As collaboration between companies move beyond the single transaction into more long-term relationships the consequences of a company's control system become more complex. The aim of this paper is to provide an understanding of how intra- and inter-organizational control and work practices interact through examining how a company's intra-organizational control influences its customer relationships. The empirical research is performed through a qualitative case study where interviews have been conducted with management and sales staff within the case company as well as with one of the customers. The empirical findings have been analyzed using frameworks and theories regarding management control and customer relationships. The study reveals that the intra-organizational control of the case company affects its relationships with customers in a number of ways.

This study aims to investigate how consumers perceive variety in grocery stores and further how private brands have affected consumers? perceptions of variety in grocery stores.The study focuses on the perceptions and attitudes towards variety and the impact of private brands on perceived variety. Hence, a qualitative rather than quantitative study has been used. Photo elicitation has been used in both focus groups and in-depth interviews, which have been the empirical data collection of the study. Scientific articles and books have also been used in the process.

This paper examines how companies in a transparent industry work to satisfy the customer in an extended way, to offer value added products that in the end enables the customer to be loyal to the company. We have studied the insurance industry in Sweden and have focused on five different insurance companies. Four of them, Folksam, Länsförsäkringar, Trygg-Hansa and Dina Försäkringar, where we have focused on Ölands Försäkringar which is part of the Dina Försäkringar group, are some of the largest insurance companies in Sweden. The fourth company is Swedbank which is a bank that has started to offer insurances.Our results demonstrate that it is important for the company to see the customer not only in a profitability aspect; the company has to find out what the customer gets in return. In that case the possibility for the customer to change company decreases and the chance that the customer becomes loyal increases.

The increased specialisation and complexity in products and services has created the need for Swedish companies to focus more on their core businesses. This has resulted in them opting to buy services and products that lie outside of their core business from consultancy businesses or other types of suppliers. When companies describe their offers in internal and external marketing it is done often in terms of company or service attributes that are not based on customer value or offered value for the customer. The reason for this is that companies have not adapted their services to the different needs of their customers. As a result of this, they run the risk of offering the same services as their competitors and communicate values that the customers either do not understand or experience as value adding. By using the theory on the data collection from the case company we have an understanding and shown how the customer values can be developed from a service company?s internal and external prerequisites and competitive advantages.

Since the nineties the words customer, effectiveness and quality have become part of everyday school life. Municipalities? makes regular customer surveys to measure both independent schools as municipal schools ' quality. A common method for customer research and background studies is that parents and students are asked to respond to simple Web-based surveys. Customer satisfaction and/or customer dissatisfaction options are presented in tabular form, based on the percentage that expresses a particular position within a query.

Banks find themselves at a highly competitive market where it is important to achieve high customer satisfaction if they want to attract customers and stay competitive. Some studies suggest that the gap between customer expectations and perception within the five quality dimensions influences the customer satisfaction. With SERVQUAL the authors of this thesis have investigated the suggested relationship and have discovered no indications of a relationship between the gap and customer satisfaction. Instead the results indicate that there is a relationship between perceived service and customer satisfaction. The thesis also indicates that the most important quality dimension for the bank customer is reliability.

The companies of today figures on a hardly competitive market. This makes it necessary for the company to find new way to create competition advantages. Since it is no longer enough to compete with the technical quality of the product the companies are forced to also enhance the functional quality. To accomplish this it becomes necessary for producing companies to be customer oriented. A customer oriented company culture can be reached with the help of internal marketing in which different activities work to inform and teach the employees about the company strategy and also about their own role as part-time marketers.This thesis examines Electrolux, a company which is currently striving to develop a customer oriented company culture.

Our purpose with this thesis was to study how tourism providers deliver quality to their customers. We chose to carry out two case studies where we interviewed an owner of a camp site, and a municipal manager employed at another camp site. The questions were based on customer needs, service quality and dissatisfaction. The study gave us some useful aspects. The respondents told us that it was very important to the tourist providers to listen to the customer´s specific needs and to give them personal attention.

In relation to the development of IT-products it is very important that the software supplier is aware not only of the target group but also the field of application. Usability should characterize the whole IT-design process as, in relation to this context, design includes more than merely those aspects which are visible to and thus can be interpreted by the naked eye. The study examines the specific qualities and properties that substantiate the usability and the demands that a customer rightfully expects from an IT-product. The user and the customer are highlighted in the same context in order to demonstrate that it is through the customer that an IT-product is defined as being useful. Thus, from this perspective, the user and customer can be considered as being the same person.

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to identify and analyze innovative products and services within the telecom industry, letting these findings constitute possible ways for CSPs to innovate the experience of their customers. Methodology: The research in this thesis was conducted from a qualitative approach and data were collected using primary- (expert interviews) and secondary sources (journals, articles, web sites etcetera). In addition, a research design entailing four sequential steps was created to stipulate and illustrate the logic underpinning the methodological process. Theoretical perspectives: The theories are divided in three groups. Background theories ? these intend to capture the problematic nature of the transforming telecom industry, examples of such theories are; value chain theories and ecosystem theory.

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.

Customer information is to be seen as an essential part in service development. The company should be aware of how their customers experience their services. The company can get access to customer information through complaints from their customers. All information obtained from the customers is not possible to use when developing new and existing services. The information has to be analysed before it is possible to use it for service development.This paper describes if Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) uses their customers as a source of knowledge when developing new and existing services and in that case how.

Many? luxury? companies? within? the? fashion? industry? today? choose? to? extend? their? brands downwards? in? order? to? reach? new? customer? segments? and? hence? increase? their? profitability.? A? brand? extension? strategy? that? leverages? the? core? values? of? the? luxury? brand? is? a ?new ?possibility ?for ?luxury ?brands ?to ?position ?themselves ?towards ?a ?broader ?customer ?base.?? Meanwhile? there? is? a? risk? that? the? extension? dilutes? the? image? of? the? luxury? brand? and? has? a? negative? effect? on? the? company? in? the? long? term.? Thus? a? tradeoff? exists? between? becoming? more? accessible? and? maintaining? the? exclusivity? of? the? luxury? brand.? The? objective? of? this? thesis ?is ?to ?investigate ?how ?luxury ?brands ?that ?perform? downward ?brand ?extensions ?to? reach? new? markets? can? succeed? with? this? strategy? without? diluting? the? brand? image.? This? is? achieved? by? studying? the? perceptions? of? the? new? target? segment? towards? the? extension? of? luxury? brands.? The? results? of? the? study? show? that? the? risk? of? brand? dilution? is? minimized when? the? core? values? of? the? luxury? brand? are? transferred? to? the? brand? extension? while? the extension ?at ?the ?same ?time ?is ?successfully ?targeted ?towards ?the ?specific ?customer? segment..

 Syfte: Syftet med studien är att undersöka och analysera hur företag implementerar CRM i avsikt att identifiera de bakomliggande faktorerna till att företag misslyckas med en CRM implementering.Teorier: CRM som process, Implementeringsstrategier, ImplementeringsmodellMetod: Kvalitativ studie som består av fyra semi-strukturerade intervjuer med olika företag.Empiri: Består av fyra intervjuer med CRM-ansvariga från respektive företagSlutsats: Om företaget förstår och tar hänsyn till alla faser i CRM implementering, och generellt anser att alla faser är lika viktiga då alla delar går ihop, leder detta till en lyckad CRM implementering. De bakomliggande faktorerna till ett misslyckat CRM-implementering är i stort sett att företagen anser att en fas är viktigare än en annan fas, vilket leder till att företaget ned prioriterar andra faser som är väsentliga vid en implementering av CRM. .

The purpose of this thesis was to examine what the communication between bank and customer looks like. We have more specifically studied how the bank communicates with the customer when communicating different offers, how the customer wants the communication to take place, what communication problem looks like and how the customer wants the bank to design their offers. Our target group was bank customers with academic degree, with one to seven years of working experience. This study was conducted trough interviews with bank customers and representatives at the bank. On the basis of our studies we found that the communication between bank and customer works fairly well.