This thesis examines the possible beneficial effects of a temporary cooperation between a national brand and a private brand. The main hypothesis suggests that if a national brand wants to make a category extension to a remote product category, it should be able to decrease its risk by affiliating itself with a private brand. The national brand should through such a brand alliance be able to borrow some of the flexible characteristics that a private brand possesses to increase its associations with the new category. The survey consisted of 800 questionnaires with different cooperations between a private brand (ICA) and two national brands (Tropicana and Bravo). These were handed out to students in the universities of Stockholm.

The different characteristics of many food products, such as aroma and texture, changes during storage time and become undesirable. The reason is instabilities within the product which become prominent as the product ages. These changes in characteristics are quality losses caused by changes in the product?s intrinsic and extrinsic environment. The stability in UHT-milk and beverages similar to it have been studied in the past decades and a certain focus have been on age gelation which is a common defect in these type of products.

Asset management in insurance companies differs from conventional asset management to the extent that respect has to be taken to both assets and the commitments the insurance company has towards its customers. A model that has proven to fit well regarding the matching of assets and liabilities is the Asset Liability Management Model (ALM model). In addition to the matching in the balance sheet, the ALM model can be used in a company's work with strategic portfolio allocation by applying it as a basis for analyzing investment strategies with expected risk and return. From this, the ALM model also becomes relevant for calculating key figures according to the legal framework Solvens II which includes laws and regulations regarding the demands on economical strength (solvens) of insurance companies.Hence, the goal of this masters thesis has been to, on behalf of Bliwa Livförsäkring, create an ALM model to support the asset management department of Bliwa in their work with defining a credible way of analyzing the future risk and return of Bliwa's asset portfolio and insurance undertakings.The ALM model generally consist of four submodels, the scenario model, the liability model, the asset model and the company model, where the scenario model often is named as the core of the ALM model. The course of action has been to develop these submodels individually, with focus on the scenario model.

The purpose of this thesis is to identify the factors that drive efficiency and effectiveness in technical development projects performed at A?F?s department of product development. In addition to identifying and analyzing these factors, the thesis also analyzes what needs to be taken in to account in order to implement a measurement system that is able to both monitor and control the identified factors.The thesis has been performed in a qualitative manner. It is based on interviews with people from several different technological companies, within different lines of business, all of which are customers to A?F?s department of product development.The results show that there are seven critical factors for project efficiency and effectiveness.

Online shopping is growing and its turnover increases each year. Internet hastherefore become an important retail location for companies. Web shops lack thephysical room for marketing as well as face-to-face interaction between customer andsalesperson. Therefore there is a need to develop marketing and customercommunication methods for this way of shopping. In physical shops the customer hasthe ability to try on the garments and be pampered by the staff.

The purpose of this investigation is to come across the associations of consumers who are being exposed to a brand extension from a different product category. Moreover, our aim is to contribute to the knowledge of how consumers respond to these extended products, by investigating the influence of the parent brand. To fulfill our purpose, this study was conducted through qualitative interviews with consumers. In order to carry out our investigation and analyze our findings the following theoretical framework has been used: Customer-based equity, Parent brand affect and Perceived fit. Our data was collected through ten semi-structured interviews including consumers of Fiat and Marlboro brand extensions.

The company Sol & Energiteknik wanted to examine the possibility to make a standardhouse totally energy independent. Based upon this I have, during the spring of 2007,examined the possibilities available at the market today through litterature studies, contactwith several companies and reading reports at the internet.The first thing to examine has been to determine the energy consumption for a standardhouse, and find out if there are better technologies to be used for energy conservation.My conclusion in this matter is that there are possibilities today for building a house moreenergy efficient.When I had reached the point at which my design for the house was decided, I also hadto choose the different products to use to produce energy as well as to store that energy.To produce heat and electricity to the house I decided to use a wind turbine and a solarwater heater.The most difficult part of designing a house that is energy independent is that theproduced energy must be stored somehow. Storing the heat is relatively easy beacuse theheat can be stored in a large water tank. The electricity is a bigger problem beacuse itmust be stored in batteries, which today are too expensive to be used in a standard house.In the future producing and storing hydrogen might be used to produce electricity, buttoday that technology is both expensive and not tested enough.My final conclusion is that a standard house can not be built to be totally energyindependent today, unless it is very expensive to connect the house to the electricitynetwork. As an alternative solution I came up with a proposal for a house which isconnected to the electricity network and have some amount of own produced energy.This house prooved to be a good investment if you choose to build it today, and it couldbe a very good investment in the long run beacuse energy prices increase every year..

This master thesis was performed at Scania Research & Development. The given mission was to see where the department Systems Development should focus to improve their development work. Thus the purpose was to map the product development processes in which the department works today and within them identify improvements. To fulfil the purpose a theoretical study of relevant terms, such as improvement work, product development and processes, initially was formed. The mapping method used is called "walk trough" and meant to let the people working in the processes be guides in their own process.

Investors have been shown to be driven by emotional and psychological factors. This contradicts classical financial theories, for example the Efficient Market hypothesis which states that all investors act rationally. Behavioural Finance is an area of study which describes various psychological factors which may result in irrational investor behaviour.The primary question of the study is: which factors do operating people in the financial sector consider themselves to be influenced by? The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors which affect the process of creating forecasts or making financial decisions. The study examines in addition if there is a correlation between length of investor experience and overconfidence in forecasting accuracy and investment decision making.The study includes both quantitative and qualitative analysis.

Vobbla Racing is a racing team who has an online sales department that is in need of an upgrade to be more efficient and easier to use. Before this study their present homepage was anything but structured. The products were sorted in an illogical order which made it difficult for the customer to find a wanted product. The customer had to summarize the products, transport sums and other costs. The order had to be e-mailed or phoned in to Vobbla Racing Produkter.

Consumer involvement in the product development process, co-creation, is being practiced by numerous companies. Previous research has investigated how consumer participation in co-creation affects consumer attitude. However, little is known about how co-creation affects the attitudes of the observervers of co-creation. The effect of observed co-creation on consumer attitude should be important when deciding whether to apply co-creation or not, as the observing consumers make up a larger part of the consumer collective than the participating consumers do. The paper at hand aims to investigate how observed co-creation affects consumer attitude and purchase intentions.

It has in a broader extent become important for companies and other organizations with large organizations to have a properly functioning web platform where content management is an essential part. Polopoly is a web content management system developed in Sweden, used by several European corporations but foremost Scandinavian such working in different media related business areas.Our aim has been to analyze this tool and render a report which hopefully will assist the initiator of our thesis; a consulting enterprise called Qurius, in their negotiations with future customers, when to suggest Polopoly as a suitable content management solution.By using case studies at companies currently using Polopoly, our goal is to define which characteristic makes the product a competitive publishing tool. To put our analysis in perspective, we will compare the most important aspects of Polopoly with a similar product.According to the results of our investigation we consider Polopoly being a beneficial choice with regard to a number of important parameters. Finally we have summarized these properties in a list of examples explaining in which cases Polopoly is a preferable alternative as a web based content management platform..

Title: Experiences of Banner advertisement on a specialized homepage Author: Marcus Westerberg Supervisor: Marie Hemming Department: Department of Business Administration, IEM Course: Bachelor thesis in Business Administration, FEC 007 Purpose: Create a understanding for how the users on Internet pages experience the occurrence and the shape of the banners. Method: Methods used are quantitative and qualitative, and the facts and figures are based on a pop up inquiry and some telephoneinterviews. I elected pop up inquiry and telephoneinterview as my data collection. My inquiry had a high grade of standardization and the interviews had a low grade of standardization. Result: On the basis of the question of issue I have drawn the conclusion that the users feels that it is important with information in all advertising. It is also important for the users to create a value around the product. The users do not have the time to figure out the message behind advertising, the want simple and massive information about the product/service.

This work of examination describes an environmentally oriented product development aimed to develop new packaging with improved environmental and sale aspects of the products from Primus Sweden AB. The report covers the design process from the first collection of facts to the final results with a description of all methods involved in the work. The focus has been on a clear environmental awareness and the report contains a deepening of the concept life cycle assessment (LCA) for product development. In the process, the consumers? opinions of the brand Primus and environmental profiling formed the basis for the packaging to communicate the right values such as quality, technology, environmental awareness and adventurer?s first choice.The deepening of the life cycle analysis shows that composting and other alternative treatment of the biological cycle is not possible to implement in a satisfactory way in the design process.The work results in two final concepts.

The need for snow-free surfaces at squares, bus stops, platforms, car parks and sports facilities increases and at the same time energy price rise and the environment is becoming a hotter issue. The construction of the ground heating systems often lack thermal insulation under the heating pipes, which means that the heat from the pipes not only warm up the soil surface but also heats the surrounding soil. The insulation also has more features, by insulating the risk of frost damage is minimized. The goal of this report is to demonstrate the large heat loss and energy costs in the absence of insulation under the heating system.The report begins with a scientific way to study and treating the soil heating system uses, and the theory involved. Furthermore it also deals with different routing principles of heat pipes depending on the facility.All calculations are made with so called finite element method (FEM), in COMSOL Multiphysics 3,5a, where models are created with different conditions.