Title: Strategies for competition ? a study of the Swedish contact lenses market.Authors: Pernilla AArskog and Annika Lange.Background: As a market gets more mature and the competition increases, it is more important for a company to apply the right strategic perspective. There are four fundamental strategic perspectives for a service-oriented business: a core product-, a price-, an image- and a service perspective. This study is a about service management and take its point from the theories from the Nordic School about strategies for competition, customer value, perceived customer quality and customer loyalty.Purpose: The main purpose with this study is to analyze and evaluate how the actors at the Swedish market of contact lenses should compete to gain further competitive advantages.Method: The study includes four qualitative interviews with two traditional opticians and two Internet based businesses, but also a survey with 106 contact lens users is included.Analysis: In the analyse part of this thesis it was concluded that the traditional opticians conception about their customer not agrees with what the customer evaluate as important. Many of the customers have thought about changing their optician, and besides that do not recommend their optician, and can there for not be categorize as loyal customers.

Purpose: To examine how video-game releases affect the share price, and if video-game reviews have any impact on the share price of gaming corporations. Method: A quantitative deductive research approach is applied with event study methodology used as basis. The investigated companies were the five largest gaming companies listed on the U.S. NASDAQ exchange. A total of 29 video-game launches and 85 reviews where examined.  Theory: The study is based on The Efficient Market Hypothesis, Agent Theory, Public Relations Theory, Nextopia and previous research.Results: The result contains 114 observations in five companies.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att kartlägga användningen av Country of Origin och dess relevans på den globala marknaden genom att undersöka om en landsimage kan relateras till varumärke istället för produkt. Uppsatsen har en deduktiv ansats då den grundar sig på tidigare teori inom området Country of Origin, positionering samt varumärkesstrategier. En kvalitativ undersökning i form av djupintervjuer med valda företag genomfördes för att kunna besvara uppsatsen syfte. Slutsatserna till uppsatsen är att Country of Origin inte längre är en relevant strategi eftersom varumärkets landsimage är mer relevant än produktens härkomst. För att bättre passa dagens marknadsförutsättningar behöver COO därför modifieras och ge företag konkreta riktlinjer vid användningen av marknadsstrategin eftersom landsimage fortfarande anses vara relevant, men då i relation till varumärket..

The rise in prevalence and severity of obesity and related diseases imposes increasing costs on society. The objective of this thesis is to discuss and estimate the possible effects of a so-called fat tax as a tool for minimizing these costs. Two alternatives for differentiation of the value-added tax (VAT) on food are compared. The first alternative is an increase of the VAT levied on food containing saturated fatty acids. The second alternative is a subsidy on fruit and vegetables in the form of a VAT at zero percent, instead of today?s twelve percent.

The Swedish processor Findus contracts approximately 500 pea producers annually to secure the company?s supply of green peas for human consumption. A production contract, which has had roughly the same design for decades, regulates the relation between Findus and the pea producers. Agriculture is typically a risky business. The main sources of risk in agricultural production are production risk and price risk.

This report deals with issues related to construction waste. Building material that has not been built into the project is defined as construction waste. Cost of construction waste amounts to 4-12 % of the total cost of the project. Moreover, cost of construction waste is 1-3 % of the production cost. The aim of this study is to increase knowledge about the main causes of waste within the construction industry.

Chemotherapy is one of the most important methods of treatment available today for the treatment of neoplastic diseases and gives many patients an increased quality of life and a prolonged survival time (McKnight, 2003). The object of this study was to find out more about owners? views on and experiences of chemotherapy of dogs when it comes to for example quality of life, side effects and if they would make the same decision and treats their dog again in the future. A questionnaire was in the spring of 2009 sent out to the owners of 100 dogs that had been treated with chemotherapy for neoplastic diseases at Universitetsdjursjukhuset, Sveriges Lantbruksuniversitet (SLU) in Uppsala between 2002 and 2008. The response rate was 67 %.

The purpose with this essay is to study how companies use the repositioning process and identify the risks involved from a business perspective. We have chosen to base our essay on the following research questions:What reasons are there for a company to initiate a repositioning?, What does it mean for companies to implement a repositioning?, What are the risks with a repositioning?We have used a qualitative research method and have chosen to interview six respondents which in various ways are actively working with brand repositioning. Our study has been implemented with and deductive character.The most important conclusion that we observed after implementing our study is that repositioning is a high-risk project. Instead of changing their entire brand image, companies should instead make small changes and revitalize the brand by developing the strength that already exist.

Ever since Internet revolutionized the world, e-stores and e-commerce has grown into becoming a natural part of consumer's everyday life. Much thanks to it's facilitative and time saving characteristics. Online, consumers are provided with a huge assortment and the opportunity to shop any time they like. Yet, the absolute greatness of e-stores is the possibility to push prices below the physical store price, which seems to be most appreciated to a large extent by consumers worldwide. The fact that e-store sales in Sweden grew 14% last year verifies this.As more players step into the virtual world of e-commerce the competition gets tougher.

Chemotherapy is one of the most important methods of treatment available today for the treatment of neoplastic diseases and gives many patients an increased quality of life and a prolonged survival time (McKnight, 2003). The object of this study was to find out more about owners? views on and experiences of chemotherapy of dogs when it comes to for example quality of life, side effects and if they would make the same decision and treats their dog again in the future. A questionnaire was in the spring of 2009 sent out to the owners of 100 dogs that had been treated with chemotherapy for neoplastic diseases at Universitetsdjursjukhuset, Sveriges Lantbruksuniversitet (SLU) in Uppsala between 2002 and 2008. The response rate was 67 %.

Arbetet är ett utredningsarbete som går ut på att försöka lokalisera felkällor och göra förbättringar på en testutrustning som mäter rodervinklar på akterdelen på en robot. Rapporten innehåller en översiktlig bild över den tidigare metoden och dess felkällor som hittas vid test av den tidigare metoden. Utredningen utmanar också många utav antagandena som är gjorda för beräkningarna av den tidigare metoden. Detta utförs för att kunna bekräfta eller dementera antagandena. Detta görs i form av matematiska modeller som testar olika delar av metoden.

In the last decade, member states of the European Union have adopted a range of measures to decrease the dependency on fossil fuels. This has led to an increased use of biomass in heat and power production. In some countries, the lack of forest resource has led to large scale power producers importing their biomass needs. Due to high energy content and homogeneity, wood pellets have become an internationally traded commodity used for large scale power production. The Baltic States have emerged as one of the largest wood pellet exporting regions in Europe.

As demand for renewable energy is increasing rapidly, the market for biomass pellets is expected to continue to grow in the near future. Most of the new raw materials that are discussed for pellet production have one thing in common; the production costs will increase compared to using traditional raw materials such as sawdust and planer shavings. The aim of this thesis is to investigate to what degree increased use of new raw materials for pellet production will affect the general pellet prices in Sweden and to survey what plans Swedish pellet producers have concerning new raw materials. To investigate the raw material situation of the Swedish pellet producers an industry survey was performed. Literature studies were also made on previous research in the subject field. Calculations of the production costs for pellets were done for the raw materials sawdust, wet sawmill chips and energy wood respectively. New raw materials are already used by the large-scale pellet producers in Sweden.

This essay is about a debate concerning the magazine Axess, feminism and antifeminism - in relation to a issue of Axess called To a new feminism. The theoretical foundation of this essay is Pierre Bourdieu and his field theories. The battles taking place in this particular field concerns the positioning of feminism and antifeminism in the way we culturally interpret these in our society. The essay shows that the magazine Axess (at least in the first edition of 2012) links feminism with a very prominent symbolic capital in a culture context. This discussion can at times seem confusing, and this is probably due to the fact that Bourdieus symbolic capital can be a very abstract concept. The journalist and author Maria Sveland writes about the development of a culture moving towards accepting antifeminism (and also xenophobia). She expresses the opinion that this, to a high degree, is due to actors in the culture domain with a big amount of trust in the public eye has moved towards expressing anti-feministic (and xenophobic) views.

This master thesis is a study of the Swedish hydropower capacity to balance wind power. The Swedish government has decided that it should be possible to produce 30 TWh from wind power in the year 2020. The Swedish municipalities have to have plans for wind power plants with total yearly generation of 30 TWh. Wind power is an variable energy source that needs to be balanced by other energy sources. In Sweden the Swedish hydropower can be used for balancing a large scale introduction of wind power.