Background: The business market today is characterized by tough competition amongst the competitors to capture consumers? interest and money. One marketing tool companies can use to achieve this is the company?s image. The customer buys not only a product, but also the image that the company or the product is associated with.

Through this thesis, we want to discuss how the marginalization of people, several precedent political, city planning- and engineering decisions resulted in a catastrophic outcome after hurricane Katrina in New Orleans 2005. We also put forward a case study of the Make It Right Foundation, to demonstrate how the residents of the Lower Ninth Ward are involved in the urban development of their community. We would like to draw attention to the power of citizens and how they can influence the urban development of a community after a trauma. This study also focuses on the mission of The Make It Right Foundation: which is to rebuild the Lower Ninth Ward with firm concepts on sustainable development where all dimensions are accounted: ecological, social, cultural and economic. The empirical data was collected by a field study in New Orleans 2010-03-22 and semistructured interviews were made during the same days..

This thesis was developed as an assignment from Ludosity Interactive where the goal was to develop a copy of the Xbox Live Indie Games-marketplace from the Xbox 360. Ludosity Interactive had a necessity to easily test a game's attractiveness to potential customers using testing people from outside the company in a simulated Xbox Live Indie Games test environment; excluding this developed system there is no other way to do such an analysis without actually releasing the game on the Xbox Live Indie Games marketplace and then analyze the resulting sales from the product.The finished system had to be similar to the original system to the degree that a user could see past the interface itself and use the system just as he/she would have used the real marketplace. It also had to be easy to change and add games to the system so that Ludosity Interactive easily could show the games and the data that they deemed interesting for their tests. The final product was developed using C#, XNA and XML together with an Agileinspired development method in combination with Pivotal Tracker. This report describes how this product was developed..

This study analyses how different companies offer customer support through social media andthe customer experience of it.Facebook emerged in Sweden during 2008 and today it has more than 800 million user acrossthe globe. Initially Facebook was created for individuals. However, over time, Facebook hasincreased its functionality to support the presence of companies as well. Today most companieshas got a Facebook page and through it, they can easily communicate with their customers.Customer support is one of the communication forms that Facebook is used for.1A questionnaire that received a hundred responses together with a survey of the differentFacebook pages was done in order to determine how the companies work through socialmedia. The results from the questionnaire and the survey was analyzed with different theoriesregarding corporate presence on social media and Facebook.The results shows that only a few people actually used Facebook for customer support butamongst the ones who did the majority thought it worked well.

The advantages with product placement in blogs compared to traditional media is shown in earlier empirical findings where consumers found blog posts more credible and informative than a corresponding article in a web paper. It can therefore be argued that the informal structure and personal tonality of the blog reinforces the effects of product placement on brand attitude and intention to buy as the consumer has no persuasion knowledge and does not detect the rewriting of the product as commercial.This paper?s overall aim is to provide concrete implications for how to manage product placement on fashion blogs. The purpose of the essay is therefore to investigate the communicative effects of product placement in fashion blogs as well as to examine if a revelation of commercial interest behind a blog posts about a certain brand effects the consumers? attitude towards the blog and/or brand attitude and intention to buy.

The struggle for the customer has become a priority for the fashion industriesconsidering that it is the customers? willing to shop that guarantees theircontinuous survival on today?s competitive market. To keep the customer happyand satisfied, should be their priority as this leads to an economic advantagesince the customer becomes the companies strongest allay with help of the socalled ?word of mouth? effect. The positive response is then transmitted fromthe customer, acting as a spokes- person for the company.

AbstractPurposeThe purpose of this thesis is to examine the Swedish students? habits regarding videos on Youtube and create an understanding towards what makes them viral. The purpose is also to state how companies should make use of visble and hidden viral marketing to get their message out to the customers.MethodThe thesis uses both a qualitative and a quantitative method. At first there was a qualitative focus group with 6 Swedish students. The focus group generated valuable information which later was used to create surveys.

Oscar Jacobson was founded in 1903 in Sweden, which at the timewas a leading country in the textile industry. During the 1960s morecompetitors arose as the fashion industry grew stronger and theglobalization became a fact. Today there is an abundance of brandsand products in the fashion- and textile industry. This has given thecustomers a greater range of products to choose from. We can seetendencies of customer not being as brand loyal as they used to.

SNA Europe?s handsaw concept is called ?Bahco Handsaw System? and is constituted by a saw handle with the possibility to switch between different saw blades. The sales of ?Bahco Handsaw System? products have not achieved the desired results probably due to the high price. Developing a more cost efficient handle, enabling a lower consumer price of the product, is assumed to increase the sales volume.

We have conducted a quantitative study investigating whether an Ingredient Branding collaboration between private label and national brands could be executed with success in the Swedish market. The objective was to measure the consumers? response to two products from different product categories, representing hedonic and utilitarian products. We have been able to establish that by adding a branded ingredient to a private label product, one obtains a more positive product attitude as well as a higher perceived product quality and taste. The study also shows that attitudes towards the ingredient brands were improved by the collaboration whereas the brand attitude towards the private label did not change significantly.

Multichannel-shopping has become a wide spread phenomenon in the retail industry due to a significant development of retail channels and formats. Consumers now shop for the same product category in many different retail settings and this trend is increasing. Therefore both the academic world and the retail industry are screaming for knowledge about the multichannel-shoppers. Several studies have focused on the characteristics of different channels and how multichannel strategies should be designed to minimize cannibalization. There is however a lack of research concerning what characterizes multichannel-shoppers and what drives them to shop in several channels.

In this degree project a study of the importance of a graphic identity to companies has been done. A questionnaire among small companies in Dalarna has beenmade. From this, three sets of graphic profile-program have been formed andthese are suitable for new companies. Finally a practical application has been made on Greenfield in Mora, a graphic profile has been designed.To cause an identity is to prove that someone or something exists by individualizingand distinguish. Every individual or company has its qualities or charasteristics.The way to a desirable identity is going by a corporate identity-program that containsthe companies strategies, people, products, buildings, trademarks, graphic design.

In the beginning of this century United Nations expressed their concern about the lack of female participation in politics through a number of resolutions and conventions. To ensure sustainable development and democracy, United Nations argued the importance of women?s participation in every level of politics within a state.Burma is a country that is in the middle of an ongoing democratization process and women are not considered to participate in this process. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to analyze the experience of politically involved Burmese women in their political participation progress.This study has been realized through semi-structured interviews with nine Burmese women, in both Thailand and Burma. The questions that have been asked are about what societal and cultural barriers women meet when they are, or want to be, political involved, both from the society and within their own political organizations.

This report looks at the possibility of designing a universal adapter for Flat Blade windshield wipers in cooperation with European Automotive Supplier AB.To understand and see if this is possible, a research and an extensive patent search where done. Then to add structure to the project a Ganttschematic were developed. To generate good and solid ideas, different methods for product development were looked upon.When a method was chosen and applied, a series of concepts emerged. Now the focus was to design and construct all the pieces. The desired manufacture procedures were looked upon as well as materials.

The purpose of this study is to further develop the understanding of Nextopia, the belief that the next product will always be better, and the effects it has on Word of mouth, both oral (WOM) and electronic (eWOM), and investigate possible causes of this effect. This has been made through an experimental study of responses to two mineral water ads, with a manipulated time frame. First, this thesis supports the fact that there is a general Nextopia-effect on customers being exposed to a future product, which makes them evaluating the product higher in terms of feelings, attitude and intention. Further this study shows that there is also a Nextopia-effect on WOM and eWOM, by customers being more likely to recommend a future product rather than a current one. This propensity to recommend the product also has a relationship with responsibility, which correlates much stronger with WOM than eWOM.