The purpose of this thesis is to analyze how the ongoing controversy surrounding the Internet, the phenomena of digitalization and file sharing will affect the music industry in the form of the ?big five? labels. Furthermore the thesis aims to present a recipe of strategies for the companies? survival by studying their situation through a theoretical perspective in conjunction with a comparative analysis with industries facing the digitalization challenge. The theoretical contribution lies in the strategic perspective at an industry level.

This thesis attempts to clarify the impact of cultural differenceson customer expectations of service level. Furthermore, wewant to determine whether or not expectations of service differenough to be quantifiable between two countries, Sweden andthe US, mostly regarded as similar in business practices. The conclusion showed that higher ratings on four of Hofstede?s five cultural indexes were associated with higher customer service expectations overall, and in all four SERVQUAL dimensions. This research contributes to retail internationalization and customer expectations theory.

Competition in the market of interior design during the last several years has drastically increased. The consumers of today are very conscious about what the market can offer and therefore they have high demands on the products. It is not only the function of the product that matters but also the design that makes a difference. Companies are becoming more aware of this and as a result they have to find a way to set themselves apart in order to attract customers. This realization has led designers and economists to cooperate in a different way than before.

This report is the result of a master thesis carried out by the author, student at the Royal Instituteof Technology(KTH). The task was performed as a product development process at a companycalled Ameibo AB, located in Stockholm. It is the final task of the studies at the Master'sprogramme Design and Product Realization. The report is structured in a chronological order anddescribes the methods used, the implementation of these methods and a presentation of theresults given from these studies.Ameibo is a company located in Stockholm, distributing films on the internet. The aim of thismaster thesis was to investigate the possibilities of entering the market for portable devices.

This Master Thesis has been carried out in cooperation with Ursus Medical AB (URSUS) which markets, assembles and sells the Rotex Screw Needle Biopsy Instrument ®. The instrument is delivered with an instrument holder. Customers had expressed dissatisfaction over that they needed to use two hands during a biopsy procedure, which resulted in a project to develop a new instrument holder.The project aim was to create concepts for how the new instrument holder should be designed, with focus on the mechanics. The new instrument holder would build on the existing basic principle that the screw needle and the cannula were screwed into the tissue. The thesis work would result in a technical solution and a functional prototype of the chosen concept.To achieve this, a generic product development processes were used and began with a comprehensive literature review.

The purpose of this study is to develop and practically evaluate a new approach for the introduction of changes in internal and external processes in a customer front, but with the aim of maintaining or increasing customer perceived quality during insertion. A working model has been developed and is used in a qualitative research in the form of a case study carried out in a customer front, on a customer group in Telia's mobile customer service in Sweden. There is currently little research that has studied the implementation phase.The results of the study show that the designed working model works satisfactorily, but also that it can be developed more. Employees are satisfied and the sale was a positive boost, however, declined the customer experience a little bit. Employees raises questions as leader behavior, confidence in the group ahead, everyone's different circumstances and desire for the individual choice.The biggest challenge for future leaders will be to manage and lead continuous change.

The purpose of this master thesis is to present a model that illuminates the important factors when deriving technical information from market data within a company. For companies to be able to become and stay competitive in the market, product quality is an important factor. Whilst good product quality leads to customer satisfaction and loyalty, lack of quality brings costs in service and replacements. To improve product quality, the developers need information and knowledge about what quality issues affect existing products. Most companies gather data from market about known issues, but in order eliminate known quality issues in new products; this data has to be transformed into information and knowledge.

Most people have been forced to throw away a pot-plant after its death. There are many reasons to the death of a plant, but mainly it?s because its owner forgets it, and therefore fails to water it. The purpose of this project is therefore to develop a product which can prevent this from happening, while the product has to have a low manufacturing cost to be able to compete whit other, similar, products on the market. During the project, a benchmarking has been done to give a clear picture of what the product has to compete with. The directives there are for CE-marking, and which of these who concerns the product has also been looked up.

This study intends to elucidate which view customers has about Sony Ericsson as a trademark compared with it?s biggest competitors and how the company can expand and create added value around its products. The aim with this essay is to study and to analyze Sony Ericsson?s creation of value and to increase understanding about strategy development. We have chosen to do this study on the basis of customer perspectives.We have used existing theories that treat matters: added value, marketingmix and trademark image.

Background: Mass customization has been identified as a competitive business strategy by both companies and academics because of its ability to incorporate the voice of the customer into companies? products and services. Although mass customization may sound appealing, the strategic concept is still developing and firms adopting this business strategy face several challenges. Production concerns are of high relevance since mass customization implies a high level of customer involvement in the product design. Since the areas are closely linked it is reasonable to ask how a mass customization strategy affects production concerns.

The purpose of this thesis is to try to understand, with the help of existing theories and empirical findings, the parameters which are of importance in the development of the pricing capability. We have used a qualitative and abductive methodology approach. The empirical findings have been collected via semi-structured interviews which we have conducted via personal and telephone interviews. Seeing pricing as a capability within the company our theoretical framework mainly consists of the resource-based view and an article explaining and given proof how pricing can be seen as a capability. We also describe the most used pricing strategy today within business-to-business companies, the cost plus strategy.

The aim of this final thesis is to make it easier for the customer of a new designed house to get a picture of what the house will look like inside before it has been built.A method, which can be applied by any construction company who likes to visualize there buildings, has been designed and tested. One works after a regular design planning which is transformed into a three dimensional model of the house. In a rendering program, materials and surfaces are chosen for the model and then a picture of the finished product is made. The programs used for this work are ADT 2006 and VIZ Render.To evaluate the use of this method I?ve chosen to cooperate with LB-Hus which is a housing company that is specialized in building detached houses.

AbstractThe development of new economies from the industrial revolution to the information society of today has led to an increase in goods, services and information technology. It has also affected the way that organizations are formed and shown that organizations transform more and more into networks. This has left an impact on the concept of marketing and an increase in the handling of internal relations within companies. The marketing concept has developed from the 4P:s, price, place, product and promotion, to relations marketing as a new perspective.This study focuses on a description of relations marketing in medium - sized advertising agencies. The advertising business has a long history of close customer relations and advertising agencies strongly depend on new customers.

Title:Product abandonment ? A comparative study of five ABB-units Level:Master thesis in Business administration, spring 2011.Purpose:The purpose of this paper is to through a comparative analysis examine how different companies, within the same group, works with product abandonment and what factors influence the process.Problem:How important is situational and product specific factors in a product abandonment process in which the organizational factors are constant?Method:This study is based on primary as well as secondary data where interviews represent the primary data. Interviews, following the same interview guide, were made with five companies within the same group.Result:The results from the empirical studies presented in the text below recurring themes derived from the framework.Conclusions:Our conclusions are that the importance of product specific factors is of significant matters in a product abandonment process, even when organizational factors are constant. We base that on that although the companies are within the same group, under the same strategic direction and constructed according to the same organizational structure the product abandonment process is different for the respective companies.Keywords:Product abandonment, product deletion, product elimination, weak products, ABB .

I dagsläget är det svårt för företag att behålla en stark marknadsposition och utmaningen ligger dels i att regelbundet presentera nya produkter på marknaden och ständigt skapa nya innovationer. Genom att använda sig av Lean Product Development i produktutvecklingsprocessen kan företagen anta utmaningen. Det kan dock vara svårare för små och medelstora företag då de kan ha begränsade resurser. Syftet med denna studie var därför att ta fram en projektmodell för produktutvecklingsprojekt i små och medelstora företag. Studien bygger på kvalitativa forskningsmetoder där sekundärdata samlades in genom både bibliotekskatalogen vid Mittuniversitetet och sökningar i forskningsdatabaser på Internet.