Demands on businesses are constantly increasing and the competition in the market-place is becoming ever tougher. To gain the long-term confidence of customers, not only the best businesses, but also the best supply chains are required.Volvo Cars is experiencing a changing competitive situation and their retailers are having trouble stocking the right spare parts. Shorter product life cycles and the growth of Volvo?s product program result in an increase in the number of spare parts to be stocked. In order to adapt to market trends and meet customer demands, Volvo has developed the LDC model, establishing a number of regional warehouses in strategic locations in Sweden, de-signed to supply spare parts to the regions? retailers through so-called Vendor-Managed In-ventory (VMI).The purpose of the study is to examine Volvo personbilar Sverige?s (VPS) motivation for a modified customer-service strategy through LDC.

Abstract ? ?Aggregate complaints in banks MIS?Date:                       June 8th 2012Level:                      Master thesis in Business Administration, 15 ECTSInstitution:                School of Sustainable development of society and technology, Mälardalen UniversityAuthors:                  Abdulla Ahmed Ibrahim         Alexis AnderssonTitle:                       Aggregate complaints in MIS ? A case study of Nordea BankTutor:                      Carl G ThunmanKeywords:               Aggregate, complaint, dissatisfaction, content analysis, Nordea, MIS.Purpose:                  The paper aims to develop a model of how Nordea Bank can monitor customer dissatisfaction through aggregated dissatisfaction analysis. Furthermore, the study aims to identify improvement proposals in Nordea based on the developed model and conducted interviews.Method:                  This thesis consists of qualitative interviews. Personnel at the local office in Västerås has been interviewed as well as Nordea?s customer ombudsmen, former office employee at Nordea, data analyst, head of customer inquiries, Professor of database technology and also a researcher in language technology.

Today, youth crime is a topic that recurs daily in the news and politics; the subject arouses motions both within the professional community and among private individuals. The purpose of this study was to shed light on how social workers reason and work with young people aged 15 and above who are in criminal environments. We also shed light on how motivation can contribute to young people accepting the voluntary interventions that social workers have available. The study helps draw attention to the potential challenges that social services face when motivational work is insufficient, and the concern is not sufficiently high to warrant the use of coercive interventions. Our empirical material was collected using semi-structured interviews with social workers who have a degree of Bachelor's degree in Social Work, whose work is to carry out investigations of young people who, due to their own behavior, may be in need of support or protection from social services.

Thesis purpose: The aim of this paper is to extend the knowledge of what influences the purchase decision of functional food in the store. By applying the M-R model in a new setting - the dairy department in grocery retailing in Sweden - and adding variables related to health attitudes, the aim is to contribute to existing research concerning in-store purchase decision making and store environment as well as consumer attitudes. Methodology: This thesis employs a quantitative strategy with a deductive approach and data has been collected with questionnaires. Theoretical perspective: Environmental psychology serves as an overarching framework where, more specifically, certain aspects of store atmospherics and some variables concomitant to health attitudes provide the theoretical base. Empirical data: The empirical data consists of customer purchasing a functional food product, Proviva, and this is contrasted with a test group, Bravo.

This is a product development project which has developed a prototype in order to facilitate for people using mobility devices when they want to buy a larger quantity of groceries. The prototype is a shopping cart composed with the upper part of a walker.Today there are many different types of mobility devices used by elderly and people with physical impairment. According to Myndigheten för samhällsskydd och beredskap (MSB) are accidental falls the most common cause of accidents in Sweden.This project has been using Computer Aided Design (CAD) as a tool to create a visual image of the prototype. The advantage of this is to modify the functionality and performance of the prototype on the computer before the modification takes place in the real model. Using human manikins, the CAD model was rendered in natural surroundings to get as true a picture as possible.

The Swedish retail business has been characterized by a small number of ruling distributors. These distributors have been affected negatively by the internationalization which has made it possible for international distributors to establish their stores in the Swedish market. These international distributors are focused on low price stores. Their establishment on the Swedish market has led to a decrease in market shares for the Swedish distributors, which has damaged their profitability. Another change that has affected the Swedish distributors is that the behavior and needs of the customers has changed.

Abstract: Hightech EU/Japan ? a research about European hightech companies? interest in establishing business on the Japanese market with the help from a middleman. Subject: Marketing. Problem: The Japanese market is highly developed and therefore interesting for foreign companies. The Japanese culture is very different from the European and this together with the long distance creates problems for European hightech companies to compete on the Japanese market.

This master thesis investigates the possibilities of using GPS-information from trains to create a model of a railway system, register the routes of the the trains and predict how the trains will travel in the railway system.The thesis work was done at Icomera AB which is a company that specializes in internet connected vehicle solutions.We describe how the GPS-information is sent from the trains in the form of samples and investigate limitations and possibilities with the available information. About three million samples from 83 SJ-trains were analysed and the samples were filtered with the intent of removing erroneous information. We here found that about 30 % of the samples from the trains were unreliable.A solution for how the samples from the trains can be used to create a model of the railway system traveled by the trains is presented. We use a large set of historical samples and use cluster nodes and Hermite curves to generate a graph that represent the railway system with stations, nodes and the railway itself. A fully automatic solution is not presented since it did not fit into the time frame of the thesis; instead we created a simple tool which can be used to manually finish the model of the railway system.Furthermore, we describe how the railway system and the samples from the train can be used to register the routes the trains travel.

The study aims to reduce energy consumption in apartment buildings where individual metering and charging of heat is applied. The aim is to develop planning and design for individual metering and charging in apartment buildings.The study is based on literature review, interviews and case study that include analysis of existing documents. Interviews were carried out with the property developer and the involved consultants who planned the apartment building Yasuragi. To investigate the differences the condominium association has noted in heat consumption between flats, the debit values of the heat were used to discern which houses that were furthest from the average consumption. On these flats there were temperature measurements and thermal photo shoots made for discriminating behavior and possible construction techniques which could be the explanation for the heat spread.Boverket shows that the consumption of heat can be reduced by 10-20% after insertion of individual metering and charging in an apartment block.

Abstract -                     Much better sauce! - A study of brand loyalty for Lohmanders Date:                             5th June 2013Level:                           Bachelor thesis in marketing, 15 ECTSInstitution:                   School of Economy, Society and Technology, EST                                      Mälardalen University Authors:                       Sara Meijer                               Julia Åberg                                      20th February 1990                   26th April 1990Title:                             Much better sauce! ? A study of brand loyalty for LohmandersTutor:                           Finn Wiedersheim-PaulKeywords:                   Brand, loyalty, consumer behaviorResearch questions:    Which significance has the brand for the consumer when buying fresh sauce?                                       How loyal are the consumers to the brand Lohmanders?                                      How does brand loyalty arise among Lohmanders customers?Purpose:                            The purpose with this thesis is to research consumer?s brand loyalty to fresh sauce and to analyze how brand loyalty arises regarding the brand Lohmanders.Method:                       The theoretical framework used in the study is based on theories of consumer behavior, brands and loyalty. The quantitative study consists of a poll. To complement the study a focus group interview and a company interview have been held.  Conclusion:                        The study showed that the brand has significance for the consumer to a certain extent. The brand can though have an unconscious effect on the consumers since most of the purchases are made by habit.

Urban planning is not only a matter of architectural trends; it is first and foremost political. This thesis seeks to understand the links between political ideas and visions for the city and the physical structure of the city. The study aims to construct a model to help understand these links, a helpful tool in analysing a city, focusing on the one hand at the physical structure of what I call "The City as a Welfare Provider" and on the other hand at "The City as a Growth Engine". It also sets out to test this model in an empirical study of Stockholm and the soon-to-be built district of Norra Station in the same city.The analysis shows that Stockholm has ambitions to be a welfare provider to its citizens, but have also adopted to a discourse of interurban competition which stresses the importance for the city to enhance economical growth. What is interesting is that the physical structures promoted in the planning documents of Stockholm are nearly exclusively those associated with the model of "The City as a Growth Engine"..

Produktplacering har växt i popularitet över åren och används i allt fler typer av medier. Det har gjorts flera studier om konsumenters attityder till produktplacering men endast ett fåtal av dem har gjort en distinktion mellan konsumenters attityder till produktplacering i olika slags medier. Genom att använda fokusgrupper ska denna studie därmed undersöka studenters attityder till produktplacering i de fyra följande medierna; filmer, musikvideor, datorspel samt bloggar. För att ta reda på detta användes ABC-modellen av attityder och studenternas attityder delades upp under de tre olika kategorierna inverkan, beteende och kognition. Resultaten visar att studenter överlag är positiva till produktplacering i filmer och anser att det ofta är en naturlig del av filmer.

Traditions are something that is very important to many people, Christmas is usually no exception. Christmas tree, Christmas ham, herring and candle lights are just as important as the advent candlestick. The advent candlestick help you get the Christmas feeling during the countdown. In this report the work with a new advent candlestick concept can be followed step by step.A lot of information was needed in the beginning. By doing some research, surveys and interviews the ground was established for further work.

There are an increasing number of people suffering from depression and depressed mood. Concurrently important benefits have been noticed from the effects of massage, effects that can be assumed to restore individual?s health with depression and depressed mood. The aim of the study was to examine the importance of gentle massage in connection with depression and depressed mood. The research was based on scientific studies that were applied through the databases Cinahl, elin@Kristianstad, PsycARTICLES, PsycINFO, PubMed and the journal Vård i Norden as well as by manual searches.

This master thesis deals with steel girders subjected to patch loading caused by concentrated moments. There exist no good methods to calculate by hand the ultimate resistance for this load case. In ?tunnplåtshandboken?, (Handbook for sheet metal, which is published by SSAB), one calculation method is presented. It?s however fairly difficult to use, because of many calculation steps and many graphs.