The public sector in Sweden outsources its core business to a very large extent, whileinsisting on running its IT operations internally in a traditional way. IT as a service ingeneral and cloud computing in particular has become incredibly popular in recentyears, offering cost efficiency and greater ability for the business to concentrate on itscore activities, which is why it should be a promising alternative to the traditional wayof running IT internally. To achieve an understanding of why IT as a service has yetto take off in the public sector, a study of its use of IT/IS, what the effect of IT as aservice is, and the opportunities and challenges that cloud computing represents, isnecessary.The study, which was conducted using a qualitative hermeneutic approach, was initiatedby a literature review, followed by six in-depth interviews with five respondents,all of which hold many years of experience in the area. The outcome of the interviewsindicated that IT as a service should represent a promising and feasible way of reachinghigher levels of cost control, and a greater focus on core activities. Furthermore,the results indicated that Swedish legislation along with a high level of businesscomplexitymight be reasons for the low amount of IT as a service in the public sector.Through careful analysis and examination of the business? current situation, as well ascomprehensive knowledge of Swedish legislation with regards to the implications ofLagen om offentlig upphandling, the public sector can avoid IT as a service becomingmore expensive and more complicated than necessary, and achieve cost efficiencyalong with a greater focus on its core activities through it.Future research could examine the possibility of a framework for the integration ofcloud services within the public sector?s IT/IS environment, and whether there is aspecific size of a cloud implementation at which it?s more cost efficient to go withtraditional IT operations..

Service branding is a subject that has been excluded from the traditional branding theory. Our main purpose with this paper is to distinguish what characterizes service branding. To do this, we have looked in to both service marketing theory as well as branding theory. We have also looked at the existing theory concerning service branding. Six qualitative interviews have been performed to explain what characterizes service branding.

Abstract Title: A conjoint analysis of packaging attributes. How can the attributes of a product?s packaging best look like to attract the consumer? Authors: Linda Granberg & Helena Niklasson Supervisor: Jan Svanberg Department: School of Management, Blekinge Institute of Technology Course: Bachelor?s thesis in Business Administration, 15 credits Purpose: The purpose is to find out how visual and technical attributes on product packaging affects the consumers tendency to want to buy the product. Method: Conjoint analysis and a quantitative survey. Results: When developing a package for a food product we?ve reached the conclusion that it is most important to have clear product information on it. The consumer wants it to be simple and easy to use, the people under time pressure seeks product with new technology which can save them time..

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 process of value creation is rapidly shifting from a product- and firm-centric view to personalized consumer experience today. Informed, networked, empowered and active consumers are increasingly co-creating value with the firm. The interaction between the firm and the consumer as well as the experience factor plays an increasingly important role in determining the success of a company?s offering. In this study, a special type of co-creating experience is investigated - ?omstartspex? - where the audience is interacting with actors during the play.

Today?s market for companies doing statistical surveys is a market consisting of mostly standardized methods where differentiating your company from the competitors is hard. Simultaneously both the society at large and technology in specific is under constant development and everything needs to be done at a faster pace with better precision. One of the companies on the market mentioned above is Tradewell Group AB. During 2008/2009 Tradewell has developed a new method for doing statistical surveys. The method named by Tradewell is called Cellphone Survey System, CSS and include using existing technology in a, for this market, unknown way.

This paper examines the relationship between the experienced quality in the offering of a brand, emotional attachment and consumer commitment. The study aim to explore several dimensions of the experienced quality in the offering of a brand. Further we examine two conceptualizations of emotional attachment - Brand Attachment and Brand Love - and intend to declare the two of being two separate phenomena. We then conduct a relationship-based analysis wherein the mediating ability of Brand Attachment and Brand Love, between the experienced quality in the offering of a brand and consumer commitment, is examined. Therefore we conduct a focused quantitative study, wherein 171 customers of the fashion retailer H&M have responded to a comprehensive survey both online and in-store, to examine this fun-damental relationship and its components.

The gaming market is growing and the number of people, men and women, who play computer games, is also increasing every day. In addition, computer games are also interactive media which leads to the fact that product placement in computer games attracts and is used more frequently by marketers. It is therefore important for marketers and game developers to understand how product placement in computer games affects players' attention and attitude towards the brand or product that is product placed. We therefore examine how product placement in computer games affects players' recall of and attitude towards the brand. The aim is to help companies and game developers to see the effect of product placement in computer games on players and thus product place more efficiently.

This project is implemented as a thesis at the Royal Institute of Technology in the master?s degree program Integrated Product Design and Industrial Design Engineering. The project has involved development and efficiency of a free starter package for expectant parents with useful content consisting of useful products for both before and after childbirth. Areas that have been investigated include packaging development, service design and appropriate content for the package.During the work, theory about packaging design, materials, manufacturing techniques and logistics have been processed to base the further work on. The project process has involved competitor analysis and interviews with store owners and customer surveys, that have been conducted to identify areas for improvement of the current solution.

Abstract Tutor - Anders Richtnér History - Theories suggest that Lean Product Development strategies dramatically increase a company's performance through enabling faster T-T-M, Quality and Costs of Product Development. Purpose - The purpose of this paper is therefore to investigate whether the implementation of LPD actually affect corporate performance measurements T-T-M, Quality and Cost, in a positive way. Methodology - This Bachelor thesis is an exploratory investigation of the concept of Lean Product Development within a global IT- company, performed through four case studies, interviews and complementing corporate performance data. Findings - With empirical data and subsequent analyzes in mind, we note the following; it is clear that the project that produced the best results, in terms of T-T-M, Quality and Cost, also was the one furthest in the process of implementing Lean Product Development..

Purpose: We wish to gain a deep knowledge about product development processes in relation to the aspect of time in companies in highly technological and rapidly changing markets. The purpose is to establish how organizations better can employ time as a resource to make the product development process more efficient. Conclusions: Information we gathered from theory and primary data show that information flow, synchronization and time profit when seeing time in three dimensions are factors which should be reflected in the architecture of a product development process. To illustrate our findings, we decided to create a model..

In the ever increasing media clutter it is hard for marketers to make their products stand out. New ways of reaching consumers are constantly arising. This study seeks to further investigate the phenomenon known as product placement, delimited to movies/television. By conducting an experiment we tested whether different presumptions matters for what effect a product placement will have on attitude and if these could be affected. We also looked at if the level of product integration effect attitude and realism enhancement.

The use of thin and attractive models to promote companies' products is widespread among marketers. This is true even for companies whose products have little or no association with beauty or body weight. As the proportion of overweight people continues to grow in many developed countries the ideals used by marketers to attract customers strays further away from the actual attributes of the customers themselves. What is little understood is what effect overweight has on the efficiency of the product promoter. Some limited research has studied how the efficiency of the product promoters in printed advertisements is affected by the existence of congruence between the product promoter and the product itself.

Many product launches are postponed today, however very little research regarding to customer responses to such events has been carried out. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how people react to a postponed product launch. An experimental study of responses to a postponed launch of a mobile phone, a mineral water and a music album is used to investigate customer reactions. The respondents exposed to the postponed launch showed a higher value of reactance. This reactance affects the attitude, purchase intention and perceived quality of the product in a negative way.

Every business is subject to service failures. The process of correcting these failures and turning disappointed customers back into happy ones is called service recovery. This is particularly important in the hotel business, where there are many moments of truth where customers may become dissatisfied. To further complicate things, service recovery is a process where you may have to correct errors of others - people beyond your control. The research field is relatively new and there are no turn-key solutions as to how to systematically work with service recovery.