Title: Culture?s Affect on the Determinants of Customer Satisfaction in Retailing: The Case of a European Retailer in the U.S. and China Date of the Seminar: 29th of May 2007 Course: BUS 809 Master thesis in International Marketing Authors: Lisa Bustamante Chesley Norman Charlotte Valind Advisors: Johan Anselmsson Cecilia Cassinger Keywords: International Retailing, Determinants of Customer Satisfaction, Culture, United States, China Thesis purpose: Our study aims to identify the determinants of customer satisfaction of two national cultures in a global retail setting, in order to clarify what role culture has, if any, in customers? satisfaction with an international retailer. Further, this will uncover if a Western perspective of determinants of satisfaction is a universal means of capturing what satisfies customers across cultures in a retail setting.

The Swedish road transport sector relies almost completely on fossil fuels. In 2007, as much as 96 percent of the total sales of fuels was made up of petrol and diesel, while at the same time the share of total emissions of greenhouse gases in Sweden that came from road transports amounted to close to 30 per cent. Sweden is by no means worse off than any other European country in these respects. In order to address the questions of high oil dependence and CO2 emissions the European Commission has proposed a reinforcement of the legislative framework, with a 10 percent minimum for the market share of biofuels in 2020. Furthermore, the proposed target is binding for the member states, unlike the current voluntary target of 5.75 percent by 2010. More than doubling the usage of biofuels in only a bit more than a decade will most likely not be possible without policy interventions.

In recent years it has become more and more evident that man has contributed to much of the climate changes that have taken place during the last century. A major challenge today is to reduce emissions and energy usage at the same time as the global population is growing. To contribute to a better environment, Stockholms Stad has set at target of becoming fossil fuel free by the year of 2050. The construction of new districts is done with this goal in mind; energy efficiency and renewable energy sources are examples of methods to achieve this.Solar energy is considered to be a sustainable energy source and the most common techniques to harvest solar energy in Sweden are solar cells and solar collectors which produce electricity and heat respectively. This report aims to investigate whether an investment in any of these systems would prove to be economically beneficial at Kvarnholmen, a district under construction in eastern Nacka, Stockholm.Since the finished blueprints only cover a small portion of Kvarnholmen, the report examines the possibilities for a house where construction has already begun, Nya Kvarnen.

Mechanical ventilation is the most common type ofventilation in newly constructed office buildings. Therehas been an interest to utilize natural ventilationinstead of mechanical ventilation among architects andHVAC consultants in recent years. This is due to thesize of mechanical ventilation systems, which arespace consuming. The mechanical ventilation system isalso complex and requires maintenance. Furthermore,the fan uses a considerable amount of energy.

This thesis examines different methods for the cooling of data centers. Several means of cooling with the refrigeration cycle have been studied, as well as the feasibility of using free cooling in different parts of Sweden. In addition, the possibilities of transferring excess heat to a nearby district heating system were investigated. It was found that in all investigated cases except two, the data center could be cooled solely with free cooling for at least 300 days a year when only the outside air temperature was considered as a constraining factor. The limit was then set to 20 °C.The vast majority of all district heating systems in Sweden get little to none of their heat from other excess heat sources.

The purpose of this study explains the relationship between corporate governance and the auditor's role in Swedish family firms with the definitions micro, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and how this relationship is affected by the firms strategy. The study is based on a survey sent out to 3000 Swedish SMEs, of which 280 responses from family firms could be used. Our findings showed that the auditor in the family firms didn?t have a specific role or contributed added value to the firm, and that the strategy didn?t affect the outcome. Furthermore, we found correlation between the perceptions of the auditor's role and added value depending on the family firms type of corporate governance.

Every year the Swedish government invests capital in different projects. In recent years the Swedish government has chosen to invest in design. The reason for this is that the government wants industry to use design as a competitive source. Two organizations, Svensk Form and Stiftelsen Svensk Indistridesign, have been assigned to improve industry and society?s under¬standing of design.

Grubbe Ventilation AB is a sheet metal and ventilation company who provides design, installation, service, and repair of ventilation. The company is expanding their business by building a new facility in Umeå, Västerbotten. The property is designed to be used for both office and industrial work.Grubbe Ventelation AB has not yet decided upon wish system which is to be established to provide the building with heating and cooling. The consulting firm Umeå Projekt Team has therefore been asked to investigate the possibilities to invest in geothermal- heating and cooling.If the investigation of a geothermal heating- and cooling system would provide favorable results it would be a very appropriate alternative that provides energy at low costs and are an environmentally friendly option as the energy comes from stored solar energy in the ground is provided by stored solar energy in the ground.The facility ´s heating and cooling consumptions are calculated in the program BV2 and the result indicate a heating demand of 185 000 kWh per year due to thermal transmittance, transmission losses, heating of warm water and a cooling requirement of 5500 kWh.Three different systems of geothermal heating and cooling were tested in the computer program Energy Earth Design. The results show no difference in the dimensioning of the drill hole if merely heating were to be used or both heating and cooling were to be established.

This case study examined what impact the neurological disorder Asperger?s syndrome has on the line of reasoning about religion and spirituality. Also, the question of whether the four informants showed any tendency to use the cognitive tools calledtheory of mind (ToM), existential theory of mind (EToM) and hypersensitive agency detection device (HADD) or not was put forth. From the interviews five themes were extracted: a stereoscopical view upon the world, thoughts on physical causality, prayer used as one-way communication, spiritual agency and intentionality, as well as existential and social questions. These themes were subsequently matched with theories on ToM, EToM and HADD.

The discussion regarding international aid tends to be highly debated for long periods of time. Some individuals are very positive towards aid and some individuals are less positive towards aid. This study aims to broaden the understanding of the aspects behind that. The previous research tends to focus on aid allocation within the EU, or which macro factors could influence which donor countries give to which recipient countries. This study aims to add to the research with which aspects at the individual level can influence the individual's attitude towards international aid from the EU.

Climate and environmental issues is now high on the agenda. We live in a generation that must try to solve some major environmental problems. Buildings and habitations account for approximately 40 % of Sweden's total energy today. To reduce this figure, as needed, more research in the field of energy efficiency is required.This thesis concerns the heating of buildings. The load on district heating is heavy during certain times of the day.

New laws and recommendations within corporate governance during the last years have affected the way board of directors work. The board is said to have and fulfill three roles: a control role, a service role and a strategy role. These roles could be understood by three theoretical theories: the agency theory, the resource dependence theory and the stewardship theory. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether, and if so how, the board work differs between two small firms based on these roles, given that one of the firms is a publicly listed firm and the other is a privately owned firm. Using a qualitative case study as research method we find that the board work differs between the two companies when it comes to these roles.

Audit is a common concept in Sweden. This occurs in many contexts and situations and may intend a wide spectrum of areas. It might consider environment audit, amateur audit, internal auditing, external audit etc. In the business community external audit and the associated external auditor is possibly, from the general public's side, the most recognized. The external audits purposes in big features are checking limited companies economic accounting along with the board and CEO: s management.

The thermal response of a borehole field is often described by non?dimensional response factors called gfunctions.The g?function was firstly generated as a numerical solution based on SBM (Superposition BoreholeModel). An analytical approach, the FLS (Finite Line Source), is also accepted for generating the g?function. In thiswork the potential to numerically produce g?functions is studied for circular borehole fields using the commercialsoftware COMSOL.

The energy consumption continues to increase as the use of electronics and energy consuming equipment increases. The use of fossil fuels has to be phased out for this to be sustainable in the long run while the use of renewable energy continues to increase. A renewable energy source is solar energy but the production of heat and electricity are today very expensive compared to other energy sources and an important task for the solar energy market to grow is therefore to minimize the production cost of the solar collectors while increasing its efficiency to produce heat and/or electricity. One way to convert solar energy into heat is by using solar collectors and electricity can be produced by utilizing the produced heat, or by applying solar cells.This thesis aims to recommend a reflective material for the next generation solar collectors from Absolicon and to recommend a commercially available coating for the receiver tube of the solar collector. A market study has been carried out to investigate the cost-related aspects along with the optical and durable aspects for the optical material of the solar collector.