This Master Thesis is a part of PlymoVent?s business to customer plot, with the aim to investigate how the consumers receive the services that PlymoVent provides. With regard to PlymoVent's business strategy and reference theory, the demands of how to receive and monitor a supply chain for a better customer satisfaction where targeted. The findings refer to poor customer satisfaction due to obscure procedures in problem resolution and discrepancy handling, and vague transportation accuracy..

We were commissioned by Bulten Stainless AB to identify and analyze their customer order flow. Because the company had problems with delays in the production and deliveries to the customer, the task also included investigation of how the company work with prevention and management of delays. The purpose of the project also included to identify critical factors for effective order flow in smaller workshop companies.The information about the flow and how the work takes place within the company were collected through observations on the company and interviews with the staff. This information was used to draw maps over the customer order flow and to write a description of the current situation within the company. Both strengths and weaknesses of the companies work could be identified through analysis of the present situation.

The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze how the mining equipment producers on a global market manage to handle the changing conditions concerning customer value. Our approach has been a comparative analysis between two different sites in order to answer the purpose. The case studies at Metso Mining have been made through interviews and visits at two geographical markets, South America and Scandinavia. The theoretical framework applied on our empirical findings is based on Blue Ocean Strategy, Customer Value and Resourced Based View. The empirical foundation is based on interviews with Metso Mining employees at Sorocaba in Brazil and Kiruna/Gällivare, Trelleborg and Staffanstorp in Sweden.

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.

Purpose                           The purpose of this study is to create an understanding of how e-commerce companies use loyalty programs in order to retain their customers and to increase its consumption, and compare this with customer perceptions of loyalty and learn what makes them loyal. Theoretical framework      The theoretical framework starts with definitions of loyalty and customer loyalty. Further, it discusses what a loyalty program is, how rewards today and in the future affect the consumers, and other promotion offers that are commonly used. The theory also discusses how previous points work in e-commerce. Method                                                    To take advantage of the companies? point of view and at the same the customers? perspective, the survey is based on a combination of a qualitative and quantitative study. In the study, two companies in the fashion industry were interviewed and 391 respondents participated. Empirical study                 In the empirical study the interviews with the two e-commerce companies are first presented, which revolves around their use of loyalty program.

Since companies have realised the importance of customer loyalty and since the service sector has gained higher significance in recent years, we found it interesting to study what leads to customer loyalty in service companies. The theories we have chosen to consider are customer loyalty, service quality, service guarantees, affinity marketing, loyalty programmes and customer clubs, the customer in focus and other factors that influences customer loyalty. To find out how service companies are working with cus- tomer loyalty, we have conducted a case study within three service companies. Our findings are that customer loyalty has a significant importance for the companies we studied. Quality and personnel were the factors we found had the greatest impact in service companies concerning customer loyalty.

The purpose of this thesis is to map out and investigate how the banking sector affects a customer?s willingness to change bank, and what the switching costs are for a customer when making these changes. A case study was performed through qualitative and quantitative questionnaires and interviews. The qualitative part was carried out to create hypotheses. The hypotheses was tested in a quantitative survey to be able to either accepted or rejected these them.

The goal of customer support is to help clients achieve maximum value in their services and products. Customer support is the public face of a company, which means that it is important to give the customer a positive experience and live up to customer expectations. Efficient customer support has become more important and studies show that customers who leave a company do so because of poor service. Customers' growing demands for higher quality and easier access to services means that companies must recognize the need to satisfy each customer. It is important that each customer receives the attention required and that customer needs are met quickly and flawlessly.

This thesis has been performed as a part of the Bachelor degree in Industrial Engineering and Management at the School of Engineering in Jönköping. The thesis is written on behalf of Pallco AB, which is an engineering company that performs subcontracting, surface treatment, and assembly of components, mainly in steel and aluminium. The thesis focuses on identifying and analyzing the customer order fulfillment process of three customers at Pallco AB.The main objective of the thesis is to distinguish time differences in the company?s administrative work for each of the three customers. Furthermore, Lean thinking is following as a thread through the whole thesis.

For many companies, the Internet has revolutionized the relationship they have with their customers concerning costumer service. The use of Information Technology in regard to Internet as a media has provided companies with the opportunity to build customer databases in order to target their customers individually. The airline industry was one of the first pioneers to use the full potential of Internet to improve customer relations and its profits which we aim to investigate in greater detail in our thesis.Our thesis answers the question on how Scandinavian Airlines' (SAS) Eurobonus department uses their website to create valuable and profitable relationships with SAS loyalty club members through direct marketing. In order to answer our research question, three key informants have been interviewed - each representing different sub departments at Eurobonus; service and support, IT and marketing. Our results were that the Eurobonus department use direct marketing methods by sending customized e-mail offerings to target specific customer, using their customer databases.

In relation to the development of IT-products it is very important that the software supplier is aware not only of the target group but also the field of application. Usability should characterize the whole IT-design process as, in relation to this context, design includes more than merely those aspects which are visible to and thus can be interpreted by the naked eye. The study examines the specific qualities and properties that substantiate the usability and the demands that a customer rightfully expects from an IT-product. The user and the customer are highlighted in the same context in order to demonstrate that it is through the customer that an IT-product is defined as being useful. Thus, from this perspective, the user and customer can be considered as being the same person.

AbstractThe banking industry has during later years gone through several technological changes (Svenska Bankföreningen 2014). These big changes have led to several advantages seen both from a customer ? and corporate point of view. Advantages in easier usage, increased availability and more competition have made the banks more cost effective at the same time as the customer is being offered better prices. Even though the advantages seem to weigh over the disadvantages there are still those who thinks that things where ?better in the past?.

Title: Strategies for competition ? a study of the Swedish contact lenses market.Authors: Pernilla AArskog and Annika Lange.Background: As a market gets more mature and the competition increases, it is more important for a company to apply the right strategic perspective. There are four fundamental strategic perspectives for a service-oriented business: a core product-, a price-, an image- and a service perspective. This study is a about service management and take its point from the theories from the Nordic School about strategies for competition, customer value, perceived customer quality and customer loyalty.Purpose: The main purpose with this study is to analyze and evaluate how the actors at the Swedish market of contact lenses should compete to gain further competitive advantages.Method: The study includes four qualitative interviews with two traditional opticians and two Internet based businesses, but also a survey with 106 contact lens users is included.Analysis: In the analyse part of this thesis it was concluded that the traditional opticians conception about their customer not agrees with what the customer evaluate as important. Many of the customers have thought about changing their optician, and besides that do not recommend their optician, and can there for not be categorize as loyal customers.

The structures of organizations have gone through a dramatic change over the last years; as a result customer service is no longer a small side activity but a critical part in customer relationship management. Development in information technology has created opportunities as well as challenges for organizations when it comes to providing a customer service with capacity of sensing and responding to customers' needs. Previous research shows a relationship between customer response capability and customer knowledge processeses, this study investigates and confirms this relationship. However, findings show that dedication and understanding for customers needs has a direct impact on both customer response capability and customer knowledge processeses, this result indicates that customer knowledge processes and customer relationship management are difficult to differentiate. Furthermore, this study explores IT-related resources impact on customer response capability and customer knowledge processes.

To increase the quality in their products ABB is working towards a cleared order concept. That means that all customer specified options are to be known before they start with order calculations and construction. As it is today they use paper checklists to achieve this. One order may have several reactors, and for a reactor there can be several different alternatives. For each alternative a new checklist must be filled out.As of today all reading of the customer specification and checklist fill in with is done by hand by different persons, and sometimes the same data is read more than one time.