Scarcity due to supply, demand or in time is all factors that affect consumers´buying behavior. The scarcity principle describes how scarce resources appear moreattractive to the customer's eyes than unlimited does. When something is scar thecustomer often draws parallels to the quality and price, that the product will bemore expensive and better. People hate to be deprived of choices. When a certainproduct is scar, the customer will desire the product even more.

Statistics indicate an increase in online shopping. This indication could result in the loss of safety factors for the customer, for example the possibility to physically examine the product, interact with professional store personnel and try the product before purchase ? factors which all could support the customer in her choice of company and product. The purpose of this study is to increase the theoretical knowledge regarding strategies in the area of trust-development between customers and companies. We have chosen to investigate what strategies web based companies apply and how they are perceived by their customers.

The advancements in digital technology and its availability contribute to the transfer of companycentricproduct development and value creation to networks or communities. It also changes the basisfor creation of customer relationships as described in previous research on Customer relationshipmanagement (CRM). The purpose of this case study was to gain an understanding of how companieslike our case study object Memoto who developed a physical product which gets added-value fromdigital product-related services looks upon product-centered communities as a way of buildingcustomer relationships. How Memoto looks upon incentives for participation in product-centeredcommunities was also examined.Our research indicated that firms in the start-up phase (which Memoto was when this study wasconducted) initially want to have more control over the process of innovation and hence have directcontact with end-customers. The reason for this is because they see a need to define the basis forfurther innovation work.

Many product launches are postponed today, however very little research regarding to customer responses to such events has been carried out. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how people react to a postponed product launch. An experimental study of responses to a postponed launch of a mobile phone, a mineral water and a music album is used to investigate customer reactions. The respondents exposed to the postponed launch showed a higher value of reactance. This reactance affects the attitude, purchase intention and perceived quality of the product in a negative way.

The object for this study is a company developing and manufacturing vehicles for heavy transportation. The company distributes their products on a global market. Therefore the company is required to have efficient internal production development processes in order to successfully beat the competition. The purpose of this master thesis is to study how this particular company intends to implement their standardized theoretical product development process within their organization and how well it is done. We intend to identify and specify if the process has any unexploited capacity.

Lean Product Development is a knowledge-based business concept in order to maintain high quality, meetcustomer requirements and to make product development more efficient. An important part of the processis to add a lot of resources at an early stage and execute the development as an iterative process betweendepartments exploring many alternatives thoroughly. The work focuses on how Lean ProductDevelopment is carried out and explores how to manage interaction between different departments andexpertise with regard to cross-functional collaboration and knowledge sharing i.e. learning.The information for the studies was gathered at a major Swedish company from two projects. The projectswere carried out as cross-functional and possible key factors for cross-functional collaboration wasidentified.The results have been correlated with theories of Lean, Product development, Lean product developmentand Learning.

Package design constitutes an important marketing and differentiation tool in an increasingly competitive food market, particularly in the category of daily consumer goods where the turnover rate is high and the purchases are based on self-service (Hine, 1997; Spethmann, 1994; Underwood, 1999). Media fragmentation undermines the traditional marketing tools and the demands for packaging are bigger than ever. A package must not only sell a product, but also tell, through design, how the product is used and express the values that the trademark owner wishes to convey to the end customer (Underwood, 1998). The understanding of the role of packaging as a marketing tool has increased, but the initiators inside the packaging industry in Sweden still think that the Swedish packaging industry is developing slowly. They often describe Swedish packages as homogeneous and unimaginative.

Customer information is to be seen as an essential part in service development. The company should be aware of how their customers experience their services. The company can get access to customer information through complaints from their customers. All information obtained from the customers is not possible to use when developing new and existing services. The information has to be analysed before it is possible to use it for service development.This paper describes if Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) uses their customers as a source of knowledge when developing new and existing services and in that case how.

Metso Paper offers a front-running range of solutions and services for the pulp and paper industry. At the baling unit, design solutions are developed for manufacturing and handling of pulp bales. The machines are continuously developed to satisfy customer needs. One big step in the development of the baling line was to remove hydraulics from the machines and replace it with electrical motors and pneumatics. This was not done on the folding machine which is still driven by mainly hydraulics.

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.

How projects are managed can have a big impact on the project`s result. There are different types of frameworks on the market whose purpose is to help project leaders to pursue a successful project. Those frameworks focus on larger product development projects and both the literature and companies have addressed that the frameworks are too comprehensive for smaller product development projects. They have therefore asked for a framework that is more suitable for those smaller projects. To complete a project on time and to the planned cost is important in both larger and smaller product development projects.

In today?s competitive market, design is an important element for the companies. They must succeed with delivering an increased value and an experience for the consumer to be able to survive. The Swedish company?s have become better in the design area, the higher standards the consumer?s demands forces the company to invest more in design.

This paper examines the customer relationships of a telecom operator and how their customer accounting is done. The aim is to use the framework developed by Lind & Strömsten (2006) to categorize customer relationships and see to what extent the framework predicts which type of customer accounting method is used for each customer relationship. A case study was made at Telenor Sverige AB where different customer relationships are identified and linked to the customer accounting techniques that are used for financial measurement of the customers. Findings include that all but one of the customer relationships described in the framework were recognized at Telenor and that most customer accounting techniques mentioned in the framework were in fact used and associated with different customer relationships. The results of the case study also highlight that some differences exist between the predictions of the framework and the observations at Telenor..

Background: As Porter?s diamond (1990) suggested, the business environment highly influences firms? strategies. Today, most of the companies have to decide their strategy depending from a worldwide business environment. Yet, strategy researches and the growing importance of marketing for business success also show that customer dimension must be taken into consideration. On some markets and in certain industries, the offer is much higher than the demand and then, companies need to attract customers.

This examination paper concerns how a organization can reach right quality. In this case the focus is on the communication of the soft product quality within an organization to achieve right quality. To fulfill the aim of this study a case company has been used to be able to show the absence in the topic. The questions of the study are: How have the customer?s needs been communicated within the organization? What absences are there today concerning the communication of the customer?s needs within the organization? How can the communication of the customer?s needs within the organization improve?The aim of this study is to describe and analyse how the transmitting of the customer?s needs concerning soft product quality is made today in the case company and to reach any improving suggestions.