Background: Knowledge of customer needs is a key factor in companies? struggle to develop successful products. Several studies illustrate that the main reason for failure in product development is lack of customer understanding. Lately considerable changes have occurred. Large-scale mass production is continuously being replaced by customer orientation, especially in the high technological market.

This quantitative study aims to investigate whether there is a difference in the effect of the policy rate on the price per square meter for condominiums between small and large cities in Sweden. The study encompasses a total of seven Swedish municipalities, of which three located in large cities and four in small cities. Data regarding housing sales and additional variables have been collected for all municipalities, and the price per square meter is the dependent variable in the regressions performed on the dataset, which constitutes the empirical basis of the study. The aim is further to contribute to an increased understanding of how the effect of the policy rate might differ between Swedish cities and why. The results of the study show significant differences in how the policy rate affects the price per square meter in a small city compared to a large city, with the effect being greater in the latter.

The logistic business Svenska Retursystem AB was founded by the Swedish retail sector in the year 2000, and their introduction of a grey plastic crate to the supply chain for perishable goods changed the situation for the swedish horticultural sector. The new system revealed several challenges to be tackled by all actors, from the small family firm to the bigger organisations. Whereas the initiative comes from the customer himself, from the horticultural sector ?s point of view, a refusal of the new packing is a hard decision to take. It is however interesting that a comparison between the two systems, shows in favour of the corrugated board boxes, not only concerning environmental aspects but also for economical and ergonomical reasons.

Today automotive manufacturers are facing a crisis with increased pressure to strengthen their brands. To prevent declining results many automakers have chosen to extend its brand to other industries i.e. various forms of brand extensions. Automotive manufacturers have developed an international strategy for what merchandise to offer. The strategy has received an overall positive response, however, it does not apply well within the Swedish market where merchandise is sold in less quantity than abroad.

The park at Svaneholm is a place, the history of which is very little known today and the needfor better knowledge has been the cause of this investigation. The essay is primarily limited tothe time from late 17th century up to the end of the 18th century and takes stand on profoundinvestigations in accessible map-and archive material. The results presented show a manorhill, which during the course of a hundred years was subject to several changes and in bigparts consisted in other than park/garden.Burman related to the manor hill containing a cowshed, a large dam and a parterre garden isix quarters and it is plausible to think, that this establishment generally was built as producedon the plate.In the 18th century the construction is being changed, they go on building at the cowshed andin 1707 there are totally 268 livestock on the farm. In 1723 the garden is represented in amuch bigger scale than on the plate from the 1680:s, but it is not possible to tell, whether it isnew or not.Parts of the parterre garden is remaining during the whole of the 18th century, for the leastuntil it is being squared, but on two of the squares there was built a riding-groundMoreover the cowshed burnt down and was only partially reconstructed.The image given by the archive material is at the same time variegated. The inventory list ongarden tools from 1726 gives an image of gardening more directed to growing and pathshuffling, while the possibilities of keeping the parterres were fewer (e.g.

The market for fashion and interior consists of a large amount of retail chains, which together creates high competition. To be able to compete and to be the most obvious choice for the customers, retailers must review their activities that exist in the company and improve them. This concerns store chains since it is so important that the stores communicate the retailers strategy and it is very critical because of the impact that the stores have on the communication with customers. It is after all in the stores that the buying decision is made. With this information, it is important to strive for uniformity through the chain and especially the stores.

Lean is a production philosophy which is about increased resource use while meeting customer requirements. The foundation of lean comes from Toyota and their production philosophy The Toyota Way. Professor Jeffrey k. Liker has worked with Toyota's production philosophy and Lean for a long time and has created a 4 P model and 14 principles that characterize the Toyota production system (TPS), which many sources refer to.The aim of my work is to study the working procedure of asphalt projects from sales to the laid asphalt with a focus on planning and production management. The goal is to examine how the lean philosophy can be applied in planning and production to simplify the flow of asphalt projects based on Likers model and principles.

This thesis was developed as an assignment from Ludosity Interactive where the goal was to develop a copy of the Xbox Live Indie Games-marketplace from the Xbox 360. Ludosity Interactive had a necessity to easily test a game's attractiveness to potential customers using testing people from outside the company in a simulated Xbox Live Indie Games test environment; excluding this developed system there is no other way to do such an analysis without actually releasing the game on the Xbox Live Indie Games marketplace and then analyze the resulting sales from the product.The finished system had to be similar to the original system to the degree that a user could see past the interface itself and use the system just as he/she would have used the real marketplace. It also had to be easy to change and add games to the system so that Ludosity Interactive easily could show the games and the data that they deemed interesting for their tests. The final product was developed using C#, XNA and XML together with an Agileinspired development method in combination with Pivotal Tracker. This report describes how this product was developed..

Kandidatarbetets syfte är att dokumentera och analysera äppelsortimentet på Grönhults fruktodlingar i Vångabygden, samt att beskriva fruktodlingens historiska utveckling och att diskutera kring framtida möjligheter. De metoder som använts är dels en fält- och analysstudie över äppelsortimentet på Grönhult, dels en litteratur- och intervjustudie. Fruktodling har en mycket lång tradition i Vångabygden och kan spåras tillbaka till tidig medeltid då munkarna på Bäckaskogskloster antas ha startat intresset för fruktodling i trakten. Grönhults fruktodling är en av de tidigaste, lite större, odlingarna i Vångatrakten. Sedan slutet av 1950-talet har fruktodlingen inte skötts professionellt, men ändå underhållits någorlunda och än idag finns ett större antal, fruktbärande äppelträd kvar på gården. I Bilaga 4 finns en tabell över de 35 äppelsorter som idag finns på Grönhult. I denna tabell kan utläsas vilket land sorterna ursprungligen kommit ifrån, vid vilken tid de introducerats i Sverige, när sorterna mognar, vilken fruktfärg de har och anmärkningar om sorterna, där exempelvis deras härdighet i landet tas upp.

AbstractThe topic ?The effects of music in the supermarket on consumer behavior,sales, and customer state of mind? was assessed to try and analyse the emotionaldifferences that may occur as well as the sales variations that may arise fromplaying music in a supermarket. The reason for this study is that grocery storesare very common and abundant in most neighborhoods, as is man?s necessaryconsumption of food. In almost every city grocery stores must compete hardagainst each other in order to succeed in offering the most appealing options toconsumers.

AbstractThe topic ?The effects of music in the supermarket on consumer behavior,sales, and customer state of mind? was assessed to try and analyse the emotionaldifferences that may occur as well as the sales variations that may arise fromplaying music in a supermarket. The reason for this study is that grocery storesare very common and abundant in most neighborhoods, as is man?s necessaryconsumption of food. In almost every city grocery stores must compete hardagainst each other in order to succeed in offering the most appealing options toconsumers.

 The purpose of this essay is to analyze and understand which difficulties that e-company's struggles with the most, and what their strategies are to overcome this problem. Sales of clothing through e-commerce have made the shopping experience faster and more comfortable, but on the other hand it has created a couple of problems which makes a big difference in the purchase of clothing, we are partly talking about the absence of the testing opportunity. To not know whether or not the shirt or pants will fit, leads customers to a game of gamble every single time they purchase a garment. Another problem which makes customers nervous before a purchase is the absence of a physical salesperson. This might lead customers to question whether or not the company exists.

The changes in the Swedish meat- and meat processing industry have been substantial in recent years. These changes will alter the business environment for many companies. In order to be prepared to face new threats and new opportunities, companies should be actively working on these issues. Risk awareness and by developing of risk management strategies companies can act quickly and effectively when the conditions changes. The objective of this study is to analyse whether and why companies in the Swedish meat- and meat processing industry use various forms of risk management strategies.

This thesis seeks to explain the effect of private equity ownership on the amount of invest- ments made in a company. We use three capital expenditure based key ratios to determine if there is a tendency for private equity owned firms to invest more or less than comparable companies. Our dataset involve 27 Swedish buyout companies that were sold by a private equity fund between 2001 and 2009. Each buyout is assigned a peer group of two firms in similar size and in the same industry. Firstly, we compare the key ratios to determine potential differences in the level of investment.

It is important for every store to have a good financial performance which can be affected by the average purchase and the number of customers in the store. Customers shopping experience can affect both of these factors and therefore it is important for retailers to know about how an in-store environment can affect this experience. The purpose of this study is to give retailers an indication of the importance of consumers' shopping experience and how this may affect the store's financial performance. To study this subject an in-store survey was conducted in four grocery stores in Stockholm where a total of 320 consumers answered a total of 41 questions about their shopping experience. By sales data it was possible to conduct a statistical analysis to see which variables regarding consumers shopping experience influenced the average purchase.