As self-service technologies become more common in service provisions, a deeper understanding is needed of how customer satisfaction is affected by automated service encounters. Drawing from theories of customer satisfaction, human interaction, and the dynamics of complex service provisions, the differences between automated and interpersonal service encounters in the initial part of a service provision are examined in terms of customers? evaluation of the service encounter itself, overall satisfaction, as well as the service encounter?s impact on global evaluations and evaluations of other non-dependant service encounters. The study was performed on people travelling by air on Swedish domestic routes. Passengers were asked to evaluate the airline?s performance on different attributes of the air travel they had undertaken, as well as to form an overall evaluation of the service.

Executive summary This master thesis was originally based on a specific assignment given to the authors from ABB Full Service, a unit specializing in providing maintenance outsourcing: ?How can ABB Full Service expand its offering of providing fundamental maintenance by seamlessly incorporating the business concept with competencies and solutions from other ABB divisions?? The academic issue was developed throughout the thesis, resulting in the following formulation: ?From an organizational perspective; how can service providers bring continuous added value to intra-organizational outsourcing partnerships?? Many of the key findings of this thesis are reflected in the issue. The term intra-organizational outsourcing is a proposed addition to the terminology in the academic discourse on outsourcing. The definition of the term is: ? Where an organization outsources a business process interlinked with the physical operations, requiring the service provider to take over a preexisting unit and its employees.This is an accurate description of the form of outsourcing that ABB Full Service is engaged in.

To achieve a working collaboration in a big, complex organization where there are vast requirements on both quality and profitability is not always an easy task. An example of this is the organization that was created in the Swedish railway industry following a series of deregulations during the past 25 years. A partial market in this organization is the railway maintenance. In order to achieve a working collaboration between actors in this organization the so-called Purchaser-provider model (PPM) is presently used for the procurement of rail maintenance projects. Previous research has shown that this market-based instrument has clear positive effects regarding the cost-efficiency but hinders the collaboration.

The purpose of this essay is to elucidate if there is a liability to damages for cardholders, in case of unauthorized use of bankcards, in the event a liability for payment, according to 34 § the Swedish Law concerning Consumer Credits, should not be established between card issuer and cardholder. The purpose is also to elucidate if card issuing companies, in the event a liability for payment is established between card issuer and cardholder, have any possibility to get a larger sum than is allowed by 34 § the Swedish Law concerning Consumer Credits, by demanding damages from the cardholder. Finally there is a judgement of how a court could do if it wanted to hold a cardholder liable to damages because of unauthorized use of bankcards..

This study focuses on the influence a user may have over his or her welfare service, personal assistance. A county, an assistance firm and a user cooperative are compared with the thesis that the organisation that surrounds the users shapes the possibilities the user have to influence his or her personal assistance. There are questions that try to answer if there are outspoken social goals within each organisation. Questions regarding influence of the user when she or he is choosing the assistance provider and the users possibility to influence and his or her power to decide who and when anyone works as an assistant are asked..

Every business is subject to service failures. The process of correcting these failures and turning disappointed customers back into happy ones is called service recovery. This is particularly important in the hotel business, where there are many moments of truth where customers may become dissatisfied. To further complicate things, service recovery is a process where you may have to correct errors of others - people beyond your control. The research field is relatively new and there are no turn-key solutions as to how to systematically work with service recovery.

The aim with this study is to identify and discuss discourses in public service policy documents to clarify that public service policy is political and not self-evident. The study's theoretical as well as methodological starting point is the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe, which ontological position is that all meaning is constructed by discourses. In the studied material, two discourses have been identified in policy concerning the content in public service media. The responsibility-discourse construct meanings of what content the policy wants to see in public service media and in the quality-discourse meanings of how the content should be is constructed. Public service policy is consistent over the period that has been studied and the study shows that there is consensus in the parliament about the regulation of the content in public service media.

The increased interest in relationship marketing and the potential of the Internet as a platform for relationship building activities have given rise to new ways for companies to interact with their customers, such as services based on a freemium pricing model. Based on the premise that relationships are processes consisting of interactive moments of value-creating activities, value is considered subjective, relative and dependent on the context in which the activity takes place. Value is therefore variable given its context and cannot be pre-defined without nuances being lost. Despite the Internet's given role in societal development, our understanding of what contributes to customers' intentions to build relationships with online services is yet to mature.As the music industry is well established on the Internet, alongside the change in how music is consumed, it is thus appropriate to examine activities in accordance with a freemium based service that distributes music online, since it still lacks in academic understanding.This study aims to provide insights about virtual relations and how online services that provide cultural content should relate to there users as well as contributing to the ongoing academic discussion regarding value and how it is manifested by highlighting contextual impact on relational activities. For a rapprochement of relations to online services in cultural industries, this study assumed a practice perspective.

Cloud computing is a new buzzword within the IT-industry, and introduces a whole new way of working with IT. The technique delivers web based services, which results in that the user no longer needs to install an application locally on a computer. Since the application no longer needs to run on a local entity, but in a datacenter located on a service provider, the users no longer need any specific hardware more than a computer with an internet connection. Cloud computing also offers IT-infrastructure and development environments as services, these three service types is better known as cloud services. Through the usage of different types of cloud services, the need for maintenance and hardware is significantly reduced.

I have conducted a review on four countries in Scandinavia and the goal was to create a better understanding about what has caused homelessness in this countries. The result shows that the causes of homelessness can be explained by a variety of reasons. The most common causes of homelessness were related to mental illness and drug abuse. There where also other causes of homelessness, which was considered normal in Scandinavia. Examples of other causes were eviction, unemployment, housing policy, housing shortage, payment of debts, separations and family problems..

As a consumer, you can use cards for payment more or less everywhere you go, however, it is not certain that the card can be used for all purchases. When a customer pays with card there arises a card transaction fee charged to the merchant. This is a big problem for businesses where transactions with small amounts are a large portion of sales. An observation at the beginning of this study showed that seemingly similar merchants have chosen to solve this problem in different ways. Some merchant?s refuses card purchases below a certain amount, while others accept card with any purchase.

This paper is a case study of a local labour market project. The aim of the study is to investigate the staff?s way of working with unemployed people, receiving social assistance, in order to reduce the payment of social assistance in four adjacent city districts of Stockholm. Other objectives of the study are to investigate which criteria the staff uses when selecting participants for the project, in which way the participants? background affects the measures taken by the staff and how the staff experiences working as part of a project.

The manufactory industry, due to decline in profit margins, is seeking new business opportunities by moving towards servitization and value-adding services in after-sales. We have therefore conducted a case study to investigate a manufacturing company in their current transformation towards servitization. By studying the management perspective, we aimed to understand how Information Technology, by adding value, could play a role in the transformation process. This study shows that information technology can take an integrating role, by supporting new value-adding services to provider and customer, as well as a co-creating role, where both provider and customer benefits by learning from each other, in the changing work process initiated by new services. The study has also shown that Information Technology, together with organization, information and people, are crucial components in the manufactory industry?s transformation towards servitization.  Furthermore, the study has also shown that the value chain has the potential to drastically change due to the value-adding that the information technology brings to the progress of servitization..

The purpose of this thesis is to compare if a charter company's attitude and vision of service can be reconciled with the attitudes and visions that the customers have in the same area. In order to carry out the study a qualitative approach is used. The data has been collected by interviews, focus groups and observations. The framework is theories on the subject of customer satisfaction, quality of service at customer meetings, Self-Service technologies, quality assurance and gap in service.The study has concluded that the approach to service is relatively equal between the company and customers, but the future visions differ. Focus group participants have been thinking bigger and further into the future, while the company focuses more on specific functions.

The need for auditing originates from the agency problem that arises due to the separation of ownership and control in companies. The purpose of the audit is to increase credibility of the financial statements that management uses to communicate with owners and other stakeholders. In order for the audit to fulfill its purpose a certain level of quality needs to be obtained. The auditor can also be seen as a provider of a commercial service in which service quality is important. Audit quality can thus be separated into technical quality, which is defined as the probability that the auditor both discovers and reports a breach in the client?s accounting system, and service quality, which relates to the provision of services in general.