This case study has been conducted within the Swedish fitness chain World Class to explore the opportunities for knowledge development and transfers within franchise networks. We have interviewed the product manager at the World Class headquarter, the owner of a franchise club and a local product manager from the same facility. Our finding indicates that various forms of knowledge transfer occur within the World Class network, particularly in product development and sales. The transfer occurs within the framework set by World Class with regularly scheduled meetings. In addition informal networks provide other means of knowledge exchange between some units.

Glulam?s position at the Swedish market for building constructions has been established over the past decades. Factors affecting glulam demand are found both in global and national contexts as well in customer attitudes and knowledge of the material. Arguments for environmentally friendly and sustainable construction processes and energy-efficient designs are nowadays common, which is something that should motivate increased usage of wood as a renewable material. For the glulam industry to increase its sales, improve profitability and thereby gain market share in present competitive climate, reliable market information and updated market intelligence is required.

The agriculture of today is getting larger and larger and it demands more efficient machines to handle these larger units. But all farmers don?t have the opportunities or don?t want to expand. What should they do if they want to remain on the farm? An alternative is to start a farm shop.

Background: There is no guarantee that products should be equitable produced. Many products in today's trade is produced by minors, resulting in poor working environment, and gives the workers low payment. Fairtrade is the only label on the market that ensures that farmers receive fair payment for their products. Aim: The central aim with our work is to see what the future consumers, in other words students from Lund's university, Malmö College and The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Alnarp, think about products labeled with Fairtrade, and what they consider is value creation for food products. Students are often relatively young; they educate themselves and have new thoughts and valuations about how the world should be.

In this paper, I am using a critical discourse analysis a la Fairclough to examin how various actors talk about the group of unemployed youths in the 52 articles from Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet. What?s written in media often portrays different ideas that individuals use in social practice. My theoretical points are social constructivism, risk-, expert-, and media society. Four themes crystallized in the analysis; young and unemployed, education, jobbgaratin and youth and labor market.

Many interactive products constructed today is not produced towards a specific targetaudience and how they will interact with the product. This master's thesis follows the designprocess in the development of the Let's Walk webapplication. In the designprocess has users of the webapplikation been identified, prototypes developed and an interactive version has been evaluated. The Let's Walk webapplication is a fully working system used to administrate Let's Walk, an exercise competition between companies. Experts and users have been involved to evaluate the Let's walk high-fidelity webapplication prototype.

This thesis examines the deregulation reform of the Swedish railroad industry, focusing on passenger transport between 1988 and 2005. The purpose of the thesis is to examine the effects from the deregulation reform on prices, market concentration and to determine whether SJ (the state owned incumbent) has been conducting strategic behaviour in order to prevent new entrants to the market. The chosen method consists of interviews with the MD at SJ between 1988 - 1998 Mr Karl-Erik Strand, the transportation researcher at SSE Mr Gunnar Alexandersson. Statistical sources and companies financial reports have also been used. The results that I have found were besides the fact that the market concentration is still significant high and the profitability among the operators low, is that the prices has increased more than CPI during the period but the competitive tendering has resulted in lower government subsidies after the deregulation.

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to give a contribution to the studies of what strategies those are of importance for challengers in consumer technological markets aiming for the market leader position. To be able to investigate this phenomenon we have chosen to study Microsoft?s second position in the video game console industry. In addition, we want to illuminate Microsoft?s competitive advantages, how Microsoft can take advantage from Sony?s setbacks and what strategies those are of importance for Microsoft in the battle of becoming the market leader.

Previous research has shown that the market reacts on stock recommendations. As the Internet has made financial information more available and cheaper to assess one could believe that the market reflects more available information today. If this is true the market will react less on recommendation made by journalists, which generally consists of processed public information. The stock market should thus be more efficient according to the efficient market hypothesis. This study examines initially if we can conclude that stock recommendations made by journalists generate returns above the expected returns, hence abnormal returns.

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.!!! !.

In recent years the development of mobile devices has made great progress and today they account for a large proportion of the internet usage. This trend poses new demands on web developers as more companies and product owners want to customize their services and products for this new market. In this study we examine the pros and cons of the strategies desktop-first and mobile-first in the development of adaptive interfaces for the web. The study aims to create guidelines for situations in which each strategy fits well. The purpose of the study is to create an understanding of how these strategies can help developers and product owners to develop adaptive interfaces based on different goals and objectives.

This report describes the bachelor degree project called ?A case study in strategic product design in collaboration with Elfa? carried out by Mathieu Gustafsson and Pär Rickberg,students at Carl Malmsten Furniture Studies.We had the opportunity to do our degree project in collaboration with ELFA after a previous school project where we made suggestions for new products. Initially the brief was to develop new products for the company which was based on previous proposals.Reasoning led us in to design strategies and how to use such a strategy to develop newproducts for ELFA. During our first superficial analysis of ELFA and its current products, we found that we wanted to recast the framework of identity and context in which the product would be created. According to the researches made by SVID (The Swedish Industrial Design Foundation),companies that continually are working with design strategies strengthens the brand, its competitiveness and become more innovative.

It is important that organizations today focus on continuous improvements in order to face the growing competition in the world. A company needs a corporate culture that supports and encourages the employees to be creative and innovative in their work. This is necessary for the company if they are striving towards continuous learning and development within their organization.The main purpose of this paper is to investigate how the culture differences between Sweden and China affect Sandvik AB. We will also study how the company manages continuous improvements and what consequences culture differences have on their work.Our paper is a single case study at Sandvik AB in Sweden and China. We have visited Sandvik in Sandviken to conduct a series of interviews with employees of different position within the company and with dissimilar work tasks.

To me, competing in architecture has always been slightly odd and at the same time exiting. These competitions are one of few occasions were architecture is almost like art. The competition generates a variety of ideas and projects and these are often expressed in a more appetizing and artistic way than traditional architecture. It?s also an art to master the special circumstances and requirements of a competition.

Many interactive products constructed today is not produced towards a specific targetaudience and how they will interact with the product. This master's thesis follows the designprocess in the development of the Let's Walk webapplication. In the designprocess has users of the webapplikation been identified, prototypes developed and an interactive version has been evaluated. The Let's Walk webapplication is a fully working system used to administrate Let's Walk, an exercise competition between companies. Experts and users have been involved to evaluate the Let's walk high-fidelity webapplication prototype.