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.

   ABSTRACT  Title:  4000 seats to Sandviken - The business discourse development from 1921 to 2012 seen through two sports stadiums in Sandviken                            Level: Final assignment for Master Degree in Business Administration Author: Signe Jernberg Supervisor: Lars Ekstrand Date: March 2012 Aim:  The aim of this paper is to investigate the business discourse emergence during the 1900s and to make a contribution to how a business administration discourse can be seen today. Method: The business discourse is examined through a inventory of how business theories, practices and ideas have enabled the design of two sports facilities, Göransson Arena And Nya idrottsplatsen in Sandviken Municipality. The inventory is based on material gathered from Sandviken Municipality archives and from Göransson Arenas' own archives. The archives consist of such things as board meeting protocols, annual reports, bookkeeping, drawings, photographs and more. The method is based on Foucault's discourse analysis, focusing on his archaeological period.Results & conclusion: The archives show how business ideas, theories, and expressions can be seen in the two arenas. The results show how the concepts of customer, company and association are present in the design of the two arenas in different ways.

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.

The Master Thesis has been carried out in cooperation with Silva Sweden AB and the objective was to develop a new product concept within the product category for everyday exercise. The purpose of the thesis was to use and analyze methods and tools which aid creativity and concept creation in order to make method recommendations for future projects.During the thesis a number of customer needs were identified, which in turn were translated into 20 concepts. On a concept decision meeting a pedometer-based concept was chosen for development. The new pedometer is in addition to counting steps also able to measure and calculate the user?s total climbed height during a day and present this graphically in comparison to famous monuments or distances.

AbstractSpotify is currently the largest and fastest growing online music service. They started in 2006 and has since established itself in several European countries. Their financial revenue comes from advertising spots on the client and registered paid subscribers. Together with Spotify, we have come to a certain focus area where Spotify themselves feel that there is potential for improvement. This area of focus concerns the conversion from using Spotify's free "Open" to the payment options Unlimited and Premium.Objective: We will use an innovation process to achieve an innovation grant that will create more attraction to the payment services.

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.

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.

International expansion has long been associated with a positive trend that many companies, regardless of industry, choosing to realize mainly to expand its market share and hence its profitability. Various theories describe differentiated strategies to promote corporate expansion. Either they shall be financed by internal funds, or balancing equity with debt, or only increase leverage in order to achieve the desired results. This study focuses on the Swedish fashion market and its degree of internationalization. The purpose is to attempt to discern whether there exists a correlation between the degree of internationalization and its financial performance.The study was based on a quantitative approach where secondary data was collected so that we then would be able to perform regression calculations.

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.

Utvecklingen på den teknologiska marknaden har kommit att påverka företag i en allt större utsträckning då marknadsföring på Internet blivit allt viktigare. Den ökade använd-ningen av smartphones har bidragit till att fler och fler människor ständigt är uppkopp-lade vilket i sin tur har öppnat upp för nya sätt för företag att skapa relationer och att inte-ragera med sina kunder. En bidragande faktor är sociala medier som har öppnat upp för interaktion där företag och kunder kan kommunicera med varandra. De har även öppnat upp för kommunikation kunder emellan, vilket både skapar positiv och negativ word of mouth. I takt med utvecklingen av den nya telefonin, har mobilapplikationer kommit att få en allt större betydelse som marknadsföringskanal.

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.

When contemplating entering an alliance the rationale behind the decision should differdepending on the size of the companies involved as well as on other important factors. The importantfactors influencing the decision are related to the resource pooling potential of the alliance,the power structure along with the business network the companies are a part of. Theanalysis has shown proof of a need for cooperation if one wish to succeed in the telecommunicationindustry and it has also determined which resources that are deemed to be most important toget in touch with, for our study object, to facilitate its access to the market. Those resources aredefined as a direct channel to the customer, funds/capital and the access to relevant businessnetworks. To get in touch with these lacking resources, three alternative approaches has beenproposed; all of them involving a strategic alliance decision.