Product development is essential for all companies that want to survive in competitive markets regardless of the characteristics of the product that the company sells. Companies that sell products within product categories which can be seen as bad, also need to develop their products in order to remain competitive. If these bad products add a positive attribute, for example that they get organic, a contradiction within the product arises and they get incongruent. This thesis investigates which effects that follow a launch of an incongruent product. The thesis also examines if these effects are affected by the strength of the brand under which the product is launched.A total of 240 respondents participated in an experimental study where product incongruity was manipulated for two different product categories, where one well known brand and one unknown brand were examined in each category.

This essay is about classroom environment, what kind of impact it has on pupils? learning, how to create a good classroom environment and how the style of leadership relates to the classroom environment. This is a qualitative study conducted by four informants.This essay is based on Lev Vygotiskijs perspective of the "sociocultural perspective", which is based on the theory that humans act upon their knowledge and experience, depending on the opportunities that the environment provides.The purpose of this study is to examine how three teachers, who teach younger ages, organize the environment in their classrooms. The goal of this study is to find out what the interviewed teachers perceive as good classroom environment. Also how the environment affects pupils? learning and what the teachers keep in mind when they furnish their classrooms.

Author Cocitation Analysis (ACA), multidimensional scaling (MDS) and Social Network Analysis (SNA), has been used to analyze and visualize the invisible college of the journal European Union Politics. The concept invisible college was first introduced in the fifteenth century, through the creation of the ?the Royal Society of London?, and it was reintroduced in the 1960:ies and the 1970:ies by scholars such as Price and Crane. It is said to have been interpreted in as many ways as there are authors who have used it. Here it has been used synonymously with the term citation network.

The purpose of this study has been to investigate the virtual world that people are part of on online dating sites. To do this we have investigated two different research questions, which are the following: What functions do the online dating sites provide? Why and how are the online dating sites being used by their members? In order to gather information about these matters, we have used a qualitative method consisting of participating observation, scrutinizing and single person interviews. Our results indicate that people have different goals with their usage of online dating sites; some are looking for love, a long-term relationship while others are looking for sexual contact. There are many different online dating sites to choose from depending on the users? objective.

This essay contains material of how the competence maintenance works on a chosen company and how a web based tool developed for its use can help companies with competence insur-ance. As competence maintenance is a major factor to have a long term profit it´s necessary to be aware of the company?s future needs in the competence sector. This essay describes the company?s competence maintenance occupation needs taken from internal documents; it also identifies the need for competence maintenance and presents multiple areas of possible im-provements.

This study investigated how we can understand St. Francis as environmentally conscious. The study also presents where those elements can be found in St. Francis own documents and from documents that describe St. Francis.

The research this report is based on aims to find out the characteristic features of the marketing tools that are essential for a music artist, and define a successful artist. The thesis arises and discusses how different medias can have an affect on an artists career and on his/hers achievement. To bee seen in the right medias can have an important influence on their career. To be able to answer our aim we have interviewed people who have a solid knowledge about music business, we have also used a qualitative method. The outcome of the research is that there are some indications that show important factors which are essential when it comes to marketing artists.

The competitiveness and profitability of swedish farm enterprises is frequently discussed in agricultural media. Increased exposure to the surrounding world with greater competitive pressure and considerable price fluctuations in the agricultural markets demand new ways of acting to secure the agricultural sector?s long-term survival and profitability. Structural change and/or diversification leads to increased numbers of stake-holders around the farm enterprise and thereby also the expectations of the farmers ability to lead and coordinate resources. Lean is the name of a management model developed by Toyota, influenced by the lack of resources in Japan during the post WWII period.

The structure of the thesis is based on opportunities to attract businesses to the region, the need of establishments in the region and benchmarking with establishment strategies of other cluster initiatives. The identified opportunities are the local business relationship with ABB, the prerequisites of life quality in the region and the availability of financial support. Further on has a number of opportunities to be developed been identified; diversification of the existing businesses, an expansion of the cooperation with universities and to simplify the contact with local authorities. Challenges that HVV is facing is: creating a more dynamic labor market, secure long-term labor supply, spread the image of the brand HVV and finally putting HVVs geographic scope. Two of the identified needs of establishments are strategically important: to establish a third-party logistician and commercializing systems for distributed generation and energy storage.

The purpose of this study was to understand what the care recipients considering as care quality in their long-term eldercare. Our intention has been to contribute a bit to the development of the care work. Previous studies show that user surveys are carried out regularly but there is very few studies that are based on care recipients own opinions and experiences. The main questions in the study have been to examine what is considered as good elder care from a user perspective. Even to understand the characteristics of a good meeting with the care staff and also examine how the elder care in Nybro municipality can improve.

This study aims to examine how families that during a long time have lived with neuropsychiatric disabilities have experienced their contact with different authorities. The study builds on qualitative interviews with two young people and five parents, from four different families. Focus in the paper lies mainly on the families' experiences of the school and different care sectors.The result shows that there is a great number of aspects as lack of information, lack of knowledge, dislodges between different authorities lack of support from school and care sectors, incorrect medication and shortage of long-term plans for treatment, which the families experienced as problematic. These aspects have also brought dramatic consequences that have strengthened the disabilities' negative effects.The result also shows that the parents are very active and bears a great responsibility for the child's health. The parents are in large extent alone in search for care, arranging meetings, searching for information, taking care of the children's medication etc.

This paper studies the option market?s implied dividend as a predictor of future equity market returns. We introduce this variable in the simple total return framework and discuss some complications of using it as a proxy for the expected dividend. We construct some regressions using the price-dividend ratio and the implied dividend growth, and test them on six years worth of data on the EURO STOXX 50-index. The main result is that implied dividend growth exhibits some forecastability over two-year horizons, but that the dataset is too short to draw any definitive conclusions about long-horizon forecastability.

Background: Diabetes mellitus Type 1 is one of the most common chronicle diseases in childhood. This signifies big changes in the daily life for the child and its family. Aim: The aim of the study was to illustrate the family?s situation when the child falls ill in Type 1 diabetes. Method: The search for literature has been done both manually and in databases.

På Svenska Gymnastikförbundets begäran har detta projekt gjorts som ett koncept för dem att ha som utgångspunkt i diskussioner med såväl föreningar som politiker i frågan om gymnastikens behov av anpassade idrottsanläggningar.En användarstudie av gymnastiken, samt flera discipliner, har gjorts och stått som utgångspunkt för anläggningens utformning. Därtill har även en utvärdering av flertalet befintliga hallar som används för gymnastik gjorts för att motivera beslut gällande anpassningar som lyfter anläggningens utförande i jämförelse.Arbetet kommer ge en skriftlig rapport och en digital modell av anläggningen. Modellen presenteras i form av ritningar och visualiseringar..

The purpose of this thesis was to create a strategic/tactical road access plan. This was done by designing an analytical method which gives the road manager a template to create long-term road access plans. The analytical method will help to identify and appraise roads to be upgraded and give information when it is time for building new roads. The study method involved developing an analytical method. The method was comprised of five main parts: the harvest plan, analysis of the road network, transport costs, quality and storage costs and finally, identification of investment alternatives.