The creation of value is considered the core purpose and central process of economic exchange. Value creation is now conceptualized as shared by both producers and customers, and value is seen as fundamentally derived and determined in use, the integration and application of resources in a specific context, rather than in exchange, embedded in products and manifested as price. The field of research is abundant with publications but these do not fully further the understanding of value creation and co-creation in a way that is meaningful for theoretical development and decision making in business and marketing practise. Without a thorough understanding of the factors characterising value co-creation, the nature as well as content and locus of co-creation cannot be identified. In that case value co-creation easily becomes a concept without substance. Until now, individual publications on co-creation have focused on few or different aspects, have emphasized the process from either the customer?s or from  the firm?s vantage point, have different theoretical approaches and have ignored the complexity in interactions between actors.The purpose of this essay is to analyse how five fundamental aspects of co-creation of customer value are perceived in contemporary marketing literature. Discussing the different views on co-creation, this essay concludes that thoughthere are evident points of agreement, finding one generally valid doctrine of predestination or value co-creation is improbable.

AbstractTitel:How do established companies communicate with their existing customers? Level:C-level in the Business Administration Author:Jessica Axelsson and Trang Nguyen Thi Thu Supervisor:Per-Arne Wikström Date:2012-05 Aim:Our aim with this essay is to describe how an established company communicates with its existing customers. We want to explore which communication strategy the company applies to reach their customers. We also want to see what kind of communication the company applies to get to market more effectively and remain on the market longer. Method:The study is a qualitative case study where we have conducted a personal interview with the company president.

Background: Relationships are really important for companies in order to becompetitive today and in these relationships is it important to feel trust to the other companies. There is therefore necessary to find out how companies work to create trust between themselves and their customers.Purpose: The purpose of this report is to examine and explain how staffing companies work to build trust in their relationships with B2B clients through examination of the conceptual model, creating a theoretical contribution.Research question: How do recruiters at staffing companies work to create trust between themselves and the customer?Methodology: The study adopted a quality research method with a deductive approach where the focus wasg on describing and analyzing. The data was collected primarily through semi-­?structured interviews.Research findings: Through the study?s interviews and their results is it possible to see that staffing companies in Växjö is working with trust.

Relationship Marketing - will banks be able to handle higher consumer mobility in the private market?The purpose of this paper is to gain an understanding of the factors that affect customer loyalty to the bank. Consumer mobility will probably increase as a result of political changes and pressures on the private banking market to become more competitive. This study was carried out using semi-structured interviews and were transcribed and analyzed with the help of models and theories centered on relationship marketing. The theories describe loyalty, the customer lifecycle and relationships between customers and organizations.

The aim of this study was to develop a load prognosis model for Uppsala district heating system to be used as a tool for heat production optimization. The methodwas to build three models for the different customer types; housing, industry andoffices and then scale them for the total system using data from Uppsala districtheating system. The heat load consists of two parts, one that is temperaturedependent and one that is dependent of the social behavior of the customers. Thetemperature part was modelled with an ARX model using an outdoor temperatureprognosis as input signal. The social behavior part was modelled using the mean ofthe social behavior from some days before and additionally by distinguishing betweenweekdays and weekends.

ABSTRACTThe aim of this study was to examine the relationship between job satisfaction, birth order and sensation seeking. The sample consisted of 179 jobholders in four different organizations in southern Sweden, with an average age of 44 years (SD = 12,12). A questionnaire consisting of three parts was used to map out and measure the participants? family background, birth order, job satisfaction and sensation seeking. The study showed no significant relationship between birth order and job satisfaction (p = 0,127).

Vardagen präglas av olika sorts kundkort som företagen använder för att lära känna kunderna och bygga långsiktiga relationer med dem. De företag som kan ge sina kunder en god och mer individuell service, dvs. vårda dem, har en stor konkurrensfördel. Många kortinnehavare känner sig dock inte unika vilket resulterar i att de inte är lojala mot företagen och att kundrelationerna försämras. Problemet ligger i att många företag saknar förmågan att analysera kundinformationen som lagras i databaserna för att fatta beslut rörande kundhantering.

In a time of economic turmoil and financial crisis profitability matters rise higher and higher on company agendas. Many companies are pressured to find profitability to avoid layoffs or even bankruptcy. Profitability essentially depends on the margin on the product or service sold and the costs associated with selling these products or services and hence these areas are of vital importance if companies are to improve profitability. Previous research has focused, for the most part, on product profitability while customer profitability has received less attention. This study is based on a case study of a Swedish publishing house and aims to investigate how the company?s Cost-to-Serve varies between its distribution channels.

Aim: The reason we made this report were to investigate what companies in Gävle implied was the most important factor for successful sales. The various questions to be answered are: 1. How important is the relationship in B2B? (Business to business) 2. Will VRM change the work with relationships within B2B? 3.

This is a dissertation for a Bachelor Degree Project at the University of Skövde. The project is carried out in cooperation with the company Kinnarps AB.The objective of this project was to develop a new chair for café and lunch rooms, which should satisfy the markets expectations and demands and match Kinnarps AB?s assortment today. The project has contained everything from identification of user and customer needs and requirements to evaluation and building of a prototype.The result is a chair with a frame of tubular steel and there is nothing like it in Kinnarps AB?s assortment today.

The purpose of this thesis is to discuss how an instrument originally developed for measuring changes toward lean thinking inservice organizations in general should be adjusted in order to be of use in service organizations within the healthcare sector, andin hospital organizations in specific. The adjustments are suggested based on difficulties specifically arising when implementinglean within the healthcare sector.Thesis starting point is a pre-existing lean assessment instrument developed for service organizations in general. The thesis appliesa qualitative method and integrates literature from the health care sector and lean production movement with the expertise of tenacademics and practitioners in order to find difficulties associated with the implementation of lean within the healthcare sector.These difficulties then lie as the substratum for the adjustments suggested to be made on the instrument.The thesis finds that lean, as a philosophy, does not differ between service organizations in general and service organizationswithin healthcare settings. However, due to deficits in the general understanding of lean some adaptions on the instrument mustbe made. First, some words associated with production must be changed to words associated with healthcare.

För att företag ska överleva så måste de ta hand om sina befintliga kunder såväl som att attrahera nya. CRM eller Customer Relationship Management är en benämning på ett synsätt eller en strategi som används för att förbättra relationen till kunderna. När modern teknologi som Internet och e-mail används för att uppnå målen med CRM kallas det electronic Customer Relationship Management eller e-CRM. Syftet med vår studie har varit att undersöka hur företag använder CRM och e-CRM för att förbättra relationen till sina kunder. För att uppnå detta syfte har en fallstudie gjorts på Handelsbanken.

The environmental monitoring in Sweden has been developed by several different parties and is now being coordinated and made more effective in order to meet the current demands on high quality information regarding the state of the environment. Sweden has been divided into five different water districts based on watershed areas because of requirements in the Water Directive of the EU. In Sweden there are two common types of environmental monitoring programs used to gather information on changes in time and in space. Currently both these two types are used for lakes in the water district of the western sea but only one is used for watersheds. The purpose of this report is to supply basic information regarding the possible need for a second environmental monitoring program for watersheds in order to better describe the spatial variation within the district as well as to determine the number of samples necessary in order to describe the district over time and space.

Internet commerce is nowadays a well known phenomenon. There is awareness that a lot of newly created companies operate their business through the Internet. You can see a tendency where many young people try to establish an Internet business with the hope of success and expansion on today?s fierce market rivalry. To achieve success, companies have to consider factors like business concept, logistic knowledge, future vision, resources and contacts when initializing their business.Having this in mind, we can clarify the purpose with this paper: ?To analyze in what way On-line shopping companies that sell consumer electronics, cell phones and music/entertainment products, have expanded? The paper is based on telephone interviews with three On-line shopping companies.

The thesis aims to describe the current sales climate in the context of complex sales in business-to-business. The purpose is to increase the clients knowledge of sales and test the clients hypothesis that the sales climate is changing from Solution Selling to Insight Selling, further the thesis aims to contribute to the scientific debate of sales. Solution Selling is characterized, as the name suggest, by selling of solution to the customers needs. With Insight Selling the seller has a provocative approach towards the customer and the seller is searching for customers in the need of change. This is a qualitative study conducted with eight interviews and one focus group.