Without being aware of it, cognitive processes continuously take place in our heads. We are forced to fill in the information gaps that we meet in our everyday life in order to create an understanding and to form a whole, and that?s where the importance of inference comes in. To create inference implies creating meaning from something that is not explicitly given. Having knowledge about this process offers great possibilities, while not taking it into account may involve risks.

Background: Literature regarding brand identity within the service industry is relatively under developed. As a result one theory is used for both the service and product brands, even though there is a significant difference between a product and a service. As a result of this, the brand identity within the service industry has consequences. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the brand identity within the service industry. This is done by focusing on how and why this work is done.

The Hunter?s Bend project is about how our personal possessions affect our perceived identity and in what way the value of an object may increase with the relationship that is built up towards the user. I have looked upon traces of time as an extension of an existing object. The outcome is a series of leather cases made out of one piece of folded leather, hardened and locked within itself. The history contained in leather, as a living material has been an important part of the project as well as how its features are used in the making and then allowing the product to change after use..

In most software engineering project, users are only involved in the beginning of the project as a help to design the requirements specification but users can be involved after this phase too, but is it effective to do so? With this report we would like to investigate how effective it is to involve users after the requirements specification has been written and approved. To find out how effective it is to involve the users we try some fast and simple involvement techniques on a quite far gone project. These techniques include ethnographic studies, prototypes and surveys. We also interviewed a couple of people who work with usability and finally delivered a report with our results to them to find out if they found our result relevant. By also documenting how much time we spent involving users we will show to which degree user involvement is effective. We found out that a couple of fast techniques could get very much result in the form of usability enhancing suggestions to the developers.

Subject: This paper is about Brand Extension and if the process differs when a company extends its brand from a service to a product in comparison to an extension from a product to a product. As an example we have analyzed the mobile phone business and the mobile phone operators who launch their private branded mobile phonesPurpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze how companies use brand extension from service to product as a part of their brand extension strategy.Method: A literature study was done in the brand extension area, but also in the area of brands to have a deeper understanding for the subject. A qualitative study with interviews was combined with a quantitative survey study. On the basis of the theories we could analyze the collected data and fulfill the papers purpose. Results: Important features and differences in services and products were identified and the importance of a strong brand identity before an extension.

The thesis focuses on the measurement of situational factors affecting brand loyalty in purchases and consumption. A survey is conducted using previously developed scales and 199 respondents. Results show that for the particular product category (ready-to-drink recovery drinks), purchase frequency and the product experience have stronger effects on loyalty than do situational factors such as type of activity and perceived stress. Implications for managers are discussed and suggestions for further research is presented..

This thesis will describe the redesign of the manure fork SverigeGrepen. The productis available for purchase in Scandinavia and and parts of the rest of Europe.The product is available in stores but the companys goal is to start distribute it overthe internet. A problem today with a purchase over the internet is that the costumerhas to pay a high shipping-fee due to the products unique form. The long handlecontributes to the high shipping-fee which makes it hard to attract costumers topurchase the product online. Deficiencies have been found at the manure forks basketand needs to be examined.

In today's society, the availability of energy plays an integral part in our everyday lives. Unfortunately, the price of energy in Sweden has increased in recent decades. A large part of our energy consumption goes to heating modules for houses, where heating methods that depend on energy sources such as electricity, district heating, fuel oil, gas and biofuels are the most common ones. During the winter period, the increase in energy costs becomes significantly evident, especially for small property owners. This increase in energy cost is most noticeable for home owners with electric heating.This thesis is written at the Halmstad University, in cooperation with a company, which makes parts of this thesis confidential.

Traumatic arthritis is a common cause of lameness in horses. One of different treatment alternatives of arthritis, is intra-articular injection with hyaluronan. As knowledge about pathophysiology of arthritis and function of hyaluronan is increasing, understanding grows about the mechanism of hyaluronan action in joints. Hyaluronan has, in addition to effects on viscosity, anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects. Extensive research and scientific studies have been made on exogenous hyaluronan.

In today?s competitive market, design is an important element for the companies. They must succeed with delivering an increased value and an experience for the consumer to be able to survive. The Swedish company?s have become better in the design area, the higher standards the consumer?s demands forces the company to invest more in design.

Could patterns change the way we as consumers feel about a product as it ages and wears down? Why do some products increase their value as they are being worn downand others do not? Could the same affection that increases with your favourite jeans or an old, worn down, scratched and beautiful wooden furniture, be applied on otherproducts with different ability?s and history?The goal was to explore patterns and beautiful aging in products to increase the consumers desire to keep the well used product a little bit longer. Not to prolong the products ?lifetime? from brand new till it?s no longer inhabit their main function, but at that precise momentwhen you as a consumer decides to through it away in favour for a new, updated version. To buy ?new and fresh?.Patterns with different expressions, colouring and size, were explored that increase the value of a product which in this project contained handles and varies of surfaces on casseroles, frying pans, whisks, cutlery etc.

This thesis presents an application that performs positioning of modules automatically based on given data for every module, and the development of it. The basis of the application is from a previous thesis code. On top of that code, more features and error handling has been added, as well as fixes for various bugs. A stress test has been performed and further development possibilities are being presented.The thesis work was carried out at Toyota Material Handling Mjölby (TMH) and was made in parallel with another thesis by Fredrik Holden who was generating data for the application. For a complete understanding of the theory and background, please also read Holden?s thesis report ?Development of method for automated positioning of 3D-representations of a modularized product?, as well as the former thesis  ?Analysis for Automated Positioning of 3D-representation of a Modularized product??..

Bakgrunden till denna rapport är att det sportvarumärke jag samarbetat med ville utveckla en modell av längdskidåkningsjacka som fanns i deras sortiment. Undersökningen gällde att identifiera förbättringspunkter på en dam- och herrvariant av denna jacka. Avsikten var att bevara plaggens design och genom förändringar i mönstrens konstruktion förbättra passform och rörelsefrihet, och därigenom plaggets funktion. Genom att konstruera, sy toiler och prova av dessa på provmodeller, har rörelsefrihet och passform kunnat utvärderas. Resultatet visade att viktiga punkter var raglanärmens konstruktion, böjningen av ärmen, kragens form, ärmhålsdjup och placering av skärlinjer.

This thesis was performed at Vendig AB which is a company that develops and sells products such as belt scrapers for conveyor. The thesis is divided into two parts, one part where it´s investigated which tension force is required to tighten Vendig AB´s scraper Hampus against the belt in a correct way. The second part is called mechanical design and here a new and more compact tension device is developed.Field studies has been conducted at a couple of Vendig AB´s costumers to get a knowledge base about how Vendig AB´s products are used, how they function and the environment they operate in. During one of the field studies the force between the scraper and the belt was measured. The result from the measurements, together with a report from LKAB [1], were evaluated and summarized in a table.

Today it is very common to use different kinds of social media to connect with each other and get the latest updates on things. Some people today also feel that they want to share their lives by writing a public blog. The blog-market has exploited the last few years and today blogging is about a lot more than just getting attention by writing about your day. Many young bloggers make money by having advertisements and by doing product placements on their blogs. This study investigates the relationship between companies and bloggers.