The aim of our thesis is to study and analyze the components and features a brand should have to provide a solid foundation for brand building. Furthermore, we show how brands can make use of trends in a brand establishment.This paper is written from a qualitative approach. Through both structured and semi structured interviews, we obtained valuable information from our respondents. Our frame of reference and empirical foundation are linked together through an abductive approach which has resulted in our analysis and conclusions.A trend brings with a set of emotional characteristics, which companies can?t influence but must adapt to.

The interest for venture capital within the financial sector in Sweden has, according to earlier studies, been seen as a growing occurrence. Especially for what is known as informal venture capital. In modern times, private investors who engage themselves in small, unlisted companies, providing informal venture capital are to be known as business angels. They close equity gaps on the financial market by contribute financial capital to start-ups and are therefore an important participant on today?s market.

To start a company on the Internet is something that has appealed a lot of people during the last couple of years. Some of the companies have succeeded in their struggle but a lot of companies have failed to live out their ambition. This paper deals with the concept of e-commerce and aims to study whether or not the companies that has succeeded has made use of business models and what other factors that is important that you wont find in any written theory.The paper also aims to study the concept of business models and what a business model consists of. To be able to do this research we have interviewed three different companies that are all active in e-commerce and have survived for at least three years. Two of the companies are classical web shops that sell products to their customers and the last one is a site with articles about hardware and IT business in general.

This project was started within the Market-Design programme of Elforsk, with the aim of developing representative test systems of Swedish distribution networks. Using such test systems as a basis for reliability and customer interruption cost calculations makes it feasible to analyse the network tariff regulation of Swedish power  istribution companies. In particular, it enables studies of the incentives for companies to invest in system reliability. Until now, the available test systems are either not representative of Swedish conditions, or too small in scale and limited in function.Within this project we have created two test systems. In order to represent the diversity of actual Swedish distribution networks, we have created one test system for urban environments and another for rural environments.

Retail marketing is a field with many different enbranchements. Some of these can be considered relatively well explored, while the lack of knowledge concerning others is almost total. For example, the existing knowledge regardng the possible impact that non-musical sound can have on the customer can be considered non-existent. With this in mind, the intention with the thesis was to closer investigate how non-musical sound can influence the customer's decision process and attitude in and to a grocery store. The authors started out with theories on associative networks and automatic processing.

A report has been made at a company in Borås at a company called ACG Nyström. Thecompany is today international and is marketing advanced equipment, systems and furthereducation to the manufacturing industry. A part of ACG Nyström?s production is a machinethey call Unimat. ACG Nyström doesn?t just stand for the actual production of the machine,but also for assembling and installation of the machine at the final customer.

This study is an evaluation of the runtime watch function in a OEE software, knownas ProTAK. OEE stands for Overall Equipment Effectiveness, it?s a way to measurethe factories process efficiency. The runtimewatch function allows the user to setup and monitor certain critical objects that are of importance for the pulp and paper process at the mill. The data from the runtimewatch can be correlated towards the suppliers specification for the components.

The way you address people is depending on the existing culture, to be on familiar terms with people you don?t know or elderly people is totally unacceptable in some cultures. Some behaviour might be acceptable in one culture, and unacceptable in another. Culture exists on different levels in the society, and what combines people within a culture are that they share the same norms and values.This study identifies and deals with the resemblances and the differences in the customer relationship within one specific organization with activity in several different countries. Two of these countries, which can be seen as each others cultural contrasts, were chosen for the study, Sweden and Spain.

The purpose of this master thesis is to map and analyze the appropriate valuation approaches used for Intellectual Property rights and develope a model for valuing patents. This project has been executed on behalf of Electrolux?s Group Intellectual Property and is intended to be used for managerial purposes.Project limitations include patents that doesent concern technology oriented products and services, real option methods, financial forecasts, decisions concerning patents taken by the R&D division, patent applications in general and taking into account unexpected future management decisions regarding patents.Electrolux?s Intellextual Property team applies, manages and protects the groups Intellectual Property rights including patents, designs and trademarks. With an increased globalization and the rise of emerging markets, incentives have increased further to protect and safeguard the group?s innovations.Mainly there are three different valuations approaches for valuing intellectual property rights, these include the income based approach, cost base approach and market based approach.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the price effect on the initial day of trading of IPOs and the price effect on the announcement day of SEOs on Stockholm Stock Exchange. A second purpose it to conduct studies on which factors influencing the price effects and if these factors can be explained by the same fundamental ideas. Theories regarding capital structure and the pricing of IPOs and SEOs are covered. The capital structure theories involve; Miller and Modigliani's cost of captial theory, Static Tradeoff Model and the Pecking Order. The Efficient Market Hypothesis is presented and previous theories are investigated.

The view on which kind of fiction that should be mediated to the public through the Swedish public library system has since the late 60´s been dominated by what in this Master?s thesis is called: ´the discourse on quality of literary fiction´. The aim of this thesis is to examine to which extent this discourse still plays an active role in the Swedish public library system or if that discourse has been replaced by a more market-led, demand responsive view, where the features of ´quality´ and ´culture´ have been downplayed and replaced by a ´customer?s service view´ on how and why fiction should be mediated to the public. The methodological and theoretical perspective in this thesis is led by the understanding of the discourse analysis in Michel Foucault?s ´The Archaeology of Knowledge´.

Visualization plays a key role in the concept of Lean. Lean was developed in Japan as a business philosophy in order to lead to an activity, where only steps that contribute to customer value of the final product are being performed. By defining the customer value and establish visualized standards, it is possible to see when situations differ from the standard. Then it?s possible to lead the process back on track.

It is a common view that companies should focus on building brands to increase profitability and stabilize cash flows. However, building and keeping brands alive is costly. Many firms spend large sums on branding only because they are supposed to, without knowing if they will actually gain from it. Up to date, there is limited convincing evidence that branding actually contributes to shareholder value creation. This thesis aims to investigate the relationship between brand strength and profitability and shareholder value.

This report describes the development of a well?functioning and aesthetically appealing web portal and associated database for a company called Svensk Kredit & Försäkringsförmedling AB (Translated: Swedish Credit & Insurance intermediation AB). The portal will test customers' creditworthiness through another company called Business Check in Sweden AB.Administrators to the web portal have a special user interface to display all customers, to disburse the money to the customer and edit customer information. A super?user interface is available for administrators where they can change the information on all administrator accounts.Many aspects of security has been addressed because the web portal will handle personal information.

AbstractPurpose ? The purpose of this study is to investigate possible reasons for long lead-time in a customer driven production, and how the lead-time can be reduced. To fulfil the purpose the study has been broken down into two questions.1. Whichfactorsaffectthelead-timeinacustomer-drivenproduction?2.