The aims of the thesis are to describe ways to obtain information needed for teaching andlearning practical and artistic subjects at a folk high school, to look into which part the library plays in this search for information, and finally, to see what the library can do to meet the information needs existing arnong teachers and students of arts and craft.Qualitative interviews were made with four teachers, seven students and one librarian atone folk high school, providing data for the thesis. The results indicate five main ways to obtain information among the persons interviewed:through books, by their own work process, by sensuous experience, throughcommunication with other people, and by the master of the craft passing on his/herknowledge to the apprentice.In this thesis some suggestions are also given for helping the library to meet the information needs of people involved in arts and craft work..

The gas turbines in the Swedish secondary reserve are reaching the end of their technical lifetime, hence alternative solutions need to be considered. One of the solutions thought to have the greatest potential is the use of so called consumptionreduction. By entering contracts with large consumers, agreements are made to reduce consumption in the event of major disturbances in the power system and thus being used as a secondary reserve. This thesis investigates the feasibility of consumption reduction as part of the secondary reserve. This has been achieved by developing a requirement specification for the disturbance reserve and by studying the technical and economic potential for consumption reduction among a range of consumers.The technical potential for consumption reduction that fulfils the requirements for participating in the secondary reserve are on average 750 MW in SE 3 and 98 MW in SE 4.

Consumers today seek added value to the ordinary products/services that companies are offering. Consumers must get their emotional need satisfied - a need for experiences worth remembering. At the same time, the consumers are engaged in ethics and morals. Companies use events frequently as a marketing approach to meet the customer?s demand of added value.

The aim of this thesis is to form a theory of the green consumer power and to distinguish whether this phenomenon could indicate a movement toward the ecological citizenship. To do so, scientific theories regarding the responsibility of companies have been used, as well as the public choice theory, to link individuals as citizens to individuals as consumers. The motives of corporate environmental responsibility, along with consumers ability to bring pressure in different dimensions, are later drawn on as indicators applied to empirical information. The largest producer of ecological products in Sweden, Arla Foods, is employed as case study to explore if the green consumer power can and does exist. The ecological citizenship uses the ecological footprint, to define in what ways we can minimize our part of environmental degradation.The study seems to strengthen the theory, consumers do have a power to make companies go green and they tend to use it increasingly.

Parallel import in the European Union is the perfectly legal activity under Art. 28-30 EC of buying goods in a low-price country in order to ship and sell them in a high-price country. The pharmaceutical market in Europe is subject to the subsidiartiy principle of Art. 5 EC and heavily characterised by national regulations that lead to significant price differentials between ? generally speaking ? Northern and Southern Europe.

The competition amongst companies is getting tougher and the economic markets are getting even bigger with new products and businesses. One way for companies to differentiate themselves from the competitors is through packaging design. If the merchandise is to send a reliable and solid message to consumers, the attributes of the packaging must be consistent and uniform. If the different attributes are not coherent, the message loses credibility towards the consumer. Through the sent messages, the pack signals the products? expected quality and price.This paper includes two studies, in which the main objective is to discover and build understanding about Swedish consumers? perception of a product?s price depending on the pack?s design.

Multichannel-shopping has become a wide spread phenomenon in the retail industry due to a significant development of retail channels and formats. Consumers now shop for the same product category in many different retail settings and this trend is increasing. Therefore both the academic world and the retail industry are screaming for knowledge about the multichannel-shoppers. Several studies have focused on the characteristics of different channels and how multichannel strategies should be designed to minimize cannibalization. There is however a lack of research concerning what characterizes multichannel-shoppers and what drives them to shop in several channels.

Trioplanex International AB is a part of the group Trioplast Industrier AB, which produces packaging materials for the film and hygiene industry. The group is active throughout Europe, where most of the production is located in Sweden, with head office in Smålandsstenar. Operations in Landskrona consist of Trioplanex International AB and Trioplast Landskrona.Semi-finished articles consisting of paper cores, so called bobbins, give rise to a high amount of core waste in any form of core cutting. The objective of the report is to map out all core waste and illustrate the material flow with regard to present layout and equipment.In the beginning of the project an analysis of the current process was carried out with focus on the cutting equipment. A case study in the form of an improvement work took place in order to reduce the causes which had the biggest impact on existing machinery.Improvement proposals were discussed by the author together with supervisor, assigner and other parties involved.

The thesis deals with consumers behaviour in the use of online services and the cultures effect on it. It is a study of Swedes and Danes use of online job data bases. The thesis is based on a quantitative study. A questionnaire were used sent out to 80 Swedes and 80 Danes. The theory concerns areas of online consumer behaviour, decision making and services theory as well as theories within culture in relation to services and behaviour.

The beauty industry has experienced a turnover increase of 220 % the last 20 years (Jones, 2010). At the moment the market for men's skin care is seeing the fastest growth rate in the cosmetic industry and multinational companies such as Procter and Gamble and L'Oréal have identified a "multibillion-dollar potential" within the segment. BUT - fresh research from the category leading company L'Oréal, shows that only 48 % of the male consumers use a skin care product specially adapted for men. It further shows that as many as 28 % of these do not even know how that skin care product got into their bathroom cabinet. The purpose of this paper is to get a deeper insight into men's relationship with skin care products and grooming.

In Sweden today, the consumers have the opportunity to use the different sales channels; physical store, online store and brick and click, a combination of both. For the past decade, the use of ecommerce has spread tremendously and the fashion industry is one of the top three industries in this category. This, together with the growth of technology, have created new opportunities for consumers during their online shopping. The purpose of this study is to examine the differences between consumers who use physical store, online store or both. This study aims to look into consumers' shopping habits within these sales channels and factors that are affecting them.

As revenues from newspaper advertising plummet and their readers loyalty erode, the need to understand newspapers' changing environment and the actors involved in this change is growing in importance. Evidence is the entire industry is entering into a restructuring phase and that this restructuring is driven by the rapid consumer adaption of internet media.In this thesis I elaborate on "how the Internet is affecting the conditions for value creation in printed newspapers" and "how the Internet is affecting the conditions for other actors involved in the printed newspaper's value creation". These two questions land us in the bigger question of "Does the Internet act as a compliment or a substitute to the printed newspaper ".To answer these questions the printed newspaper is represented as the actor in the middle of content producers, advertisers and consumers. It is in its role as a means of distribution and as a co-ordinating force that we study the value creation of the printed newspaper. The empirical base of this thesis is a qualitative participant observation where the author during a period of time interacted and collected data from the open discussion in blogs by several of the industry's top influentials combined with material from seminars and reports on the current state of media.

Due to the highly competitive and busy marketplace of today, companies are forced to take unforeseen measures in defending and developing their brands. Key elements like opinion leadership and lifestyle marketing are commonplace and aim to deliver values that are more difficult to define compared to quality, price, looks and usability. This paper aims to develop what should be considered most fundamental to all commercial branding. By investigating the ideologies that are the core of many successful companies, we hope to clarify the importance of communicating these ideologies. The topic is examined by method of quantitative analysis and the main purpose is to determine; what do the companies think of their ideologies, and how do their consumers recieve them? A secondary purpose is also to investigate whether different kinds of consumers recieve the ideologies in different ways..

Both authors of this study have been involved in the School of Business at Umeå University Student Association (HHUS) and is due this discovery deficiencies and problems within the association. The pressure to engage in HHUS is compared with other financial organizations around the country very low. This led us to consider why this is the case. From experience we know that communication between the association and its members are not functioning optimally. Communication itself is essential for motivating students and for that motivation should be high for the students to experience good quality on the engagement. The purpose of this study is to identify lines of communication and motivational factors that affect students who are members of HHUS to get involved or not.

The behaviour of consumers has changed rapidly during the last decade, and a healthy lifestyle and an environmental mindset has become part of everyday life. This is also something that has become prominent in the supermarkets, where the organic products are increasingly winning shelf space. Several consumer behaviour studies have shown that the attitudes towards organic products and labels are predominantly positive. According to traditional marketing theory, these kind of attitudes should affect consumers? purchase intentions in a positive manner, as well as the actual purchase behavior.