This thesis seeks to explain the effect of private equity ownership on the amount of invest- ments made in a company. We use three capital expenditure based key ratios to determine if there is a tendency for private equity owned firms to invest more or less than comparable companies. Our dataset involve 27 Swedish buyout companies that were sold by a private equity fund between 2001 and 2009. Each buyout is assigned a peer group of two firms in similar size and in the same industry. Firstly, we compare the key ratios to determine potential differences in the level of investment.

This dissertation is a case study on the Co-branding between Prada and LG, ?The Prada phone by LG?. The purpose of the study is to broaden the understanding of Co-branding and the effects this type of collaboration can have on a company?s brand. The research questions are: ?What effects can a Co-branding have on a company?s Brand Equity?? and ?How can these effects be measured??.

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to test for the existence of Capital Structure Arbitrage oppertunities in the equity-credit markets. Methodology: The mispricing of Credit Default Swap contracts are calculated and used as input in an Equity-Credit market trading strategy. The returns are then evaluated with a modified Value-at-Risk simulation. Theoretical perspectives: A Merton-based structural model, CreditGrades, is used for credit pricing and a mispricing-convergence trading-strategy between the credit and equity markets is implemented. Empirical foundation: Daily quotes for the Credit Default Swap spread of 37 European firms were collected for a period of two years, as well as equity-prices for the same period and the previous two years, used for model calibration.

De senaste fem åren har buyout-segmentet på den svenska private equity-marknaden vuxit kraftigt i omfattning. Buyout-investeringarna har ökat från 6 555 mkr år 2001 till 37 171 mkr 2006. Då pengar investeras i ett portföljbolag följer ett stort ansvar att dessa investeras så att en god avkastning uppnås som kompenserar den risk investerarna tar. Därför måste buyout-företagen i förväg noggrant analysera investeringsobjekten för att göra välgrundade kapitalplaceringar.Syftet är att beskriva vilka investeringskriterier private equity-företag tittar på inför en eventuell buyout-investering och att redogöra för vilka av dessa kriterier som är de mest centrala. Vidare är syftet att klargöra vilket avkastningskrav private equity-företagen har på sina buyout-investeringar.

I denna uppsats undersökte vi fenomenet personligt varumärkesbyggande, vilket kan definieras som en persons namn och de värderingar som kopplas till det. Syftet med uppsatsen var att utifrån befintlig teori samt intervjuer med yrkesverksamma inom området, undersöka om det går att bygga personliga varumärken på samma sätt som traditionella varumärken för företag och produkter. Vi presenterade en översikt över litteraturen kring personligt varumärkesbyggande samt teori om Customer-based brand equity-modellen, vilken vi lät representerade den traditionella teorin. I uppsatsens analysavsnitt diskuterades och analyserades intervjudeltagarnas svar i förhållande till teorin och slutsatsen drogs att personligt varumärkesbyggande har fler likheter än skillnader med det traditionella varumärkesbyggandet. Dock ansåg vi att CBBE-modellen ej var lämplig för direkt applikation på människor, utan presenterade en reviderad modell för byggande av ett starkt personligt varumärke, där bland annat möjligheter med sociala medier inkluderades.

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.

A multivariate cross-sectional model is used in this thesis to proxy for expected earnings and to estimate return on equity for 214 companies over the period 2009-2013, using Swedish data. The model, which has never been tested on Swedish data before, is first confirmed to function as a forecasting model for expected return. Furthermore, the model is evaluated through a comparison with two univariate models based on the assumption that return on equity follows a mean reversion process. Forecast accuracy is calculated as the difference of estimated returns and actual returns. The results show that the univariate models' forecasts are superior to the multivariate model's..

Title: Brand Brazil ? A study on brand equity in an emerging market Authors: Anders Andersson & Jonathan Karlsson Subject: Bachelor thesis in marketing, 15 credits Keywords: Brand equity, Emerging markets, Brand awareness, Brand associations, Perceived quality, Brand loyalty Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to gain deeper understanding of how a company operating on an emerging market can work with brand equity, and what benefits it provides to the brand owner. Theoretical framework: The chapter begins with a description of brand equity to be further decomposed to its four dimensions; brand awareness, brand associations, perceived quality, brand loyalty Methodology: A qualitative research method with a deductive approach is conducted, where interviews with Brand/Marketing coordinators for the Brazilian subsidiaries of Volkswagen, Toyota and General Motors, are performed. Empirical framework: The chapter presents performed interviews that are supposed to describe our case studies? work and benefits from brand equity. Conclusion: This study shows that companies operating on an emerging market are working actively with brand equity, often in accordance with theory. The companies also experience positive effects from increased brand equity..

The purpose of this thesis was to study local bank offices work with customer satisfaction. A case study concerning two local bank offices was made, the cases were based on interviews with the managers at the bank offices. The research questions that we wanted this thesis to answer was how local bank offices create customer satisfaction among small business customers, and how local bank offices assess customer satisfaction among small business customers. The study showed that local bank offices find customer satisfaction among small business customers important and use complaints as the primary source in the process of creating customer satisfaction..

Undersökningens syfte är att analysera hur portföljbolags Strategiska inriktning och CorporateGovernance-arbete påverkas av ett skifte till Private Equity-ägande. Uppsatsens empiriska material består av intervjuer med anställda i två stora, forskningsintensiva bolag som avnoterats från Stockholmsbörsen genom Private Equity. I undersökningen identifieras hållpunkter för portföljbolagets Strategi och Corporate Governance-arbete, vilka alla på något sätt påverkats av övergången till Private Equity. Det kan konstateras en märkbar förskjutning i portföljbolagets strategiska inriktning till följd av Private Equity-bolagets tydliga ägarstrategi.Vidare medför ägarskiftet förändringar i styrelse och ledning, samtidigt som avståndet mellan ägare-styrelse-ledning reduceras avsevärt..

The increased specialisation and complexity in products and services has created the need for Swedish companies to focus more on their core businesses. This has resulted in them opting to buy services and products that lie outside of their core business from consultancy businesses or other types of suppliers. When companies describe their offers in internal and external marketing it is done often in terms of company or service attributes that are not based on customer value or offered value for the customer. The reason for this is that companies have not adapted their services to the different needs of their customers. As a result of this, they run the risk of offering the same services as their competitors and communicate values that the customers either do not understand or experience as value adding. By using the theory on the data collection from the case company we have an understanding and shown how the customer values can be developed from a service company?s internal and external prerequisites and competitive advantages.

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.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to do a brand survey of Metro in Karlstad. The study will originate from the terms ?brand identity? and ?brand associations?, where the brand identity is the organization?s desired view of the brand, and the brand associations define the associations held by the consumers.Issues: What is Metro?s brand identity? What are the brand associsations of Metro in Karlstad? How well do the brand identity and the brand associations correspond?Theoretical framework: The study is done from the perspective of media and communication studies, where the theoretical terms are defined from literature regarding brands.Method: The study is carried out using a qualitative document analysis, interviews, and a quantitative survey. The document analysis was made on Metro?s own documents regarding values and target audience.

Uppsatsen syfte är att klargöra vilka faktorer som är av betydelse när det kommer till värdeskapande i private equity bolagens portföljbolag.

An increasingly globalized market is leading to hard competition among manufacturing companies, which means that they are forced to become more customer focused to survive in the market. A Customer Relationship Management system is a system that will be of assistance to help companies succeed in building long term relationships with their customers. Best of Breed and ERP-based are two types of CRM systems. The study has focused on analyzing and examine the need for CRM systems at manufacturing companies. Our question formulation has been:? What need do businesses want to satisfy with a Best of Breed-based and ERP-based CRM system?? Are there any differences in the use of Best of Breed-based and ERP-based CRM system?In this study, we have chosen to carry out interviews and quantitative surveys with manufacturing companies to get their view of CRM-systems.