By exposing their products in blogs, companies have the opportunity to reach out to hundreds of thousands of consumers daily. Instead of using conventional Internet advertising such as banners and ads, some companies chose to make use of product placement in blogs. By choosing to expose their products in blogs, companies use a medium that blog readers are familiar with and can relate to, and can thereby solicit customers for their products and brands.We will examine whether product placements in fashion blogs are an effective way for businesses to market themselves and their products. We measure this efficiency, by keeping a record of the sales of ten product placed garment and accessories that we have selected from four of the largest blogs in Sweden. The stores we examine sales of product placed goods in are volume brand stores such as Zara and H&M etcetera.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka huruvida hedge- och aktiefonders avkastning påverkas av samma riskfaktorer. Vidare syftar studien även till att undersöka om hedgefonders och aktiefonders riskexponering är konstant över tiden eller ej. Slutligen analyseras även hedgefonders förmåga att förutspå upp och nedgångar på marknaden och därmed generera överavkastning. Det angreppssätt som har använts i undersökningen är av det kvantitativa slaget, där regressionsanalyser har genomförts för att undersöka svenska hedge- och aktiefonders riskexponering samt svenska hedgefonders market-timing förmåga. Studien bygger på avkastningsinformation, under tidsperioden 2001-2004, för 20 hedgefonder och 20 aktiefonder.

The market for management consulting services is changing with an increased level of competition and more specialized service providers. At the same time there is a high level of companies that fail in their efforts to establish themselves on the market. This thesis sets out to give the reader an increased understanding of the complex characteristics of the market for these services, focusing more specifically on which factors that have an effect on the strategy development for companies within the industry. The thesis is also aimed at providing the reader with a deeper understanding of how developing consulting companies can tackle the specific challenges facing them. In order to meet the purpose of the thesis, we have applied relevant theories to a generic strategy model in order to develop a model that is applicable for the management consulting industry.

This paper describes the integration of environmental assessment in Swedish municipality comprehensive planning through a chosen case study. The implementation of a new EGdirective in Swedish law, concerning Assessment of the effects of certain plans and programmes on the environment, should lead to some changes in the way Swedish municipalities' deals with environmental issues in their comprehensive plans. This could later on lead to new preconditions for municipality comprehensive planning. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the planning organisation in the municipality adapts to new regulations for impact assessment of comprehensive plans required by the Planning and Building act. Secondly the purpose was to partly participate in the early stages of the planning process and thereby indicate and identify possible environmental impacts regarding the aspects of land and water. This was done as a case study in a well defined part of the process.

In this thesis, the Swedish venture capital market and its profitability is analyzed. Venture capital is defined as capital that is invested in the early stages of a company's life cycle, in the two investment stages seed/start-up and expansion.A common view is that the profitability of Swedish venture capital has not been, is not and will probably not become high either. With this in mind, we try to answer to the following questions in this thesis:? What has the profitability of Swedish venture capital actually been historically?? Which reasons could be found in order to explain the historical returns for Swedish venture capital, and which factors has been identified in international comparative studies between venture capital markets?In order to answer these questions, data showing historical returns for the Swedish, European and American venture capital market has been gathered, an extensive literature study has been performed, and three interviews with participants from the Swedish venture capital market has been conducted.We conclude that the historical returns of Swedish venture capital is in line with the general view that they have been low. We also see a trend where Swedish venture capital funds that are not specialized in one investment stage generate lower returns than more specialized funds.

Vårt syfte med uppsatsen var att ta reda på om KASAM-begreppet, trots att det har några år på nacken, fortfarande ses som betydelsefullt. Vi utgick från personalens perspektiv gällande KASAM's betydelse för barn 0-12 år, placerade på institution eller med någon form av insats från öppenvården. Genom kvalitativa intervjuer tog vi del av personalens erfarenheter av KASAM's betydelse för barnen, hur de arbetar och om de metoder de använder sig av , ger möjlighet att skapa en känsla av sammanhang för barnen. Vid tolkningen av vårt intervjumaterial utgick vi från tre teman baserade på våra frågeställningar. Det som framkom av materialet var att KASAM har stor betydelse för barnens välbefinnande.

When contemplating entering an alliance the rationale behind the decision should differdepending on the size of the companies involved as well as on other important factors. The importantfactors influencing the decision are related to the resource pooling potential of the alliance,the power structure along with the business network the companies are a part of. Theanalysis has shown proof of a need for cooperation if one wish to succeed in the telecommunicationindustry and it has also determined which resources that are deemed to be most important toget in touch with, for our study object, to facilitate its access to the market. Those resources aredefined as a direct channel to the customer, funds/capital and the access to relevant businessnetworks. To get in touch with these lacking resources, three alternative approaches has beenproposed; all of them involving a strategic alliance decision.

Abstract One of the essential conditions of the co-operating within the EU is that homogeneous conditions of competition prevail within the entire common market. The competition policy in the EU should guarantee that the competition is not distorted in a way that would prevent or create difficulties for the free mobility of goods and services between the member countries. The policy of competition should also guarantee that no new protectionistic obstacles will be formed, regardless of if it is being done by actions taken by member countries or as a result of actions taken by companies in order to set limits to the competition. Companies putting to an abuse their dominant position on the common market, or on a substantial part of it, is irreconcilable with the idea of the common market in case it could interfere with the trading between member countries, and is thus prohibited. The purpose of this dissertation is to describe the collective dominance from the view of the commission's interpretation of the practice of article 82 in the EG - treaty.

Since the middle of the 1980´s the Swedish bank market has experienced a change concerning structure and pressure of competition. Before the year 1985, the market was characterized as a market with few operators but have changed to a market with many operators and seen as one of the most intense in Europe where the four major banks; Nordea, Handelsbanken, SEB and Föreningssparbanken together have a strong position. Their market share has recently decreased, mostly for the benefit of foreign banks and niche banks. The Swedish market has experienced difficulties in generating profits which mostly depends on new establishments that have increased the pressure on competition, a low growth as well as weakened customer relations. The development has resulted in a growing importance of market segmentation, mainly by the fact that costumers have become more disloyal as a result of the increased competition.Students are a market segment of interest for the financial market, mainly because of the expectations of their positive financial situation in the future.

Background:Investments in different forms have always been popular to every human being. For the most common investments, such as stocks and bonds, there are loads of information to gather for the investor. Historical data like risk, return, dividends and fundamental data like annual reports are often very easy to find, regarding these kinds of investments. The background of this thesis is the lack of market information in residential real estate investments. A problem with this investment is that there is lack of information regarding risk adjusted return for real estates, which this thesis intends to present.Objective:The objective with this thesis is to study which alternative, directly-owned residential estates or stocks, who generates the highest risk adjusted return.

When the costs for a company increase it is normal to look for alternatives to lower thesecosts. One of the expenditure that farmers have is energy costs. The price for the energy mayvary because of the free market. To look at the possibilities for a farmer to invest in sunpower, to make the company less sensitive for the changes on the electrical market, isinteresting. The biggest part of the electricity that is produced in Sweden comes from a fewcompanies on the market.

Introduction and background: The 1990s crisis and the global financial crisis year 2008 shows the same indications that the property market was affected negative. The Swedish Property companies had a difficult time on the market when the crisis led to decreased property trade and financing problems for the Property companies. The Swedish property companies became less attractive on the market and contributed to a drop in prices on investment property.Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to examine if there is any relation between the Swedish Property companies impairments on their investment property and the global financial crisis year 2008.Method: The essay is based on a quantitative study where we examined Swedish Property companies? annual reports. We answered our questions and our purpose from the empirical data that we collected from the annual reports.Conclusions: The study resulted in that we found a correlation between the Swedish Property companies? impairments on their investment properties and the global financial crisis year 2008.

Vid uppritandet av byggmodeller på WSP Group i Norrköping använder man idag två program: TEKLA Structures och AutoCAD Architecture. En av anledningarna till detta är att armeringsverktyget Impact Reinforcement i AutoCAD Architecture fungerar bättre än armeringsverktygen i TEKLA Structures. Då man behöver armering i en TEKLA Structures modell exporteras denna till AutoCAD Architecture där armeringsjärnen sedan ritas in. Jag har därför undersökt skillnaderna mellan de båda programmens armeringsverktyg, resultatet är att Impact Reinforcement är lättare att använda medan TEKLA Structures tar längre tid att lära sig, men skulle kunna göra arbetet effektivare med rätt kunskaper..

The aim of this investigation is to explain present and historical differences in the Swedish and Danish unemployment rates between 1976 and 2005 with a broad framework, making use of neoclassical and post-keynesian economic theory. The influence of the rate of investment to GDP, and various institutional factors are assessed in quantitative analysis. It is suggested that the crude answer of the question asked in the title, ?What is it that Denmark does that Sweden does not??, is that Denmark invests. This investigation suggests accordingly that the main reason of the relative labour market success during the 90?s in Denmark was a rising, and rapidly recovering, rate of investment to GDP, and perhaps not primarily its flexible labour market institutions.

China is considered as one of the world?s fastest growing economies and the future of China looks promising. Even though the Chinese market attracts many new foreign companies to enter the market there are entry barriers which companies may encounter as obstacles, which will aggravate the market entry in China. As a result companies loose business opportunities and therefore it is of great importance for Swedish companies, which are planning a Chinese market entry, to identify which entry barriers that are considered to be the most difficult obstacles to overcome.The purpose of the thesis is to examine which entry barriers that are generally considered to be the most difficult obstacles for Swedish companies to overcome when entering Chinese markets and to rank the five most difficult entry barriers to overcome.Information about these entry barriers have been gathered from Swedish companies, which have carried out successful market entries in the Chinese markets, through an e-mail questionnaire.The result generally shows that the most difficult entry barriers to overcome in China were: bureaucracy, property laws, language, cultural differences and difficulties finding local partners. The ranking of the entry barriers? result shows that bureaucracy is the most difficult obstacle to overcome, followed by cultural differences, language, relations and access to distribution channels.We conclude that companies experience different difficulties overcoming these entry barriers, which depends on the companies? size, years in China, markets and if the entry barriers were considered controllable or uncontrollable.