Sustainable urban development is a concept that has become increasingly important as the urbanization continues and more and more challenges are focused to the cities.  The Swedish government and authorities regulates and sets goals for how a sustainable urban development is to be achieved. These laws and goals are vaguely defined, which leads to disputes between the actors about how the term should be interpreted. By examining Västermalms Strand, an urban development project in Stockholm, this study strives to describe how involved actors interpret the concept of sustainable urban development and what the consequences of this are for urban development in Stockholm from an ecological, social and economic perspective. A case study has been carried out where a document study and interviews have been conducted. The interviews were conducted with four key actors from the private and public sector.

Nordic Marine Sauna AB has, since 2005, designed, manufactured and sold floating saunas. Theproduct are characterised by a well thought thru and appealing design and its high quality. Thecompany is now intending to open a new business area by starting a subsidiary, NordicSubmarine Sauna AB, which will design submerged saunas. The expected customers are leisureand conference centres as well as customers that seek an experience out of the ordinary.Due to the products technical complexity a master thesis was adverted. The task was to do aninvestigation whether such a product is technically viable.The job involved research of existing products and constructions material as well as designingthe product with CAD and FEM-programs.

During the last year in the Innovation Engineering Program, at Halmstad University, a degree project was performed that was carried out during Fall semester in 2006 and Spring semester 2007. The project was performed by two students in corporation with LIC Audio AB, a company in Stockholm. The degree project was meant to result in a communication aid for people with a cognitive handicap. The project focused on people suffering from dementia because of the expressed need within this group. This aid should first and foremost help in a conversation between a person with dementia and another person, like a relative or nursing home staff.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the customer profitability in a wholesale company. A case study of Eugen Wiberger AB has been conducted. Firstly the authors have examined the current perception of the company regarding their customer profitability and the results of their calculation of the customer profitability. Secondly an Activity-Based Costing analysis has been performed and has been compared to the perception in the case company. The conclusions are that the smaller customers are the least profitable, and in some cases unprofitable, whereas the larger customers are profitable.

The main purpose of this master thesis is to identify the issues concerning the transformation process of a product oriented company into a service oriented company, and how these issues can be overcome. We will exemplify this by developing a dewatering pump rental concept for ABS, and identify the drivers and barriers for ABS when implementing the service oriented rental concept in Sweden and Poland. This master thesis is based on the systems perspective. The reason for this is the required holistic perspective, where the system has to be regarded from different points of departure in order to be understood. The theoretical studies include services and change management.

This essay deals with the principle of surprise warfare and its development as well as the adaptation of military action that had to be made to surprise the opponent in the modern era.The concept of surprise is divided into its components in order to clarify what is required to implement a surprising maneuver, to understand the complex concept and form a theoretical framework for gathering facts in the case study.Development and adaption are demonstrated by a comparative case study where Pearl Harbor illustrates an example of historical surprise and Operation Desert Storm illustrates a modern surprise. The product will then be analyzed in order to detect the development and how military conduct is forced to adapt in order to carry out a surprising maneuver. The results shows that the military action of performing a surprise attack has had a major development and is now carried out in a different stage of the attack..

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how social procurement can be a further development of public-private partnership. This is done with interviews and a case study of the social procurement Mitt Gröna Kvarter and its labor effort Boendebyggarna. The theoretical framework used in the thesis consists of public-private partnership and corporate social responsibility. It tries to answer the following questions:What does this social procurement mean by the concept of public-private partnership?What does this social procurement mean for the participants involved?How can social procurement be seen as a further development of public-private partnership?The thesis uses the theory development around the concepts of public-private partnership and corporate social responsibility and shows that social procurement does indeed have similarities to public-private partnership and could very well be a further development of it..

The psychosocial work environment in hard professions is hardly studied and this study was implemented to observe port workers psychosocial work environment in ports of Västerås and Köping. There are two purposes with this study: firstly, to examine how ports of Västerås and Köping, Mälarhamnar AB, can improve and develop their business by using psychosocial methods. To do this, a questionnaire study and three interviews with workers were done and the results were used in a SWOT- analysis. Secondly, the aim is to be able to use the results and make a difference in the business development by adjusting the psychosocial work environment. The results show that the employees are happy at work and are happy with their work colleagues.

Purpose: The aim of this thesis is to examine how word of mouth and buzz marketing affects Uppsala´s businessstudents attitudes towards Red Bull. To solve this purpose we intend to answer some underlying questions.Theory: We have used relevant theories within word of mouth, buzz marketing and consumer behaviour. Our thesis will bring up the essential parts within these three different theories that we believe are relevant to our purpose.Method: In this thesis we have used both quantitative and qualitative methods such as interviews and questionnaires. The questionnaires will be handed out at Economicum at Uppsala University.Empirical study: This part is based on our questionnaires handed out to business students at Economicum, but also on our interviews made with employees working for Red Bull.Conclusion: Our empirical study has given us a clear picture of how Red Bull works and use marketing tools to promote their product. Through our questionnaires we have also found out what attitudes consumers has against the brand and the product.

This thesis deals with the development of a specification regarding a push-button, which will be used to control the gear-shifting function in an automobile. In addition to this the author will describe different techniques and theories that have been helpful in achieving data and results for the specification.Kongsberg Automotive AB, is located in Mullsjö, Sweden, the company supplies parts to the automotive industry. In the research and development department, R&D, there is a group that works with development of Shift-By-Wire systems. In an automobile with a Shift-By-Wire system the communication between the gear-shifter and the gear-box occurs electronically. The mechanical link is, in most cases, taken away and replaced by the digital system.

The study aims to understand the underlying factor why McDonald's customers return despiteprevious failure customer experiences. Why do customers come back to the company thatcontributes to the former dissatisfaction? McDonald's attempt to maintain unceasingpurposeful emergence fail at the local level, where the customer contact occurs. McDonald'sofferings and customers' bounded rationality results in that customers are satisfied with an"ok" experience, which adds to their low expectations of McDonalds. This makes clear thatMcDonald's does not have to make an effort through constant adaptation at the local level toachieve a "great" level of satisfaction.

The purpose of this thesis is to compare if a charter company's attitude and vision of service can be reconciled with the attitudes and visions that the customers have in the same area. In order to carry out the study a qualitative approach is used. The data has been collected by interviews, focus groups and observations. The framework is theories on the subject of customer satisfaction, quality of service at customer meetings, Self-Service technologies, quality assurance and gap in service.The study has concluded that the approach to service is relatively equal between the company and customers, but the future visions differ. Focus group participants have been thinking bigger and further into the future, while the company focuses more on specific functions.

Background: The use of digital marketing channels during the last years has increased significantly, especially the use of marketing on the Internet. Hence the communication chart of marketing has been redrawn. The technological development has had a major impact on the marketing discipline. The integration of information technology and marketing has resulted in the emergence of a new field, namely e-marketing. Hence the need for further research is desirable.Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine alternative marketing procedures that a company can apply to increase the digital awareness and manage their customer relationships.Theoretical framework: Theories regarding digital marketing cycle, SEO and customer relationship.Method: This research is based on data collected through a primary semi-structured interview with a company active in the corporate information industry which also provides a RFQ service.

AbstractThis paper discusses how system development methods today support communication between system developers and their customers and end users. Today there are many system development methodologies with different aims and emphases. It is difficult, however, to find among these methods those who promote good and effective communication with customers because so many of these are very technically rooted and not as much directed towards the soft aspects of systems development - i.e. Human aspects. Our own experiences tells that a simple interview can be initialized without us having an idea what to ask the customer about or how to structure it up - nonetheless it?s done, but the outcome is just chance.

The purpose of this report is to come up with possible improvement suggestions to the distribution central at Götene Stål & Verktygs AB (GSV). GSV is a wholesale dealer located in Götene. The company doesn?t produce anything it self, it buys in products and sells them to customers.The distribution central at GSV is the place where the products comes in and gets ready to deliver.To come up with possible improvement suggestions we started with process mapping over the main process and the distribution centre process. The main process here is from the point where the customer gives GSV an order to the point where GSV deliver the order.Our result shows that the major problem in the distribution central at GSV is the big volume differences in the incoming goods.