Competition is keen in the fashion industry of today. Homogenous products and prices aredriving competition and most firms are struggling hard to attract customers. Brands havebecome one of the most important assets for success and are often critical for the choices of theconsumers. A strong brand is often considered as a substantial value in the eyes of the consumerand gives the individual firm a competitive advantage in the marketplace. To build a strongbrand it takes that the brand identity not is in conflict with the brand image of a firm or a product.Sometimes one of these conflicts exit and sometimes the firms are not even aware of it.In this thesis we study how two firms, Lindex and Prada, perceive their own image and then wecompare how the images of the firms are perceived by the customers.

This master thesis has been a pilot study preceding a forthcoming project of a larger scale with the long term objective to separate the direct effect of added nitrogen on soil processes from indirect effects via trees. The aim of this study has been to investigate the allocation of nitrogen following direct injection of liquid solutions into the xylem of 40 year old Norway spruce. The field site is located at Flakaliden (64°07?N, 19°27?E), approximately 60 km northwest of Umeå, Sweden. A total of 18 trees were selected for treatment, equally divided between three treatments, potassium nitrate, glutamine and water (control).

Purpose Based on the new comprehensive income due to changes in IAS 1, the authors aim to describe how a listed corporate accounting is affected by IAS 1 and the new income statement.Methodology This study uses an inductive approach with a combination of qualitative and quantitative data, using financial rapports from the investment company Latour. This case study is based on Latour?s all published financial statements under the period 2008 to 2012.Result The study resulted in different observations of Latour's operational and financial performance, share price trends as well as ratios. The study's authors can see that Latour's net income and comprehensive income differ due to changes in IAS 1. They can also observe the effect of clean surplus in Latour?s income statement.

General concerns about environmental issues may mean that the demand for bio-based products will increase. Opportunities that arise on markets, together with the declining demand for newsprint, may trigger firms in the Swedish forest industry to increase their development of new products. One product that has received a lot of attention during recent years (and is a contender) is nanocellulose. The purpose of this master thesis was to examine the Swedish forest industry?s view on the market potential of nanocellulose.

Bakgrund: Bonussystem är något som började växa fram på 1980-talet och har sedan dess varit ett omdiskuterat ämne, både här hemma i Sverige och internationellt. Många forskare, politiker och invånare har uppmärksammat de höga ersättningarna som delas ut inom företagen i både bra och dåliga dagar. Det som drog mest uppmärksamhet var att företag trots en finanskris fortsatta med sina utdelningar och t.o.m. ökade sina rörliga ersättningar. Detta fick människor att undra vad företagen egentligen baserar sina ersättningar på.

Background: The debate about environment, labor conditions and aid to developing countries has the last years been a much discussed subject The pressure on the companies to live up to their responsibility is beginning to be noticed in the market.Purpose: To find out if a retail company investing in Corporate Social Responsibility thereby direct can effect it?s stock value. Using interviews to investigate if and how stock analysts and corporate finance professionals valuate a company?s CSR initiatives.Theoretical perspective: The description of CSR is leading to the main theory, The Brand Value Change, and the Market Hypothesis. Additionally a theory of the Consumer Buying Process and CAPM-model about financial risks is presented.Method: An event study of 30 companies to investigate if there is any change in their stock values and interviews with three professionals from the financial sector to find out about their attitude to CSR.

The market for fashion and interior consists of a large amount of retail chains, which together creates high competition. To be able to compete and to be the most obvious choice for the customers, retailers must review their activities that exist in the company and improve them. This concerns store chains since it is so important that the stores communicate the retailers strategy and it is very critical because of the impact that the stores have on the communication with customers. It is after all in the stores that the buying decision is made. With this information, it is important to strive for uniformity through the chain and especially the stores.

The first aim of the thesis is to analyse the problems of trust, according to game theory, in the Russian market for private pensions insurance. The second aim is to find suitable strategies to solve the problems. Problems of trust have arisen because, (i) buyers of insurance have had negative experiences when dealing with insurance companies and corruption has decreased trust for all players in the market, (ii) incomplete information makes it difficult to separate honest actors from dishonest, and (iii) dishonest insurance companies do not get punished because of corruption and weaknesses in the law. Mutual risk-sharing is a potential solution as necessary conditions already exist in the Russian society. There are groups who (i) share the same type of risks, (ii) are aware of moral hazards, and (iii) are able to control each other.

This paper focuses on traditional clothing enterprise IT strategies. The purpose was to investigate the correlation between traditional clothing companies IT strategies and their brand. In a market where the competition is high it has become more important that the company targets a customer segment. To reach their targeted customers the company builds their brand with different corporate strategies. This segmentation is necessary because of the high exposure to competition, and a well-established brand could be a prerequisite for profitability.  In today?s market, IT has a major impact on the clothing business.

Today there is still irrelevant pay differential in society. In Sweden in 2010, the average pay differential was 15,4 percent between the sexes. Only 0,8 percent better than EU:s average.In Sweden the individual salaries increasingly have begun to characterize the Swedish labor market. Based on this, the aim of this study is to highlight the issue of equal pay between men and women from the perspective of individual salary. This would also been doing with a background in the regulatory environment of equal pay.When it comes to equality between women and men it is the area of labor law in EU who is the most developed and in Sweden this is the area who is most affected by EU law.

The meeting industry is a growing industry around the world, and the technological development in recent decades is one of the contributing factors to the increased travel opportunities and meeting industry's expansion. It can be assumed that the technology could replace some of the personal meetings, but humans have always had a need to meet in physical locations in work related purposes, therefore there is no evidence that personal meetings will disappear. Technological development should be seen as complementary rather than a substitute to the existing professional meetings. Public and private sectors within countries has drawn attention to meeting industry's potential, as favored destinations in terms of economic administration, image creation, expansion and acquisition of further market share in the global market. Meeting industry is complex precisely because there are so many different actors and stakeholders that integrate.

This thesis aims to study brand change, which can be of interest since a brand during its lifetime can be expected to meet a lifecycle consisting of five phases; innovation, introduction, growth, maturity and recession. In order to avoid the recession phase and the sales decline that follows there is a need for a change of the brand.In order to study brand change, theoretical framework is compared to two real world cases that have gone through an active change.The conceptions of positioning, repositioning and revitalization are clarified. Positioning deals with how brands are located in customer?s minds as well as on the real market. Repositioning implies a change of the current position and is also often a move towards a new market segment.

Syftet med uppsatsen var att undersöka huruvida den riskjusterade avkastningen från en traditionellt förvaltad lång indexportfölj kunde ha varit högre om portföljen hade förvaltats enligt en Equity Market Neutral-strategi. Vidare ämnar undersökningen att testa huruvida de skapade portföljerna uppvisar låg korrelation, dvs marknadsneutralitet, med underliggande marknad som är förenligt med strategin. För detta ändamål används Svenska Handelsbankens Månatliga Modellportfölj mellan åren 1998-2003. Vidare är syftet att utifrån analysen av undersökningens resultat kunna dra slutsatser om det kan finnas information i traditionella långa indexportföljer, liknande Handelsbankens Modellportfölj, som kan öka den riskjusterade avkastningen men som inte utnyttjas och som skulle kunna tas till vara via implementeringen av en Equity Market Neutral strategi. Undersökningen visade att portföljerna uppvisade såväl högre absolut- som riskjusterad avkastning jämfört med modellportföljen, och låg korrelationen gentemot marknaden sett över hela den undersökta perioden.

To establish sustainability reports is an increasing trend for more and more companies. This has led to a spread of the international framework Global reporting initiative, GRI, guidelines to make a sustainability reports. This trend has got a lot of critics from various stakeholders who believe that companies in these reports communicate the information in a way of window dressing. Both negative and positive information has to be represented according to GRI: s principle of balance.  Window dressing is created by adding a greater emphasis on the positive information. The researchers review the context of the negative information to study the extent to which it is reported and whether there are patterns and variations in the reported information.

Previous research has discussed how voluntary disclosure relates to the cost of equity capital. Theories of estimation risk support a negative association between disclosure and cost of equity capital, as empirically documented by Botosan (1997) among others. In this Bachelor thesis we investigate whether such a relationship exists on the Swedish capital market. Using the CAPM to estimate the cost of equity capital and a disclosure index based on Aktiespararen?s annual evaluation of corporate disclosure, we test a model where disclosure explains cost of equity capital.