Quality Assurance in Service Procurement --- Total Quality and Total Quality Management refer to popular management philosophies in organizations these days. The purchasing department has an important part in the strive for organizational quality as several studies show corporate spend is significant and increasing. In this master thesis I study the actions companies take to ensure quality in service procurement. I argue that managing quality when sourcing services is particularly tricky, because of the special characteristics that belong to services. The purpose of the study is to examine whether different actions are taken to ensure the quality of different kinds of services.

ProblemområdeAnvändningen av digitala sociala nätverk har under de senaste åren ökat och Facebook är det nätverk med flest anhängare över hela världen. Statistik tyder på att användningen av sociala medier och Internet är en väsentlig komponent i den svenska befolkningens vardag, speciellt bland den yngre generationen. Millenniegenerationens användning av sociala medier kan betraktas som en förutsägelse över hur framtida generationers konsumentbeteende kommer att se ut och är därmed av stor relevans för marknadsförare för att hålla sig uppdaterade kring denna generation. Företagens största utmaning idag är att skapa en god kundrelation via de sociala medierna. För att bättre förstå konsumenters beteenden behövs vidare forskning i ämnet, vilket har mynnat ut i studiens problemformulering:? Hur uppfattas CRM-aktiviteter via Facebook av den svenska millenniegenerationen? Teoretisk ansatsDen teoretiska ansatsen har delats in i fyra delar; relationsmarknadsföring och CRM,  sociala medier, marknadsföring via sociala medier och Facebook samt millenniegenerationen och segmentering.

This thesis investigates the dynamics of the relationship between a leader and the followers within a chosen organization. The research on leadership has generally been focused on the leader, and consequently treating the followers like passive subordinates. We pursue a more multidimensional view of the subject, meaning that leadership descends from an interaction between leaders and followers, which makes it relevant to study the dynamics of the relationship from both perspectives. We chose to do a qualitative case study on a middle- and preschool which has won a price for being an ideal place to work at. This price peaked our interest to investigate why the relationships are highly functional in this particular organization.

Titel: Investera i dina kunder med hjälp av Key Account ManagementBakgrund: För företag på dagens högt konkurrerande och ständigt föränderliga marknad krävs en väl strukturerad planläggning och nya metoder för långsiktig överlevnad. Den traditionella marknadsföringen flyttar fokus och introducerar Key Account Management utifrån det faktum att kundfokus och relationsmarknadsföring blivit allt viktigare, inte minst på den industriella marknaden. Key Account Management utgör leverantörsföretagets aktiviteter för att identifiera och analysera deras nyckelkunder, välja lämpliga strategier och utveckla operationell förmåga att bygga, vidareutveckla och underhålla lönsamma och långsiktiga relationer med dem. Konceptet handlar om att utveckla relationer, skapa förtroende och kunskap om kunden och att använda kunskapen för att leverera värde.Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att genom en operationalisering av teori utforma en analysmodell vilken genom test-analyser hos valda fallföretag ämnar besvara vilket värde, uppdelat i för- och nackdelar, som skapas för det säljande företaget till följd av Key Account Management.Genomförande: Denna studies syfte och frågeställningar kommer att besvaras genom en kvalitativ forskningsmetod bestående av intervjuer hos de tre valda fallföretagen; Gunnar Dafgård AB, Findus Sverige AB och Orkla Foods Sverige AB. Studien kommer att belysa värdeskapande till följd av Key Account Management med fokus på det säljande företaget.Slutsats: Det värde som, enligt litteraturen och intervjuer med de tre fallföretagen, skapas för det säljande företaget till följd av Key Account Management har redovisats utifrån de för- och nackdelar det kan medföra.

Thesis purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the interdependencies within the process of partner selection in the fashion and design sector and the emanating criteria for finding the ideal co-branding partner in order to use co-branding as a strategic brand activation tool. Methodology: Multiple Case Study Theoretical perspective: Brand Building and Brand Activation, Relationship Marketing, Strategic Alliances, Affinity Partnering, Co-Branding, Consumer-Brand Relationships Empirical data: Interviews with expert consultants and company representatives (adidas, BMW, BMW MINI, Diesel, H&M, Opel, Philips, Sharp, Volkswagen) Conclusion: Partner selection depends decisively on the different co-branding aims and incorporates the crucial step when using co-branding as a tool for strategic brand activation. The co-branding aim and the corresponding partner lead to various types of relationships, which, in this study, are anthropomorphized to connect the world of marketing and branding to real life. Fashion and design brands have proven to be particularly eligible as co-branding partners for brand activation due to their innovative and trend-oriented nature..

Background: The Swedish fashion industry grows steadily, today it?s populated by many small and medium sized companies. Due to the big clothing chains dominant position small businesses risks to be ousted out of the fashion industry.Smaller companies may find it difficult to reach out to the customer by traditional advertising because their budgets are often smaller. It is therefore important for smaller companies to create loyal customers. If the smaller sized businesses in the fashion industry do not follow the rapid developments in society and focus on building strong brands and relationships, they will have problems with surviving in the long run.Problem definition: Which communicative factors are important in the choice of brand strategy to create a long-term survival for small and medium-sized companies in the fashion industry?Purpose: The purpose of the essay is to analyse and evaluate the brand as a communications tool for building a brand image.Method: The data which is being used in the essay is collected from interviews with companies and survey of each company's existing and potential customers.Theoretical perspective: Relationship Marketing Perspective and Transaction Marketing PerspectiveTheories: Brand Strategies, Total Communication, Brand Equity, Involvement Theory, Service Value Profit Chain.Empiric: The empirical data is primary data gathered from interviews with a representative for each company and from the questionnaires distributed to the customers of each company.Analysis: The analysis is an interpretation of the empirical material collected from interviews with each company and customers survey.

As a consequence of the exports of Saab AB?s airplane 39 Gripen the departmentFATPA has grown and developed substantially in a short period of time. With the aim toclearly define and describe the establishment and its new work procedures and routines,which are meant to be applied after the turn of the year 2005/2006, FATPA is aiming todevelop a management model which will contain the above. The purpose of themanagement model is to describe how the department FATPA wants to work, especiallywith consideration to the department?s management.

Denna kandidatuppsats syftar till att undersöka hur hotellverksamheter praktiserar Revenue Management, genom att behandla interna och externa influenser..

We describe in this work - how the commercial real-estate companies build relationships with their tenants. We describe also how the tenants experience these relationships with the real-estate companies. This work acts about relationships and its build-upp and conserving. The literature about the working ways with relationships in the commercial real estate sector is not so extensive, despite an increased popularity of relationship-marketing since beginning of 1990s. We choosed to examine how the relationships functions nowadays with help of interviews targeted to contacts in five of us selected real-estate companies.

We have left the industrial society, and instead, we live in a post-industrial knowledge and information society. It is often said that industrial production has disappeared or that it has changed greatly. This means that fewer are employed in the manufacturing sector while the service sector is increasing, resulting in that the boundaries between production and administration decreases. The production goes from mass production to more flexible and specialized solutions. This puts greater demands on the logistics chain that continually need to work to meet customer requirements.

In relation to the development of IT-products it is very important that the software supplier is aware not only of the target group but also the field of application. Usability should characterize the whole IT-design process as, in relation to this context, design includes more than merely those aspects which are visible to and thus can be interpreted by the naked eye. The study examines the specific qualities and properties that substantiate the usability and the demands that a customer rightfully expects from an IT-product. The user and the customer are highlighted in the same context in order to demonstrate that it is through the customer that an IT-product is defined as being useful. Thus, from this perspective, the user and customer can be considered as being the same person.

The purpose of this thesis is to look into the knowledge city concept and the preferences and requirements of companies on such a city. Furthermore, suggestions of ideal conditions in a knowledge city are proposed. The thesis has been conducted through a qualitative approach where a deductive procedure has been implemented. In order to examine knowledge cities, Barcelona has sketchily been looked at as an early example of a knowledge city, whereas a more exhaustive observation of Copenhagen was conducted. Since the concept of knowledge cities is a rather new phenomenon, models from several disciplines constitute the theoretical framework.

Purpose: The purpose of our thesis is to analyze the application of models from product branding on job-seeking business students as a way to establish a personal brand.Conclude: We found that the principles of product branding closely resembles those of personal branding and are therefore applicable. The models that build a products brand can do the same for a business student. Thereby we can conclude that personal branding does derive from product branding..

Everywhere you look in today?s society many kinds of people are constantly interacting with each other. Especially in large groups of people working together, the phenomenon is even greater. In the construction industry there are many kinds of parts that need to come together in order to get sustainable and successful results. Therefore the relationship between the contractor and the construction client must be at its best.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) ämnar hjälpa företag att förstå kunders beteenden för att möjliggöra förvärvandet av nya kunder, underhålla befintliga relationer samt skapa lojalitet. Förståelsen för hur företag bör hantera kundrelationer har fått stor uppmärksamhet under de senaste åren vilket har utmynnat i relationsmarknadsföring på one-to-one nivå. ICA är det enda företaget inom den svenska dagligvaruhandeln som erbjuder sina kunder skräddarsydda, individuellt anpassade erbjudanden. Denna uppsats syftar således till att undersöka hur ICA använder CRM i ett försök att skapa mer lönsamma kundrelationer genom one-to-one marknadsföring. Studien genomfördes huvudsakligen genom intervjuer med två nyckelpersoner inom CRM på ICA.