The aim of this thesis is to clarify the affect that preferential and regional trade agreements have on the World Trade Organization (WTO), as being establisher of the international trading regime. The essay is an explanatory literature study, which strives to answer the following questions:Are regional and preferential trade agreements a threat or a complement to the WTO?Is an undermining of the MFN principle weakening the WTO?How do regional trade agreements made by the EU affect the future of the WTO?The empirical material is to be analyzed using an explanatory framework, which is based on neo-liberal instutionalism, theories on regime changes and a game theoretical approach, using prisoner?s dilemma. I will employ the EU-ACP relation, the Cotonou agreement to exemplify how an agreement of this kind can have an influence on multilateral trade. The result shows that preferential agreements do have an impact on the WTO, one that is fairly negative in scope.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to accomplish an understanding for childrens librarians purchases of juvenile books. Two main questions are to be answered: - Which considerations do childrens librarians do when buying juvenile books and which goals and motives are behind their purchases? - What do childrens librarians think that their knowledge and competence consists of and how is that knowledge useful when buying juvenile books? To answer the questions qualitative interviews with five childrens librarians have been carried out. The material has been analyzed through a theoretical construction consisting of theories about collection development, book selection and quality judgments. The conception tacit knowledge silent knowledge from Michael Polanyi has also been used for interpretation.

Banks are an important institution for the economy of a society. During the later years the world of banking has changed. Several new actors have entered the market and taken over traditional bankservices as well as new ones. The way of conducting banking has changed with the event of new technology. One of the banks customer segments, the students have also been under a change. With a changed market companies have to adapt to the new rules of the game.

The purpose of this study was to illuminate dentists? work with guarantees. A case study was performed by personal interviews with dentists from both private and public sector. The result showed how dentists work with guarantees and how they motivate their guarantee obligations. We found that service guarantees? shaping and application should be simple and obvious.

Background: Associated with the change in the regulations in 2009 concerning how goodwill should be handled in the acquisitions, brand valuation is increasingly recognized. Goodwill will now be identified and the brand will therefore be separated to be individually evaluated. The valuation has a problem with a number of factors that will influence the choice of method, to obtain a reliable value Aim: The purpose of this study is to examine the method used for brand valuation associated with the acquisition situations. In addition, it aims to gain a better understanding of brand valuation and its problems.Method: The study has a qualitative basis, where three key people of brand valuation have been interviewed. These work as valuation specialists at various accounting firms, this to get answers that could be compared.

This study is made in cooperation with Setragroup AB. Setra is Sweden?s biggest sawmilling company with a turnover of almost 6 billion SEK. 45% of the produced volume goes to the Swedish market where the customers are the DIY-sector and industrial customers. Setra as well as the other Swedish sawmilling companies operate in a very competitive environment.

The focus of this thesis is positioning and customer retention in newly started small service businesses. The thesis is based on the case study of two small newly started service businesses: Kåffe In that is based in Skellefteå and Lundström Aaro Design! which is based in Umeå. The thesis presents the conclusion that newly started small service businesses, regardless of industry, seem to work in accordance with the theoretical framework of the thesis..

Background: The recent years in the Swedish Fast Moving Consumer Goods industry have been characterized by a palpable shift in power balance, favouring the retailers. Since the shift in power balance has strengthened the negotiation position of the retailers, the suppliers now have to, to a greater extent than before, accommodate to the retailers? goals, whether they be financial or strategic. Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate how this recent power shift has affected the relationships of suppliers and retailers. This development has resulted in the rather new and unexplored area of retailer value, which this study further aimed to explore.

This Masters' thesis is a study on the information behaviour of hospital personnel at the University Hospital in Lund, Sweden. A questionnaire was distributed to 301 nurses and physicians working in the intensive care unit, the population was reduced to 244 persons. The response rate was 52%, i.e. 125 questionnaires were completed. Nurses constituted 68 % of the population.

AbstractBachelor Thesis, School of Economics at Vaxjo universityProgram: Enterprising and Business Development, EBD 362, Spring 2006Authors: Jens Asp, Vivianne Holmer, Carl-Marcus WahlstromExaminer: Stig G JohanssonKeywords: Services, cooperation, collaboration, customer offer, knowledgeTitle: Service firms in collaboration ? A study of the development of small service firms in collaborationNutek presented numbers during year 2005 witched show that the Swedish service sector, for the first time ever, was greater than the industrial sector. The kind of firms that develop most is small service firms without employees. The topic of interest in this bachelor thesis is to study how this kind of firms can develop. There is a great number of strategic options for firms to choose.

Dagens företag, vars utbud alltmer karaktäriseras av tjänster, måste lära sig att anpassa sig till denna nya kundorienterade värld. Idag har kunderna stort utbud av varor och tjänster vilket innebär att företagen måste anstränga sig extra hårt för att ha nöjda och lojala kunder. Att ha nöjda kunder innebär inte automatiskt att dessa kunder är lojala. Kundlojalitet är viktigt för att företaget ska fungera på lång sikt. Syftet med uppsatsen är att se vilka slutsatser som kan dras om kundlojaliteten hos Bergslagens Sparbanks privatkunder i relation till hur nöjda de är.

It is important for all companies to be seen on a competitive market. It?s all about positioning yourself so that you?re seen and that you?re are attractive for both customers and employees. A crucial factor to achieve this are how the brand are handle directly by the company it self and by the market. Establishing a brand on the market is not easy and it takes time to establish what the company stands for. To be able to succeed with this you need to have a strategy and a strong belief on the brand.

The title of this thesis is ?Accessible Landscape - boardwalks in nature areas?. The main purpose of this thesis is to show how you can increase the accessibility for disabled people by constructing boardwalks in nature areas. The platform for the thesis is a study of litterature on boardwalks, accessibility and disabilities. After defining these terms I made three excursions to three different locations in the south of Sweden. During the excursions I evaluated the boardwalks situated in each of the areas through preferences such as the construction of the boardwalk, its design and the accessibility. After the excursions I interviewed managers of the areas I visited, and people working with disability questions in the municipalities where the excursions took place. To know how to make a boardwalk accessible you need to have knowledge about certain concepts, rules and recommendations. My thesis deals with aspects such as: *Accessibility *Disability *Rules and recommendations when building boardwalks *Real life - evaluation from the excursions and interviews with the managers The result shows that accessibility is a hot topic in Sweden and a lot of improvement is being done with fi nancial support from the European Union.

This bachelor?s degree thesis was conducted in mechanical engineering at Halmstad University during spring semester 2010 in close collaboration with the company Gremo AB, located in Ätran, Sweden. Gremo AB produces, developes and sales forest machines in both Sweden and on the international market.Gremo AB belongs to one of the market leaders in forest industry, especially with their forwarder. In order to become a market leader even with their harvester, the company decided to change the harvester to have a swivel and a leveling driver cabin.The aim with this bachelor?s degree thesis was to develop a design concept for the harvester driver cabin, which Gremo AB can apply on the new harvester.

The visual complexity in real-time applications, like computer games, is increasing with customer demands on vissual apperance. This trend is supported by even better graphics cards from the hardvare industry. This must be taken into consideration when the architecture of a new graphics engine is to be designed. The engines renderer is responsible of generating a picture of scene data. The renderer must cope with increasingly more complex scenes, and must be able to render them depending on available hardvare capasity.