This thesis attempts to clarify the impact of cultural differenceson customer expectations of service level. Furthermore, wewant to determine whether or not expectations of service differenough to be quantifiable between two countries, Sweden andthe US, mostly regarded as similar in business practices. The conclusion showed that higher ratings on four of Hofstede?s five cultural indexes were associated with higher customer service expectations overall, and in all four SERVQUAL dimensions. This research contributes to retail internationalization and customer expectations theory.

Small!size!enterprises!within!the!outdoor!industry!seldom!use!a!structured!process!or!method!when!involving!users!in!product!development.!One!reason!for!this!is!that!many!structured!development!processes!are!designed!for!large!companies!with!very!different!resources.!When!involving!users!in!product!development!processes,!the!most!common!user! is! an! elite! athlete.! She! or! he! often! has! different! requirements! than! the! regular!consumer!and!in!the!customers?!point!of!view;!this!leads!to!nonCmaximized!developed!products.!!The! result! of! this! thesis! is! a! user! involvement! process! for! small! outdoor! companies!based! on! the! Sister! Kenny! Research! Center! Innovation! Handbook,! a! product!development!process,!which!itself!is!based!on!a!phaseCgate!model.!The!process!focuses!on!the!user!category!enthusiastic!amateurs,!since!this!is!what!companies!in!the!industry!require.!The!process!also! focuses!on!how!and!where! small!outdoor! companies! should!involve!users!and!give!recommendations!on!how!many!users!that!should!be!involved!in!a! product! development! process,! different! from! what! the! theory! recommend.! The!process! also! builds! on! that! ideas! should! come! from! the! users! first,! and! then! being!further!developed!by!the!company's!product!developers.!The!degree!of!communication!between!users!and!the!company!is!shown!and!the!report!clarifies!the!user!involvement!intensity!in!product!development!processes.!!The!involvement!process!that!has!been!developed!has!also!been!summarized!in!a!guide!that! can!be!used!by! a! company!on! a!daily!basis.!This! contains! information!on,! among!other!things,!how!users!are!selected!and!how!to!plan!a!workshop.!!! !.

The PhonePages of Sweden is a company that develops software for mobile units, especially cell phones. This thesis treats the development of, and contingencies for, a mobile phone directory, using the limited resources found in a mobile unit. The project was implemented and executed at The PhonePages with the intention of creating a product to sell to a third party.By studying different solutions, their benefits and drawbacks, an abstract picture of the product was constructed. Problems covered include compatibility problems caused by todays platform diversity as well as problems with saving, organizing and presenting data.The main goal was to create a phone directory which does not make external information retrievals. The service should contain both company and personal information, with name and phonenumber.

Multi-brand portfolios are characterized by comprising many brands in the same product category. Companies that have chosen to organize their products according to this strategy are facing both possibilities, such as expanding the accessible market size, and challenges such as how to organize the brands, their individual roles and their relation and position to the other brands in the category to maximize revenues. To address these aspects of multi-brand portfolios, I have investigated four product categories where multiple brands are represented at Mölnlycke Health Care, Unilever, Fagerhult and L?Oréal; how the multi-brand portfolios are organized, how the segmentation, positioning and product differentiation are done and what advantages and disadvantages that are associated with this strategy. My conclusions are that multi-brand portfolios can be organized in many different ways and to become successful, they have to be set in relation to the company?s whole brand architecture.

The business world has been through an extreme transformation over the past decades, which have forced companies to look at themselves from a new point of view. Consumers have a complete new set of ways to gather information and are more motivated than ever to make sustainable consumption choices. This change of attitudes among consumers has made companies focus on other things than price versus quality. A whole new concept has been brought up to questioning: environmentalism. Consumers demand more organically produced products.

During the last decade, the construction industry has focused on improving and optimising its production process. The construction industry is now facing larger changes regarding efficiency in their supply chain for the next decade. Many companies are now trying to optimise its supply chain together with its supplier. JM AB, which is one of the biggest construction companies in Sweden, is looking at different options to improve its own logistics together with their suppliers. One option is to use a terminal between JM and the suppliers to solve problems such as quality, custom service and inventory for the in production.

The deregulation during the last decade within the airline businesses have called upon a more fierce competition among airlines. This fact forces airlines to continuously focus on service development in order to offer attractive solutions to satisfy customers changing needs and stay competitive. This paper focuses on service development at Scandinavian Airlines. The aim of this case study is to examine the sources of information used in service development and new service development at Scandinavian Airlines. Further the aim is to examine whether information derived from customers can be shown to play a more important role in either service development or new service development.

Public Service är ett svårdefinierat begrepp. De gamla idealen handlar mycket om enmedieideologi som baseras på etermediernas möjligheter och begränsningar, vilket har skapatsvårigheter när Public Service har letat sig ut på Internet. Kritik från bland annatbranschorganisationen Tidningsutgivarna ifrågasätter Public Service-företagens breddning påwebben. De anser att gränserna för vad Public Service-företagen får och inte får göra äralltför otydliga.Med hjälp av fyra kvalitativa samtalsintervjuer (tre personer från Sveriges Television samt enfrån Tidningsutgivarna), och med kvalitativa textanalyser av statliga propositioner ochutredningar angående Public Service-uppdraget undersöks hur Public Service-uppdraget ochdess medieföretag påverkas av medieutvecklingen.I uppsatsen jämförs resultaten med Anna Maria Jönssons tankar kring Public Service och denmedieideologiska inriktningen ?Social ansvarsideologi?.

Together with Attends in Aneby a thesis of 15 ECTS (credits) have been undertaken. The assignment was to develop a new incontinence product for single use. Users of the product value comfort, flexibility, softness, comfort and a discreet product. Users are for individuals with incontinence problems that usually receive the products via prescription. The product must also have an attractive price and good quality from the purchase / originator's perspective.Currently there are two models that Attends supplies, which the project intends to develop, (Slips / Briefs and Pull On's).

Organisations tend to focus more and more on product and process development to increase their competitiveness. Several major organisations, among them ABB, have developed models aimed to more effectively control and manage product development processes. ABB is using its standardised model ABB Gate Model for this. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze how the introduction of ABB Gate Model has affected the outcome of decisions and also the decision-making in the product development process. The study is limited to elucidate the version of ABB Gate Model handling product development projects.

To identify the underlying forces behind a product hype is difficult and the findings often seem random and unclear. To create a better understanding behind the affecting mechanisms would consequently be a valuable addition to the surrounding research area. The purpose of this paper is to understand if there exist common denominators between different product hypes and in such a case, which these are and how they function. By conducting a case-study on four products which have enjoyed immense sale success on the Swedish market, the possible presence of structural resemblance will be analyzed. From the study we can conclude common denominators such as the presence of an underlying trend and an overbalance of indirect decision basis do exist.

By exposing their products in blogs, companies have the opportunity to reach out to hundreds of thousands of consumers daily. Instead of using conventional Internet advertising such as banners and ads, some companies chose to make use of product placement in blogs. By choosing to expose their products in blogs, companies use a medium that blog readers are familiar with and can relate to, and can thereby solicit customers for their products and brands.We will examine whether product placements in fashion blogs are an effective way for businesses to market themselves and their products. We measure this efficiency, by keeping a record of the sales of ten product placed garment and accessories that we have selected from four of the largest blogs in Sweden. The stores we examine sales of product placed goods in are volume brand stores such as Zara and H&M etcetera.

Identification and analysis of key success factors for an entrepreneurial firm to achieve leverage when establishing on a foreign market with a premium consumer product..

Vi ville se om kunderna har olika förväntningar på service beroende på vilken butik de handlar i och hur detta påverkar säjarnas och föetagets agerande. Studien visade att företagen har profilerat sig på två helt skilda sätt. Detta har gjort att kunderna förväntar sig olika nivå av service vilket också företagen förstått och därmed leverarar de den service kunderna efterfrågar..

This Bachelor thesis is a qualitative study of the public debate regarding the role of Public service in the media converged society today. The purpose of this thesis is to examine how the public debate, that is the Swedish Public service television and people with broad representative knowledge about Public service, motivates a change of the function of the Swedish Public service television.Our issues are: What does the public debate say about the function of Swedish Public  service television in our society today and how is a change motivated in this debate? How does the public debate look upon today´s media convergence and the fragmentation of the audience which, according to Denis McQuail, is a consequence of this?The method of this thesis is a qualitative analysis and we have analyzed ten opinion articles and Swedish Public service television magazine ?DittSvt?. The theoretical background was obtained from Henry Jenkins and Håkan Hvitfelts theories and thoughts about mediaconvergence. We have supplemented this with Denis McQuails theory regarding the fragmentation of the audience.In this thesis, we see that the public debate is a lot about diversity in Swedish Public service television programming and that the democratic base is still very important.