tax deduction. The study is based on six qualitative interviews with people between the ages of 65 and 80, living in Nacka, Sweden. This thesis is a collaboration with Stiftelsen Stockholms la?ns A?ldrecentrum/ Stockholm Gerontology Center and part of their follow up study concerning simplified administration for elderly people applying for home care services in Nacka.

Sisyla is a joint project between the counties of Skåne, Blekinge, Jönköping, Kronobergand Kalmar in Sweden. A geographic database has been built with the aim to study theservice situation of the area. The main purpose of this thesis is to find a method toinvestigate the quality of the Sisyla database and to apply it. The method is adjusted tothe standard ISO 19114. The agreement between the database and reality was studied ina test sample.

The interest for power and energy measurement has greatly raised with todays increasing electricity prices and enviromental awareness. In the search for energy efficient solutions, the measurements are more complex due to increasing of non linear components. Harmonics and non sinusoidal voltages put high demands on sampling and filtering. Meanwhile, the price must be controlled so the customer still will find it interesting to invest in smaller plants. ITT W&WW asks for a robust, heat resistant power meter with compact dimensions to allow mounting inside the casing of a pump.

This study is a quantitative study designed to examine whether training in health issues may have contributed to the increase in head managers' psychological capital (PsyCap). Construction consists of the following components: self confidence, hope, optimism and resilience. A high PsyCap considered beneficial in organizational change and steer towards the positive development and helps individuals in stressful situations. The results show an increase of characteristics such as hope and optimism among managers (N = 15) who have undergone training in health issues compared with managers who have not undergone training. However, the tests show no significant difference in head managers' attitudes to health breaks, not the severity of granting health breaks in the groups as a result of training.

The purpose of this study was to illustrate a parental perspective of children´s participation and quality of live through personal assistance. Important aspects of parents' experiences were highlighted based on how they experienced participation and quality of life for their children. We chose to use a qualitative approach in the form of four individual interviews with parents from different municipalities in central Sweden. The study was conducted with a narrative approach in which we used a holistic perspective. Parents' experiences were highlighted over time to create a complete picture.

Photography has a big role in information sharing today. Especially in the hotel industry where it is the closest thing a customer can get to the product that is being sold. This study intends to find out how you can make use of rhetorical models and techniques of photography to enhance the communication skills of photos of hotel rooms. The main focus was to understand the difference between informative and emotional photographs and what consumers themselves focus on when choosing a hotel, and also how to use the collected information to create a larger buying interest through hotel photography. Using previous research work and quantitative data collection method, we have concluded that the informational and emotional photography methods have obvious differences but also many similarities, and are most effective used together and that the hotel consumer is more aware of the images influence then we assumed..

Our purpose with this research is to highlight that there is a scope for increased value creation in the experience room during concerts, and how value-enhancing strategies can be a competitive advantage for different venues. In our investigation of this we have worded the following research question: How is the perceived customer value affected during a concert in the experience room and its physical environment? With the background in this question we have identified three key concepts that we believe are the influence of the total concert experience which are; sensory experiences, interaction and identity. From these concepts we have drafted a number of propositions to test the reality by our empirical data collection. .

Since the middle of the 1980´s the Swedish bank market has experienced a change concerning structure and pressure of competition. Before the year 1985, the market was characterized as a market with few operators but have changed to a market with many operators and seen as one of the most intense in Europe where the four major banks; Nordea, Handelsbanken, SEB and Föreningssparbanken together have a strong position. Their market share has recently decreased, mostly for the benefit of foreign banks and niche banks. The Swedish market has experienced difficulties in generating profits which mostly depends on new establishments that have increased the pressure on competition, a low growth as well as weakened customer relations. The development has resulted in a growing importance of market segmentation, mainly by the fact that costumers have become more disloyal as a result of the increased competition.Students are a market segment of interest for the financial market, mainly because of the expectations of their positive financial situation in the future.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine whether Swedish, Internet-based travel agencies, acting on a consumer market are working towards creating added value for their customers. If that is the case, how and why do they use such a mode of operation.The theoretical framework was based on Grönroos´ ?Augmented service offering?, which treats added value as an addition to the core service. The services offered on five of the larger companies´ websites on the market were examined and 3 representatives of the five companies were interviewed.The study shows that 2 of the examined companies did not produce any added value, while 3 of the companies did produce added value for the customer. The added value was generated through packaging of core-, facilitating- and supporting services for the purpose of differentiating the company towards competitors and generating service fees..