As self-service technologies become more common in service provisions, a deeper understanding is needed of how customer satisfaction is affected by automated service encounters. Drawing from theories of customer satisfaction, human interaction, and the dynamics of complex service provisions, the differences between automated and interpersonal service encounters in the initial part of a service provision are examined in terms of customers? evaluation of the service encounter itself, overall satisfaction, as well as the service encounter?s impact on global evaluations and evaluations of other non-dependant service encounters. The study was performed on people travelling by air on Swedish domestic routes. Passengers were asked to evaluate the airline?s performance on different attributes of the air travel they had undertaken, as well as to form an overall evaluation of the service.

De traditionella flygbolagen verkar på en marknad som kännetecknas av en ökad konkurrens. De är ofta delvis eller helt statligt ägda och präglas av tröga beslutsprocesser. På grund av sin befintliga struktur och gamla affärskultur har de svårt att konkurrera med priset som konkurrensmedel och måste därför fokusera på att skapa kundlojalitet.Uppsatsens syfte var att analysera och utvärdera SAS långsiktiga marknadsföringsstrategier genom en jämförande studie av företagets ledning, anställda samt kunder. För att belysa problemet har en gapanalys genomförts på SAS Sveriges ledning, anställda och kunder. Studiens teoridel är baserad på teorier om mervärdeskapande, organisation och lojalitet.Resultatet visar att gapet mellan SAS ledning och kunder var relativt litet då ledningen har kunskap och insikt om kundernas förväntningar på SAS tjänster.

The dependency of continuous electricity supply is high in the Swedish society today, at the same time no one is willing to pay for a too costly or over dimensioned power distribution system. The owners of the distribution systems are the ones responsible for this balance act of maintaining a high quality of electricity delivery to customers at a reasonable cost.In this master thesis a limited part of the primary distribution system (10 kV), owned by Mälarenergi Elnät AB and located in the city centre of Västerås, was chosen for a deeper analysis of its reliability. Its ability to handle outages of system components (N-1 and N-2 contingency analysis) was investigated to find out potential weak spots and parts of the grid that showed signs of being overdimensioned.The results of the performed simulations showed that in 74 % of the studied N-1 contingencies cases, consisting of outages of a bus bar in a distribution substation, the system could handle this without causing outages in other parts of the grid. For the N-2 contingencies 61 % passed the test. It was also found that one of the two included high voltage substations could alone supply the investigated part of the grid.

The purpose with our thesis is to understand and explain the advantages and disadvantages there is with the self scanning system. The advantages and disadvantages we will highlight from three different angels; the store management perspective, the staff perspective and the customer perspective. These three perspectives will together form an overall perspective over the advantages and disadvantages as the self scanning system has contributed with. Finally we will highlight the differences and resemblances we have found between the perspectives.Through a qualitative approach we have gathered data to our thesis. Furthermore we have based our theory chapter and our empirical chapter on the base of Grounded Theory.

This study was performed to examine the performance of an equity based crowdfunding campaign, as well as seeking to describe the risks, complications and the opportunities that this kind of funding brings. The study was conducted by an empirical case study of a company that was about to initiate an equity based crowdfunding campaign.The conclusion is that the planning of an equity based crowdfunding campaign is time consuming and requires knowledge in many different areas. Therefore it is important to identify in which areas skills and resources already are available within the company, and where it must be obtained through a learning process.The report also highlights that equity based crowdfunding, because of legal restrictions surrounding the issue of unlisted shares, can not be marketed as other types of crowdfunding. This leads to the conclusion that those who invest in equity based crowdfunding do not necessarily belong to the crowd that crowdfunding is generally associated with. Arguments can be made that this crowdfunding model rather resemble traditional angel networks.A technical study was also made about the company's products.

This study was performed to examine the performance of an equity based crowdfunding campaign, as well as seeking to describe the risks, complications and the opportunities that this kind of funding brings. The study was conducted by an empirical case study of a company that was about to initiate an equity based crowdfunding campaign.The conclusion is that the planning of an equity based crowdfunding campaign is time consuming and requires knowledge in many different areas. Therefore it is important to identify in which areas skills and resources already are available within the company, and where it must be obtained through a learning process.The report also highlights that equity based crowdfunding, because of legal restrictions surrounding the issue of unlisted shares, can not be marketed as other types of crowdfunding. This leads to the conclusion that those who invest in equity based crowdfunding do not necessarily belong to the crowd that crowdfunding is generally associated with. Arguments can be made that this crowdfunding model rather resemble traditional angel networks.A technical study was also made about the company's products.

Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka vilka värden som på längre sikt har avgörande betydelse för att engagera en kund med avseende på lojalitetsprogram.Metod: I studien användes en kvantitativ metod där en enkät med stängda svarsalternativ skickades ut till ca 30 000 respondenter. Till enkäten användes ordinal- och nominalskala för att möjliggöra Spearman?s rho korrelationsanalys med hjälp av statistiska mjukvaran IBM SPSS. Analyserna användes sedan för acceptera eller förkasta de hypoteser som deducerats från teorin.Resultat: Resultatet visade att trots en pågående negativ trend för lojalitetsprogram så skapar de engagemang och är betydande för kunden. Det värde som visade sig ha signifikant betydelse för engagemanget var kundens mervärde.

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate how an industrial company can increase customer value by offering added services to their core products. Theses added services can be categorized into the three different parts of the buying process. The company that was investigated is Smurfit Kappa Kraftliner in Piteå, a large international industrial company active on a business to business market. We have conducted a case study and made interviews with three respondents within the company. The result of the study show that the company offers value added services in each stage of the buying process.

Consumers today are bombarded with innumerable advertising messages. The need for companies to create advertisements that consumers find relevant is thus increasing. In order to break through the ad clutter, companies have to give something extra to their customers and show that they care about them. How a company decides to communicate might then be more important than what the company actually communicates.The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the use of creative media choices induces signaling effects and enhances advertising value as well as perceived corporate consideration. The two last mentioned variables are explored as potential driving forces behind the signaling effects.

Scarcity due to supply, demand or in time is all factors that affect consumers´buying behavior. The scarcity principle describes how scarce resources appear moreattractive to the customer's eyes than unlimited does. When something is scar thecustomer often draws parallels to the quality and price, that the product will bemore expensive and better. People hate to be deprived of choices. When a certainproduct is scar, the customer will desire the product even more.

Purpose:  The purpose of this paper is that from the physical travel agencies perspective try to see how they perceive their future, knowing that the booking on Internet has increased.Problem: What are the prospects for future development of the physical travel agency? Has the technological development affected the physical travel agency and forced it to change its role and meaning?Method: This paper has a qualitative approach. Interviews have been made with employees on physical travel agencies to try to reach a deeper understanding and thereafter be able to give us an understanding of our problem.Conclusion: The physical travel agency has been given a new role as the employees are no longer seen as sellers but more regarded to as consultants. The travel agency has become more of an information bank than just a shop where travels are being sold. Despite this change, we believe that customers will continue to visit the physical travel agents because of the unique knowledge and services they can provide that Internet not yet can offer.

ABSTRACTPurpose/aim: To clarify what information is communicated through the PR-firm JKL:s blog, how it is communicated, how it relates to and diverges from the communication theories in point, and what the strategies behind the blogging are. By doing this I hope to contribute to the knowledge on corporate blogging and how it can be used.Material/method: Qualitative textual analysis of ten blog posts published on the JKL Blog and process seeking interview with the person in charge of the same blog.Main results: JKLs? blogging coincides to the most part with business intelligence, with the exception that the information doesn?t relate directly to the company?s? main activities. This is mainly due to that they can?t publish information about their customers or competitors.

The decision of the European Commission to block the merger between Volvo and Scania in the late 90?s became the starting point to the debate of the possible discriminating effects of the European merger regulation. Especially since the Commission a few years earlier had approved of the merger between Mercedes-Benz and Kässbohrer on the German bus market, where the conditions for competition had been similar to those at hand in the Swedish case. The issue that was and still is in focus is whether the European merger regulation is more difficult to pass for large companies situated on a smaller domestic market than is the case for their competitors of corresponding size but situated on a larger domestic market.This thesis aims at examining what the judgement of the geographical relevant market means for the application of the Merger act. This is being done from two perspectives.

The aim of this study is to investigate how employees in consulting companies develop their competence in order to perform their daily work. The focus is on informal competence development. The theoretical framework consists of theories concerning learning and competence development in working life, theories on organizational change and evaluation, a well as professional reflection. The methods applied are narrative research and interviews based on the assumption that knowledge about reality is only obtainable through language and communication.The main results show that competence is developed through experience, social interaction, communication and dialog with co-workers and customers. The post-modern conceptions of the rapid (technical) development and need to be up-to-date has a strong hold on the informants apprehension of working life, as does the notion of not having enough time for all the competence development they would like.

Music affects us humans. Marketing has long made use of music as a means to enable customers to identify with a brand, and thus increase sales. The Influence of music is obvious, but can you use this on students, and how effective is it to use in a classroom?I will answer the question: how does soft music provide reassurance/create a harmoniums learning environment at the beginning of a lesson?By observing how students react and behave to the playing of soft music. My aim is to create different strategies that teachers can effectively use to get students to ?jump in? to their lessons without wasting 5-15 minutes of class time.Professor Lennart Grosin conducts research into what is in Sweden called PESKO.