The companies of today figures on a hardly competitive market. This makes it necessary for the company to find new way to create competition advantages. Since it is no longer enough to compete with the technical quality of the product the companies are forced to also enhance the functional quality. To accomplish this it becomes necessary for producing companies to be customer oriented. A customer oriented company culture can be reached with the help of internal marketing in which different activities work to inform and teach the employees about the company strategy and also about their own role as part-time marketers.This thesis examines Electrolux, a company which is currently striving to develop a customer oriented company culture.

This essay highlights the Swedish retail companies? engagement in ethics and environment issues as a part of the business concept. The Customer is today more aware about what is going on in the world than ever before. Two of the main reasons are the Internet and the globalization. In relation to the customer being more aware about the situation in the world today, the demand for products which have been produced in consideration of ethical and environmental values has increased.

New innovation and technology have influenced the development of product development processes and the four largest banks in Sweden have more or less been forced to adapt their products and services along new customer requirements. It may therefore be considered appropriate to involve customers in this process. This by collecting customer information and allow customers to influence the process to a greater extent. The payment solutions of Sweden?s largest banks' continue to evolve and to pay with electronic money has come to change banks' product development processes of payment solutions.

Background: There has been a movement of power towards customers in most markets which puts higher demands upon the customer orientation of organizations to survive competition. In general the opinion is that satisfied customers also are profitable for the organization. Even though a consciousness exists about this connections importance for the organization there exists no prominent economical theory showing how a organization should work with customer adaptation and how management should be shaped for success in this area. In the field of competitive sports clubs a similar trend is discernible since the field is increasingly commercialized.Purpose: The purpose of this study is to adapt The Balanced Scorecard as a model to the demands on management that customer orientation causes and to use the knowledge created during the study to show how customer orientation in a competitive sports club could look.Realization: The study first takes the form of a literature study which emerges into a theoretic development. Above that a case study of Linköpings Hockey Club has been accomplished so that knowledge created from the literature study could be used on competitive sports clubs.

AbstractAttitudes towards the reference situation and the meetings between library users and librarians have become the subject of much debate in the library setting today. The aim of this two years master´s thesis has been to examine six librarian?s attitudes and apprehensions concerning the interactions between the librarian and the users in the library setting. We were also interested in knowing how a library can work to become more service oriented and customer centred. We conducted six interviews with librarians located at three different libraries in Sweden.

The aim of this research was to examine how the relationship between consultants and their customers can increase the value for the customer and to see how consultants can act to gain closer relationships with the customers. An empirical study has been performed through case studies with a consultant and six customers to the consultant. The theoretical areas for the analysis are customer value and relationship development between seller and buyer. Our conclusions of the research were that values for the customers are increases with closer relationships. The increased value lays in lesser uncertainty when repurchasing.

This paper was written at the Baltic Business School in Kalmar. The purpose was to analyze and determine the importance of packaged holidays within the tourism and travel sector and how value can be created for the customer. This have been done with a focus on the chosen parts; customer needs and how packaging can create value, how companies can work to give the customer increased value through packaging, last but not least how companies segment the market and if there are specific segments that prefer packaging. We have applied the qualitative method through conducting four face-to-face interviews and one phoneinterview. The purpose of this paper is not to generalize, but to show patterns in the chosen subject.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This thesis investigates how web agencys in Stockholm use, value and incoroprate the terms usability, user experience and interaction design in their work process. The purpose of this study is to investigate how creative professionals works with the notions of usability, user experience and interaction design with focus on the end user. Our definition of creative professionals is every employee at a web agency involved in the work process of developing digital artefacts in any capacity. We wanted to investigate how these notions are considered, consciously or unconsciously, during the workprocess. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at three different web agencys with eight different employees.

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.

Quality Assurance in Service Procurement --- Total Quality and Total Quality Management refer to popular management philosophies in organizations these days. The purchasing department has an important part in the strive for organizational quality as several studies show corporate spend is significant and increasing. In this master thesis I study the actions companies take to ensure quality in service procurement. I argue that managing quality when sourcing services is particularly tricky, because of the special characteristics that belong to services. The purpose of the study is to examine whether different actions are taken to ensure the quality of different kinds of services.