A purchase decision can be seen as a multifaceted context that raises many unanswered questions. Understanding the consumer's evaluation of alternatives is complex and should be studied at a deeper rather than wider scale. There is a problem for retailers to understand how the consumer manages a purchase decision in a retail setting with durables goods that generates a higher effort. The aim is to describe the decision rules used by the consumer and how they are expressed in this context. A better understanding of which ones they use and how they are conveyed will help retailers to create effective marketing solutions that generate positive outcomes as increased profitability and customer satisfaction.

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.

Background: The strategic importance of purchasing departments is increasing, yet supply risks are rather uncharted. The procurement of coffee involves supply risks and the purchaser needs to be able to handle these to enable the roasting-house to produce coffee as specified. Purpose: To chart risks in connection with the procurement of coffee as well as the possibilities of handling these. The thesis also examines if general risk management theories are applicable on the supply risk present within Swedish roasting-houses and can become an integral partof the purchasing process. Method: A qualitative case study of the purchasing process of Swedish roasting- houses.

This study examines how and why organizations evaluate training and development within the organizations. The study has a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews, with office and organization development managers. The purpose of the study is to contribute with knowledge about how three large Swedish organizations evaluates training and development programs for staff members. Another purpose is to describe why the organizations evaluate training and development programs and to research if there is a further need to develop the organization evaluation methods. Therefore the research questions are Why and how do organizations evaluate training programs? What further need is there to develop organizations evaluation methods?The conclusion of this study shows that evaluation of the training and development programs are not a high priority among the selected organizations.

The aim of this master thesis is to evaluate the performance of the content-based image retrieval system ImBrowse from a semantic point of view. Evaluation of retrieval performance is a problem in content-based image retrieval (CBIR). There are many different methods for measuring the performance of content-based image retrieval systems, but no common way for performing the evaluation. The main focus is on image retrieval regarding the extraction of the visual features in the image, from three semantic levels. The thesis tries to elucidate the semantic gap, which is the problem when the systems extraction of the visual features from the image and the user?s interpretation of that same information do not correspond.

The aim of this study was to develop and psychometrically evaluate an instrument for measuring the impact from chronic pain on daily life. Traditionally psychometric evaluation is done with parametric methods even if the items are ordinal data. In this study the instrument to be developed is solely based on ordinal data, and the psychometrically evaluation is done with both traditional methods (i.e. parametric statistics) as well as with non-parametric methods. These two different ways of psychometrically evaluation are then compared with each other.

Summary Title: How to make decisions on software based servicedevelopment in the mobile handset industry.?The Rapid Model for Holistic Application Evaluation Authors: Per-Inge AnderssonPatrik Dreveborn Tutors: Björn Regnell, Department of Computer Science,Lund UniversityRobert Wenglén, School of Economics and Management,Lund University Problem formulation: Academically the questions of finding out what constitutes a sound decision base and finding out how to handle the issue of a holistic approach must be addressed in order to make a well balanced and relevant decision model. The core question is which decision criteria to include and which drivers are important in estimating the status of the criteria? Practically to provide Sony Ericsson with a formalized evaluation process for decisions on software development that is transparent, objective and challengeable. Purpose: Academically to contribute to the field of decision making research by elaborating on how to make a holistic, rapid and rational decision model.

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.

The development for Skanska Commercial Development (SCD) during the last years has been positive on all markets and Skanska therefore plans on expanding their activity. Central and Eastern Europe has had a considerable economic development, what is assessed to continue during the next following years. Bucharest is one possible alternative in the CEE for a new establishment by SCD. However, the investigation before an entry is a process with many factors that need to be taken into consideration. There are today no models on how and what a developer as SCD should evaluate in terms of opportunities and risks on a possible new market.

Forensic psyhiatric care protects the society by giving patients care to diminish risks of serious crimes. In their work the nurses use different care methods to help and support the patient in managing his or her life situation. To clarify how a group of nurses describe the nursing process in forensic psychiatric care. A qualitative study based on interviews. Six nurses were interviewed about their work in four different forensic psychiatric care units.

This bachelor thesis is a study and an evaluation of the planning and implementation of the targeted marketing campaign "Småbarnsföräldern" at a public library. The analysis is based on the following questions:? What goals does the library have with the marketing campaign "Småbarnsföräldern"?? How has the library chosen to plan and implement the marketing campaign "Småbarnsföräldern" and what role have the users had in this process?? What is the internal result of the library?s marketing campaign ? how did the staff experience the marketing campaign "Småbarnsföräldern"?? What is the external result ? how did the target group, the parents of young children, experience the marketing campaign "Småbarnsföräldern"?The method is based on a case study of a single library with a series of interviews and document analysis. The study reveals that it´s difficult to plan a marketing campaign against a target group. The target group, the parents of young children, didn?t observe the marketing campaign, two informants had noticed the poster but didn?t pay much attention to it.

Mikael Svanberg skrev 2003 en doktorsavhandling där han beskriver en metod för att givet ett antal olika kandidatarkitekturer välja den som på bäst sätt uppfyller den blandning av kvalitativa krav som ställs på ett system. Denna rapport innehåller en fallstudie av Svanbergs metod applicerad på en webbapplikation beställd av GreenIT. Applikationen ska tillämpa en metod för mätning och relation av ansvarsfullt företagande med ett enkätformulär. Metoden bygger på principialkomponentsanalys (PCA) och är framtagen i ett examensarbete av Helen Josefsson 2009.Svanbergs metod, ?Architechture Evaluation and Selection Method?, appliceras på den beräkningstunga PCA-modulen i applikationen i syfte att utvärdera metoden med avseende på vilken kvalitet resultatet har, hur kostnadseffektiv den är samt när den lämpar sig bäst att användas.Tre stycken kandidatarkitekturer, Layers, Pipes and Filters och Blackboard, och fyra stycken kvalitetsattribut, Effektivitet, Pålitlighet, Underhållbarhet och Säkerhet, väljs ut och används som indata i metoden som bygger på Analytisk Hierarkisk Process (AHP).Metoden visar att Layers tillhandahåller den bästa blandningen av dessa kvalitetsattribut med stor säkerhet.

Our paper is based on matrixes and the feedback process as tools in the daily work in the higher education system. The main purpose with this paper is to investigate if these tools can enhance the effect of formative assessment and increase students? empowerment in the courses. In do-ing so, we investigate if students experience that their efforts result in increased progression in their courses and if they acquire adequate proficiency in the subject matters native to their pro-grams, along with an increased desire for lifelong learning. Compulsory collection of data for profit is conducted through interviews of students in year one of the IT media program and the IT program.

The core process is responsible for internal business development and is the process that runs through the organization and the results which creates a value for the customer. Some research suggests that identification of the client's conscious or unconscious needs clarifying the so-called core process in the organization and operations can thus be more effective. The study aims to identify and analyze the experience of the core process within child health care. The method has been interviews with nine managers and 10 clinic nurses in a county. The results show a lack of knowledge regarding core process and process work.

The concept of leadership development plays an important role within the modern organization. As a result of the increasing interest in developing leadership competencies, investments in leadership development programs are becoming a common part of business strategies. However, the return on those investments is seldom evaluated. The reason for this is considered to be the complexity created by the many factors that influence leadership but have no relation to the program. This is a case study based on interviews with participants from a one-year leadership development program that was carried out at AB Previa.