Diet and lifestyle are closely interrelated and believed to have a significant influence on four major public diseases - cardiovascular disease, cancer, hypertension and obesity, but also affects functional deficiencies like gluten- and lactose intolerance. Health added-value foods are thought to reduce health-related risks or delay the onset of these major diseases. Therefore, interest among scientists, researchers and the public in general has been growing remarkably over the last decade regarding these special foods. The Swedish market seems to be a good target for health added-values food. However, as there are many risks and cost factors involved for companies to enter the market or invest in R&D, it is important to take a step back and analyze the current market situation.

Increased consciousness about environmental and sustainable issues has led to consumers and companies who are more in favor of reuse and recycle. Even though this is a fact, people today are buying new things more often compared to before. For instance for a mobile phone the functionality lifecycle is eight years which can be related to the economic lifecycle today which is 1.5 years compared to 3 years in 1995. Only 1-2 percent of the mobile phones thrown away in Sweden today are handed in for recycling. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether an international company within the recycling and reuse of mobile phone industry has a market in Sweden.

This thesis will address a problem concerning availability of information systems at an enterprise within the financial sector and its external suppliers, so called trusted third party. The information system resides on the internal network of the enterprise and must be available to both employees of the enterprise and the trusted third party simultaneously. This contradicts the company policy which disallows third parties access to the internal network. The HAVECA-model introduced in this thesis provides a framework of methods, each solving a sub problem identified in the model. The identified methods are hardening, verification, control and assurance, together supplying a method for continuously securing the internal network against a trusted third party.

This study will focus on the fund raising market and what characteristics that can be found in marketing in this market. The donations to fund raising organizations has increased lately and therefore we found it interesting to study how their marketing has developed over time and what risks that can be found. When talking about marketing in fund raising organizations it?s difficult to not include the donors. Therefore have we also studied what value creates for the donors and how the organizations work to gain their trust.

Digital preservation is a relatively new subject to Swedish archives. Alhough computers have been used for a long time, preservation has been made on paper and stored on shelves. These days a lot of cities in Sweden have investigated how to best secure the digital information for the future through electronic archiving, e-archives. One option is to hand in the information as soon as possible, but to let the producer keep the information ownership yet some time. The idea is to let the producers of the information answer questions and hand out material, since they are more competent on their field.

AbstractAccording to several researchers finance is scarce, scarcer for small businesses than for big enterprises. Small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs, that want to start exporting and sales or manufacturing abroad need capital to get ready. Which capital structure and financial costs do they have, and which forms of finance do they actually use for that purpose. New american research by Mansi, Reeb (2002) has suggested, that there is a positive connection between leverage and a negative one between financial costs and internationalization, and that a non-linear model better describes this connection.This study has gathered data in two ways: Through a questionnaire from 37 SMEs and balance sheet figures from totally 166 manufacturing SMEs. In order to examine, whether the company was active on the international market, 200 SMEs in south Sweden were asked, if they exported to, produced or sold on any other market than their home market.

All companies face risk in their daily business. Internationalised companies tend to experience higher risk due to for example unfamiliar business environment than companies that act only on the national market. Estonia became independent as late as in 1991 and is therefore a new interesting market for many companies in neighbouring countries like Sweden. Risks that are most apparent for an internationalised company are political risk, currency risk, capital and interest rate risk, business risk and credit risk. Our intention of this study was to find out how Swedish companies acting on the Estonian market faced the different risks when entering the Estonian market and how they value the risks today.

Forest as an investment alternative has become more and more popular over the last few years. Between the years 2004 and 2007 increased the price level on forest land with 70 percent in Jämtland. In this thesis a comparison has been conducted between forest in Jämtland and an investment in the stock market. The risk in the two investment alternatives has been included in the comparison. The thesis includes two different studies between the two alternatives.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how social media can affect and influence the B2B-relationship. Social media is now a widespread and accepted tool for communication in many B2C-companies; therefore we find it interesting to examine how social media can find its place in the communication mix of B2B-companies. We are also aiming to distinguish standards in how social media is practiced and discussed in the context of the B2B-market. We have applied a qualitative method for this study and we have interviewed seven respondents, which are experts in social media or working with market communication at B2B-companies in Sweden. During our study we have identified several comparable attributes within the B2B market and their opinions about how social media should be approach and adopt in the communication mix of the company..

Background: Mutual funds have become an important part of the Swedish deposit market. Savings in mutual funds add up to almost 20 percent of the households'assets. When the pension reform is carried out all employees are going to have savings both in mutual and bond funds. But only if the fund overperforms the market it is worth investing. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore if Swedish mutual funds have generated higher returns than market portfolio in the late nineties.

The gas turbines in the Swedish secondary reserve are reaching the end of their technical lifetime, hence alternative solutions need to be considered. One of the solutions thought to have the greatest potential is the use of so called consumptionreduction. By entering contracts with large consumers, agreements are made to reduce consumption in the event of major disturbances in the power system and thus being used as a secondary reserve. This thesis investigates the feasibility of consumption reduction as part of the secondary reserve. This has been achieved by developing a requirement specification for the disturbance reserve and by studying the technical and economic potential for consumption reduction among a range of consumers.The technical potential for consumption reduction that fulfils the requirements for participating in the secondary reserve are on average 750 MW in SE 3 and 98 MW in SE 4.

The purpose with this work is to investigate the cost to produce piglet in a case study company. The starting point is going to be the agriwise (www.agriwise.org) calculation which I am going to change and adapt to the case study company. To day the pig market is bad but we have probably reached the bottom. The market has started to rise. It is no business to produce piglets today.

The global market is becoming increasingly integrated and to keep up with growing competition and to achieve even greater success, companies expand to foreign markets. Previous studies have shown that the concept of psychic distance has an important impact on international performance regarding small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). The aim of our study is to provide the reader with a deeper understanding of how psychic distance influences export performance regarding Swedish SMEs. Through a single case study of a Swedish SME, we chose to research three different markets in three different continents. Our findings show that psychic distance influences export performance through export marketing strategy and active learning.

There are widespread discussions about the use of retouched models in media, ranging from bloggers to legal decision-makers. Research shows that there are negative psychological effects on especially females being exposed to idealized, retouched model images. The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of using retouched models in advertising from a marketing perspective, based on attitudes, perceived quality and purchase intentions.Based on theories about attractiveness, halo-effects and social comparison, an experimental study was done, investigating the different responses on above mentioned parameters to advertisements showing either retouched model images or non-retouched model images. Initially it was also tested if the retouched models were seen as more attractive than the non-retouched models. The results showed almost no differences between the reactions to the advertisements with retouched models compared to the advertisements with non-retouched models, when all respondent groups were analyzed together.

We have in this essay studied the Swedish Hedge Fund Market available for the average Swedish private investor. We have closely looked at the risk measurements that are applicable on the evaluation of Hedge Funds today, and furthermore studied how they are communicated and what they actually contribute with in terms of risk and yield. Our survey attempts to clarify the shortcomings in the communication between the Hedge Fund Managers and their smaller investors. Do they really know where they put their money? The market is rapidly expanding and our goal was to find improved ways to inform about the Hedge Funds risks and opportunities.