Sales is the foundation for all commercial business and companies that have the best sales process in conjunction with efficient deliveries will do well in the long run. The author of this report was tasked by the Organisation in South Africa to study new/alternative ways of attracting Swedish companies to South Africa and sell the services of the Organisation to these same companies (defined as the sales process in this report) by analysing how similar international service companies do the same. A benchmarking process has been conducted with four similar service organizations in South Africa to examine how these companies work in comparison to the Organization. Surveys have been used for purposes of this study, as the methodology is well suited to provide the author a view on the opinions, perceptions and experiences of the respondents.The project aimed to develop new methods to attract Swedish companies to South Africa or improve and streamline the existing methods. The aim was also to develop new ways to sell the organization's services to Swedish companies.The study concludes that there is little focus on marketing of services within the Organisation.

The purpose of this study is to examine which factors played an important role in the food price crisis of 2007-2008. Theories used are Microeconomic theory, explaining changes in supply and demand, and Macroeconomic theory, explaining the impact of changes in exchange rate on prices. A theory regarding speculation is also used to explain the impact of speculative activities effects on price. The method used is multiple regression analysis in order to determine the effects which ethanol production, oil price and dollar exchange rate had on the surge in the price of corn, rice and wheat.The data used is in monthly observations during the period 2005-2008. However, other factors are taken into consideration during the study, such as production quantity, stock size, economic growth, speculative activity and population growth.

Swedish public administration has for the last few decades undergone reforms aimed at making it more efficient. A substantial part of these reforms have concerned creating clearer roles for politicians versus officials in the public sector, i.e. giving politicians a responsibility for setting goals and steering activities and public officials the role of implementing them.This study aims to examine one reform following this path that is under implementation in a Swedish public authority; Försäkringskassan, the Social Insurance Agency. The purpose of the reform is to increase the organization?s effectiveness and the rule of law.

Syftet med föreliggande studie var att försöka reda i litteraturen kring två välkända begrepp inom Affective Forecasting nämligen Impact Bias, som innebär att människor har en tendens att överskatta i vilken utsträckning de kommer att uppleva en viss känsla i en framtida situation än vad som senare visar sig vara fallet, och Empathy Gaps, som innebär att människor har en tendens att underskatta i vilken grad känslotillstånd kommer att påverka deras preferenser i en framtida situation samt pröva dessa begrepp i en och samma enkätundersökning. Etthundra sextiotvå studenter, slumpvist uppdelade i två grupper, Känslogrupp och Preferensgrupp, deltog frivilligt i undersökningen. Enkätundersökningen var en mixad design med grupp (känsla kontra preferens) som mellangruppsfaktor och förtest kontra eftertest som inomgruppsfaktor. I studien visade samtliga gruppers resultat i linje med Impact Bias teorin, dvs. att deltagarna i både Känslogrupp och Preferensgrupp skattade lägre i eftertest (actual) än pretest (forecasting).

Syfte: Att studera vilka faktorer kunder tycker är viktiga vid val av bank och försäkringsbolag. Att se hur väl företagen känner till kundernas preferenser vid val av respektive tjänsteföretag samt att se vilka likheter och skillnader det finns vid val av 2 tjänsteföretag inom den finansiella sektorn.  Metod: Undersökningen gentemot kunderna genomfördes med hjälp av en enkätundersökning och personliga intervjuer vid respektive tjänsteföretag. Enkätundersökningen har redovisats i form av diagram och tabeller medan intervjuerna har redovisats i löpande text. Resultat & slutsats: Kunderna ansåg pris, räntor, ett bra bemötande och engagemang samt personalens kompetens vara viktigast vid val av både bank och försäkringsbolag. Bankkunderna ansåg att närhet till banken och att ha en bra relation till banken var viktigare än vad försäkringskunderna tyckte.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact that idealised body images found in media have on the body-image and wellbeing of young men and women. The study was carried out using questionnaires based on the BAQ and HAD scales to examine the participants' views of themselves as well as symptoms of anxiety and depression. Time spent by the participants using different kinds of media, as well as their degree of social support, was used with the purpose of examining relations and differences in body-image between men and women. The questionnaire contained advertising images to examine whether short time exposure had any impact on the participants. In order to determine this, one half of the questionnaires contained idealised body-images, whilst the other half contained images without human objects.

The purpose of this study is to create a method that can be used to produce decisionsupport data for the climate goals of a municipality. The method should be able to demonstrate the potential for reducing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions for measures aimed at the stationary energy system in the municipality. It will be used to make longterm projections of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in order to be able to demonstrate the ability to reach climate goals. The aim was also to test the method's applicability by using the municipality of Uppsala and the Uppsala climate protocol project in a case study. Uppsala climate protocol is a project consisting of participants from business, government and organizations that voluntarily want to commit to reducing their carbon footprint by reducing their energy use and thus work to achieve the municipality's overall climate goal. Public reporting of energy use and climate impact has been studied in order to examine the nature of indicators and accounting figures that are commonly used in the field and how long-term forecasts are formulated. In connection to this, the type and sources for the kind of data needed was also examined.

It is important to ensure and develop the Swedish model for riding schools, since the pupils at a Swedish riding school learn both to ride and to handle horses. There is a pronounced problem of stagnation and in some cases a reduced demand in several of the equine industry sectors including breeding with decreased coverings. The aim of this study was to cast light on how representatives from the horse industry looks at riding schools and their recruitment of horses in the next five years. The research issue was ?Will there be difficulties regarding horse recruitment in 2020 and in that case, what are the consequences?? The results of this work consist mostly of material from a workshop on how the riding school will be affected by reduced breeding in the future.

The vegetation?s impact on erosion control is widely explored, even though research? results are scattered where it suggests a both positive and negative relationship between roots and erosion tendency. Research has measured the roots? impact on erosion by many different methods, hence the aim of this study is to offer a clearance of what factors play an important role in the choice of appropriate species controlling river bank erosion. I have therefore studied 17 articles concerning vegetation and erosion control, which were found in different databases such as: Web of Knowledge, Biological Sciences, Academic Search Elite and Google Scholar.

Every plan and program decided on by an authority or municipality, where the environmental impact can be considerable, must be environmentally assessed according to Environmental Code, the Planning and Building Act (PBA) and the Regulation on Environmental Impact Assessment.The purpose of this study is to examine the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for The Region Development Plan for the Stockholm Region, RUFS 2010. The plan was approved by at that time the Regional Planning Office (Regionplanekontoret), which procured the process by consultants. RUFS 2010 includes two merged plans ie. a regional Development Plan (RUP) and the Regional Spatial Plan for Stockholm. It was necessary to establish an environmental assessment of RUP, but not for the regional plan.

Visualization plays a key role in the concept of Lean. Lean was developed in Japan as a business philosophy in order to lead to an activity, where only steps that contribute to customer value of the final product are being performed. By defining the customer value and establish visualized standards, it is possible to see when situations differ from the standard. Then it?s possible to lead the process back on track.

The aim is to develop a new decision-making model for credit-loans. The model will be specific for credit applicants of the OKQ8 bank, becauseit is based on data of earlier applicants of credit from the client (the bank). The final model is, in effect, functional enough to use informationabout a new applicant as input, and predict the outcome to either the good risk group or the bad risk group based on the applicant?s properties.The prediction may then lay the foundation for the decision to grant or deny credit loan.Because of the skewed distribution in the response variable, different sampling techniques are evaluated. These include oversampling with SMOTE, random undersampling and pure oversampling in the form of scalar weighting of the minority class.

Given that the end-customer has become more demanding, the retailer has to deliver products according to the market demands, which have forced manufacturing companies to constantly search for new opportunities to reduce costs and improve efficiency. It is, therefore important to choose suppliers that are able to compete with the market demands.The market demands in the textile industry have lead to shorter product life cycles, which have caused manufacturers to deliver flexibility with high technology to compete successfully on the global market. To achieve the market requirements the underlying factor is to be aware and optimally use and control time. New technology can have a major influence in the production development, if the company choose to take benefit of the advantages, by optimal allocation of the internal resources the productivity and efficiency will increase, to accomplish a competitive advantage. One way to achieve this is by investing in a Unit Production System.In our thesis we have questioned what the main driving forces for an apparel manufacturing company is when it chooses to invest in new technology.

In the growing concern for the state of the environment more tools are being integrated in the decision-making processes. Sweden actively makes use of environmental impact assessment (EIA), which is supposed to minimise negative impacts of a project, policy or plans on the environment. The EIA process in Sweden still requires certain improvements to be more efficient. In this study actor interaction was analysed with trust being the framework for analysis. The aim is to find out whether it is possible to use trust as a framework for analysis since trust research is very discipline dependent.

The idea for the project emerged when Nilorn wanted to get better control over their supplychain and improve operational efficiency. The company also want to reduce their expenses inthe continuous process of improving profitability. By choosing the right option oftransportation and mode of transport there are large potential savings for the company. Thisenables Nilorn to reduce the transportation costs and strengthen the environmentalresponsibilities by reducing their environmental impact.The flow of goods within Nilorn has over the past years increased significantly and most ofthe gods today is transported by air. The aim of this thesis is to analyse the supply chain of thecompany and evaluate the potential economic savings in this area.