This thesis was developed as an assignment from Ludosity Interactive where the goal was to develop a copy of the Xbox Live Indie Games-marketplace from the Xbox 360. Ludosity Interactive had a necessity to easily test a game's attractiveness to potential customers using testing people from outside the company in a simulated Xbox Live Indie Games test environment; excluding this developed system there is no other way to do such an analysis without actually releasing the game on the Xbox Live Indie Games marketplace and then analyze the resulting sales from the product.The finished system had to be similar to the original system to the degree that a user could see past the interface itself and use the system just as he/she would have used the real marketplace. It also had to be easy to change and add games to the system so that Ludosity Interactive easily could show the games and the data that they deemed interesting for their tests. The final product was developed using C#, XNA and XML together with an Agileinspired development method in combination with Pivotal Tracker. This report describes how this product was developed..

Background: Society of today is characterised by greater dynamics and a constant demand for innovation and fresh ideas. This development is often named "the new economy" or "the knowledge society". Independent of how one chooses to name this society, most individuals seem to agree upon the fact that knowledge grows more and more important. New competencies, such as new knowledge and new forms of organising, will be demanded for corporations to be successful in the future. In recent years it has become more common with corporations based on projects.

This examination work aims to describe how a supply chain around the biggest pellets factory in Sweden will be configured in a logistic perspective. The plant and associated infrastructure are in the building phase and will have production start on the 2 November 2009. The key question that is set in this examination work is to recognize the logistic processes which are essential for an effective flow of materials and information that link the source of supply with the ultimate customer. In order to get the answer, a flowcharting of these supply chain processes is required for understanding the pipeline activities such as input and storage of raw material, the production system and the output of pellets to the customers. The basis for this supply chain map is a model-based representation of these logistic processes and activities that are involved around the pellets factory.

The advantages with product placement in blogs compared to traditional media is shown in earlier empirical findings where consumers found blog posts more credible and informative than a corresponding article in a web paper. It can therefore be argued that the informal structure and personal tonality of the blog reinforces the effects of product placement on brand attitude and intention to buy as the consumer has no persuasion knowledge and does not detect the rewriting of the product as commercial.This paper?s overall aim is to provide concrete implications for how to manage product placement on fashion blogs. The purpose of the essay is therefore to investigate the communicative effects of product placement in fashion blogs as well as to examine if a revelation of commercial interest behind a blog posts about a certain brand effects the consumers? attitude towards the blog and/or brand attitude and intention to buy.

Quality can be defined as the ability of a business to satisfy their customers? needs and expectations. Total Quality Management is defined as the way to prevent, appraise and improve the entire organization to increase the product quality. In order to systematically increase quality in an organization, there are different quality systems in use. One example is process management, which is to divide the activities of processes.

Laser for material processing possesses a number of advantages which mean that it has been and will be an important component for a wide range of industries' future development. Cutting materials processing is the dominant use of laser technology and has revolutionized the manufacturing industry. The aim of this thesis is to describe the principles of metal cutting by laser, how laser cutting is applied in practice and to identify how Swedish companies are using laser cutting. For the theoretical and technical description of laser cutting literature studies are the primary source of information. The empirical basis for the mapping of the Swedish industry for laser cutting is grounded on a survey; this includes Swedish companies that use laser cutting in their production.

SNA Europe?s handsaw concept is called ?Bahco Handsaw System? and is constituted by a saw handle with the possibility to switch between different saw blades. The sales of ?Bahco Handsaw System? products have not achieved the desired results probably due to the high price. Developing a more cost efficient handle, enabling a lower consumer price of the product, is assumed to increase the sales volume.

We have conducted a quantitative study investigating whether an Ingredient Branding collaboration between private label and national brands could be executed with success in the Swedish market. The objective was to measure the consumers? response to two products from different product categories, representing hedonic and utilitarian products. We have been able to establish that by adding a branded ingredient to a private label product, one obtains a more positive product attitude as well as a higher perceived product quality and taste. The study also shows that attitudes towards the ingredient brands were improved by the collaboration whereas the brand attitude towards the private label did not change significantly.

This paper examines how themed hotel companies work with innovation and innovation processes to meet the demands of todays market.. To get a deeper understanding the paper is focused on three separate hotel companies in Sweden. The paper is based on a qualitative method. The paper starts with a methodology chapter, followed by an explanation for a number of concepts that are central in the paper. Here, the reader will also read about the concept of innovation, and innovation processes. This is followed by a number of innovation processes in tourism.

Political disenchantment and detachment is proven to be growing in well established democracies. This development brings along concerning behavior regarding general political participation. Fewer citizens participate in elections, parties are losing members, and the trust in politicians is steadily decreasing. IDEA (Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance) has been registering voter turnout worldwide for the last 60 years and their publications show a decline in voter participation since the 1980s.During the same period of time another development has caught attention, namely the fast progress of the medium Internet. The new generation of Internet functions is called Web 2.0 and allows users not only to create content, but also to interact with each other.This dissertation aims to explore the possibilities emerging when integrating Web 2.0 in political processes.

Multichannel-shopping has become a wide spread phenomenon in the retail industry due to a significant development of retail channels and formats. Consumers now shop for the same product category in many different retail settings and this trend is increasing. Therefore both the academic world and the retail industry are screaming for knowledge about the multichannel-shoppers. Several studies have focused on the characteristics of different channels and how multichannel strategies should be designed to minimize cannibalization. There is however a lack of research concerning what characterizes multichannel-shoppers and what drives them to shop in several channels.

The purpose of thesis was to investigate and compare how two companies within pharmaceutical industry and nuclear power industry are currently working with quality development regarding continuous improvement and Lessons Learned in business processes. In addition, a simple comparison was made with the automotiveindustry.McNeil AB are improving their processes continuously and are according to the findings of this report performing well in their pursuit of world-class pharmaceutical production. They have a well functioning process regarding improvements proposed in weekly improvement meetings engaging all employees. However, during interviews it was made clear that the functionality of the process which administer improvement proposals generated in addition to, or beside the weekly improvement meetings, were inadequate. McNeil AB is proposed to administer this through an IT solution instead of by paper and e-mail, that simplifies the process of adding, implementing and follow up an improvement proposal.The nuclear power plant Ringhals AB recently made major improvements in their business processes as well as the plant itself.

This report looks at the possibility of designing a universal adapter for Flat Blade windshield wipers in cooperation with European Automotive Supplier AB.To understand and see if this is possible, a research and an extensive patent search where done. Then to add structure to the project a Ganttschematic were developed. To generate good and solid ideas, different methods for product development were looked upon.When a method was chosen and applied, a series of concepts emerged. Now the focus was to design and construct all the pieces. The desired manufacture procedures were looked upon as well as materials.

The thesis work has been carried out at Volvo Aero Corporation (VAC) in Trollhättan. VAC has entered a partnership as developing and producing partner with engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney and is currently at the starting phase of producing the turbine rear frame (TEC) to the engine PW1000.The purpose of this study was to create a report on process level that describes the conditions and the potential with PW1000 TEC to reach the product cost calculation taking into account lead times and describe alternative method solutions.The report describes a comparison between the present flow (2012), a flow based on product cost calculation (2016) and a potential flow (2016). The work has mainly been based on acquiring the knowledge and information available to inspect the present flow; this has been done by workshop observations, meetings and gathering of the information that is available on the work site for the PW1000 TEC.The information obtained has been merged into an Excel document, called Roadmap. It serves as a roadmap with current situation as the start and the potential flow for 2016 as the goal. With the roadmap as a tool, assumptions have been taken considering the flow and how it will change, where processes have been eliminated, reduced or marked as a problem..

The purpose of this study is to further develop the understanding of Nextopia, the belief that the next product will always be better, and the effects it has on Word of mouth, both oral (WOM) and electronic (eWOM), and investigate possible causes of this effect. This has been made through an experimental study of responses to two mineral water ads, with a manipulated time frame. First, this thesis supports the fact that there is a general Nextopia-effect on customers being exposed to a future product, which makes them evaluating the product higher in terms of feelings, attitude and intention. Further this study shows that there is also a Nextopia-effect on WOM and eWOM, by customers being more likely to recommend a future product rather than a current one. This propensity to recommend the product also has a relationship with responsibility, which correlates much stronger with WOM than eWOM.