Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to give a contribution to the studies of what strategies those are of importance for challengers in consumer technological markets aiming for the market leader position. To be able to investigate this phenomenon we have chosen to study Microsoft?s second position in the video game console industry. In addition, we want to illuminate Microsoft?s competitive advantages, how Microsoft can take advantage from Sony?s setbacks and what strategies those are of importance for Microsoft in the battle of becoming the market leader.

The purpose of this essay is mainly to study the reason behind students' visits to restaurants, and also their restaurant habits. The study also intends to find a possible difference in students dining habits among the different social classes; working class and middle class.  This study contains qualitative methods. The qualitative research method is in the shape of deep interviews with ten students from different social classes who?s registered at Södertörns  högskola. The results of this investigation show that the consumer society along with the respondent?s habitus and access to capital, has influenced and created their opinions and habits around eating out. This has also created the similarities and differences between them. Keywords:Habtitus, consumption, restaurant, social class, consumer society.

The media industry in general and the newspaper in particular is going through major changes ? technological, logistical, economical ? due to the dropping sales and width of the printed daily newspaper. Few organisations have been spared the necessary rationalizations and cut-downs in staff. All of them are expected to produce more and better content, in more and new channels and platforms, with less resources. Some have been preparing for this a long time, others have never entered the digital world of news.

Due to a growing interest in communication in today?s society the demand for equipment that is used in communication networks increases while the competition between companies that produce this equipment grows. To meet the increasing demand and at the same time having a competitive product development many companies use some effective product design, such as the modular product design. When a modular product design is used it?s good to compare different module configurations for a certain product and to simplify these comparisons some tool can be used.

Within the subject of retouching there is an ongoing debate about whether fashion retailers should retouch their ads or not. There has been a large amount of criticism to the communication of stereotyped beauty ideals that is used by companies in their marketing. The stereotyped ideals also contribute to negative psychological effects among people. As a response to the criticism, or as a way to differentiate one-self from competitors, retailers are starting to use unretouched models in their advertising. How this affects the consumer's perception of CSR along with the attitudes and behaviors is still unknown.

Background: Knowledge of customer needs is a key factor in companies? struggle to develop successful products. Several studies illustrate that the main reason for failure in product development is lack of customer understanding. Lately considerable changes have occurred. Large-scale mass production is continuously being replaced by customer orientation, especially in the high technological market.

The design of packages is something that product manufacturers put great effort on. The package is often the consumers' first interaction with a product and consumers judge the product based on the package. A common way to evaluate a package design is to let respondents look at a package and answer which attributes they think the product has. This paper wants to take this evaluation a step further, i.e. it examines if consumers experience differences in taste between two identical products that have different package designs.

The purpose of the study is to explain whether the introduction of a new and different brand by means of a brand extension affects consumers? perceptions of the product category that the brand is launched in. An experiment was carried out to study the following aspects: associations and constellations of associations to the product category, interest, perceived variation, and the perceived similarity with the category from which the brands were extended. In the study, brand breadth in the original product category was used as moderating variable. Aspects found to be affected by the brand extensions were associations to the product category, the constellations of these associations and the perceived similarity with the category from which the brands were extended.

The thesis strives to answer the question whether there are any differences between how young customers, in comparison with older, are affected by brands when buying different products. The purpose is to get a clearer idea about the brands' importance in the future and in that way also to give guidance to companies about how to best market themselves and there products.To answer the question, an experiment was conducted with 480 respondents taking a survey where they had to rate a product after reading a short text about it. Some of the texts stated that a specific brand was behind the product while some said the product was produced by an unknown brand.The result of the study was that young people showed a greater propensity of rating products with a brand higher than products without brands, in comparison with the older respondents. This gives reason to believe that brands progressively will become an even more important tool for marketers and an unmatched asset for companies in the future..

Project Safe Sleeping Position (SSP) contains all parts in a product development phase. The project comprises the whole cycle from idea to a complete product where all aspects are included. The scope is to develop an innovative solution for a common known problem and work with all parts within the man-machine-way. The result is an inflatable product which secures a child in the correct way for the seatbelt to work properly in the rearseat of a car. Ergonomics, technical extent, usability, design, construction, product solutions and market potential are some of all parts witch the project includes.

The interest for locally produced food has increased the last couple of years, and some consumers have a willingness to pay a premium for niche products like locally produced food. At the same time it seems like the Swedish pig production are in a negative development period. This study tries to see if locally produced pork could be a possible factor which might affect producers in the county of Västra Götaland views on different aspects regarding their production. Consumers of pork and their point of view regarding locally produced pork were also studied. Surveys to consumers and producers were constructed. Although previous studies claim the opposite, in the two locations (Högsäter and Uddevalla) where the consumer survey were performed, there were more men than women that always bought locally produced pork.

This report is the concluding part of the course national minorities, main focus on design, at Luleå University of Technology spring 2007. The purpose of this written examination is to produce a prototype to a product, which can be used both when marketing Kiruna as a student municipality and when recruiting students to the study programmes Kiruna offers. The product has been produced through systematic problem solving, where methods to fix the problem, gather facts, examine and come to a solution have been used. The product should in one way or another get the student to think of Kiruna as a student municipality and it should also appeal to the target group ? the students.

Title: How does the buying decision process really function within e-commerce? - A qualitative study of consumer behavior when they consume on Internet.Institution: School of Economics, Linnaeus University, Va?xjo?.Course code: 2FE16E.Authors: Sara Hja?rne, Mathilda Perem, Ewelina Wallin.Tutor: Dan Halvarsson.Examiner: A?sa Devine.Key words: Buying decision process, purchase decision process need recognition, information search, evaluation, purchase decision, postpurchase behavior, consumer decision making, E-commerce, E- commerce channels, online shopping, online purchase, e-retail, internet shopping, electronic shopping, consumer behavior, online appereal shopping, social media, decision making, online retailing, website design, customer satisfaction, webshopping, perceived risk, convinience, price, online consumption behavior.Background: Buying decision process is a model that marketers use to get a better understanding of their customers and their behavior when purchasing a product. This process consists of five different steps; need recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision and evaluation. Buying decision process has for a long time been an accepted model but scientists argue that the introduction of Internet as a channel for consumption has changed this process. The Internet has also led to a change of power in which customers today have greater influence, which greatly affects the buying decision process in e-commercePurpose: The purpose is to explore how consumers perceive their behavior when they consume through e-commerce.Research questions:How do consumers perceive the buying decision process they experience when they consume through e-commerce?How do consumers perceive different factors that are important to them when they consume through e-commerce?Methodology: Qualitative study, cross-sectional design, semi-structured interviews.Conclusion: This thesis shows that the traditional model of the buying decision process is not consistent with consumers' perception of how they are undergoing the process when applied to an e-commerce context.

Forskare har under de senaste decennierna försökt finna förklaringar kring den finansiella gåta, känd som the forward premium puzzel, som har visat sig på valutamarknaden. Denna finansiella gåta har skapats då forskare sett statistiska avvikelserna från det öppna ränteparitetet (UIP) på valutamarknaden. UIP förutsätter att det inte ska finnas någon skillnad i avkastning mellan att hålla kapital i olika valutor, vilket empiriskt har visat sig inte stämmer. Detta misslyckande har tagits som bevis för att valutamarknaden är ineffektiv och att valutaspekulerare kan erhålla en överavkastning. Syftet med studien har varit att genom ett lönsamhetstest, med SEK som grundvaluta, undersöka huruvida valutamarknaden har varit effektiv under åren 1997-2012.Studien utgår från en deduktiv forskningsansats där den teoretiska grunden utgörs av den effektiva marknadshypotesen. Den kvantitativa forskningsmetoden bygger på uppgifter från Datastream om valutors utveckling mellan åren 1997-2012.Vår regression visade på att tio utav tolv valutapar återspeglade the forward premium puzzel.

Companies in the apparel industry are becoming increasingly responsible with regards to the social and environmental issues related to textile production. Despite these tendencies, there are great insecurities surrounding the concept of CSR and the effects on consumers of CSR communication. There is currently no model for breaking the concept of CSR down into smaller elements, specific for the apparel industry. In the first part of this thesis, we create such a model, applicable in a consumer communication context. In the second part, we investigate the effects on consumer attitudes and intentions of communicating the different elements of CSR presented in the model.