The process of value creation is rapidly shifting from a product- and firm-centric view to personalized consumer experience today. Informed, networked, empowered and active consumers are increasingly co-creating value with the firm. The interaction between the firm and the consumer as well as the experience factor plays an increasingly important role in determining the success of a company?s offering. In this study, a special type of co-creating experience is investigated - ?omstartspex? - where the audience is interacting with actors during the play.

AbstractTitle: External communication and brand strategies in Swedish municipalities? Author: Philip Hagne & Einar Svensson? Tutor: Jessica Gustafsson? Purpose: The aim of this thesis was to study and obtain greater understanding on how Swedish municipalities use external communication and branding strategies to gain and attract more residents. The key questions to be answered in this thesis were: What does the external communication look like in the selected municipalities? Are the selected municipalities trying to establish their own brand? What does the work on creating the brand look like??Method/Material: This thesis is based on material collected trough interviews with people working with external communication in eleven swedish municipalities. The selected municipalities where divided into two groups based on their negative or positive population growth between 2005 and 2012.

There is now a trend to move closer to the customer in the form of long-term and lastingrelationships. The market today is characterized by growing competition with new playersconstantly arising. In order to gain competitive advantage with the increasingly challengingmarket, companies require to place the customer in the centre. Being close to the customerand engage in successful efforts to create customer loyalty has become a critical successfactor in many businesses. Especially when the customers in today's market is becomingincreasingly unfaithful and continuously looking for new companies with new productofferings.Many companies have now also realized the importance of trying to retain existing customersas it is more profitable than constantly trying to acquire new ones.

Sweden is going through big changes within the bank sector. Increasing card usage, decrease of cash acceptance in the society, an attempt to reduce money laundering, and a possible increase in profitability has lead to the rescindment of cash management among three of the four major banks. This has lead to a big debate in the society, a lot of frustration from customers, and a drop in customer satisfaction for every bank that started the process of removing cash management. The purpose of this study is to find out how the banks could keep their customer satisfaction when removing cash management. When doing the study, the rescindment of cash was a deduction of a part of the service, compared to the normal adding or starting of a service. The study was done through a focus group that was the base of a questionnaire that got answered by 125 respondents.

This essay is a case study of how two non-profit organizations, in the same line of business work with external communication and new media such as Internet and social media (Facebook and Twitter).Both these organizations are located in different countries and the purpose of the case study is also to find out if the differences in their work methods in communication depend on organizational or cultural differences. The case study was conducted in the organizations Sverige Amerika Centret in Karlstad, Sweden and The Swedish Council of America in Minneapolis, US. A qualitative approach executed through interviews and a qualitative content analysis of the organizations annual report from 2010. The result of the interviews and the document content analysis shows that there are differences in the way these organizations handle their work with external communications and new media. One of the organizations uses new media more actively in their work with communication and through that channel creates a relationship with its external audiences. The theories that has been used for this case study is Organization communication, Intercultural communication, Public Relations and Organization culture. Keywords: external communication, new media, culture and employees..

This study analyses how different companies offer customer support through social media andthe customer experience of it.Facebook emerged in Sweden during 2008 and today it has more than 800 million user acrossthe globe. Initially Facebook was created for individuals. However, over time, Facebook hasincreased its functionality to support the presence of companies as well. Today most companieshas got a Facebook page and through it, they can easily communicate with their customers.Customer support is one of the communication forms that Facebook is used for.1A questionnaire that received a hundred responses together with a survey of the differentFacebook pages was done in order to determine how the companies work through socialmedia. The results from the questionnaire and the survey was analyzed with different theoriesregarding corporate presence on social media and Facebook.The results shows that only a few people actually used Facebook for customer support butamongst the ones who did the majority thought it worked well.

The struggle for the customer has become a priority for the fashion industriesconsidering that it is the customers? willing to shop that guarantees theircontinuous survival on today?s competitive market. To keep the customer happyand satisfied, should be their priority as this leads to an economic advantagesince the customer becomes the companies strongest allay with help of the socalled ?word of mouth? effect. The positive response is then transmitted fromthe customer, acting as a spokes- person for the company.

Oscar Jacobson was founded in 1903 in Sweden, which at the timewas a leading country in the textile industry. During the 1960s morecompetitors arose as the fashion industry grew stronger and theglobalization became a fact. Today there is an abundance of brandsand products in the fashion- and textile industry. This has given thecustomers a greater range of products to choose from. We can seetendencies of customer not being as brand loyal as they used to.

For many companies, the Internet has revolutionized the relationship they have with their customers concerning costumer service. The use of Information Technology in regard to Internet as a media has provided companies with the opportunity to build customer databases in order to target their customers individually. The airline industry was one of the first pioneers to use the full potential of Internet to improve customer relations and its profits which we aim to investigate in greater detail in our thesis.Our thesis answers the question on how Scandinavian Airlines' (SAS) Eurobonus department uses their website to create valuable and profitable relationships with SAS loyalty club members through direct marketing. In order to answer our research question, three key informants have been interviewed - each representing different sub departments at Eurobonus; service and support, IT and marketing. Our results were that the Eurobonus department use direct marketing methods by sending customized e-mail offerings to target specific customer, using their customer databases.

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.

Studien har genomförts i Kista Galleria med syftet att utvärdera Ryals (2005) formel för värde­ring av kundrelationer. Med hjälp av formeln beräknas Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) för ett antal kundrelationer det undersökta företaget har. Huruvida formeln är funktionell för ändamålet kundvärdering är den centrala frågeställningen. Resultaten som framkommer ty­der på att en utgångspunkt för värdering av kundrelationer med hjälp av enbart monetära faktorer kan resultera i kortsiktiga strategiska beslut. Mindre butiker uppvisade generellt bättre Customer Lifetime Value per kvadratmeter än välkända butiker med stora butiksytor.

The work of the board in owner-managed firms often differ compared to the work of the board in large listed companies. Since the owners are working in different roles, the board in owner-managed firms might discuss topics outside the typical boards agenda, such as questions relating to ownership structure and operational matters. This thesis examines what external board members can contribute with in owner-managed firms, and which the most frequent difficulties are for the owners when deciding to recruit external board members. Through qualitative interviews, three owner-managed firms have been studied, which together with two expert interviews and five seminars, creates the empirics. In the analysis, the empirics are compared to what the earlier theory states.

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.

This thesis presents the question of a possible breakthrough for mobile payment solutions in Sweden. The way payments are made and the way cash is being used in the society is changing. To be accepted as an alternative method, if cash isn't king anymore, the new technology will have to acquire user acceptance. In this thesis a case study of Swish, a mobile payment solution for P2P-payments, is presented. The focus of the study is customer value and technology acceptance of the service.

The purpose of this thesis is to map out and investigate how the banking sector affects a customer?s willingness to change bank, and what the switching costs are for a customer when making these changes. A case study was performed through qualitative and quantitative questionnaires and interviews. The qualitative part was carried out to create hypotheses. The hypotheses was tested in a quantitative survey to be able to either accepted or rejected these them.