Abstract This essay is written to answer the questions of why, how and against who employees in the service sector use humour, charm and flirt in the interaction with their customers. The service management research is quite extensive, but despite this the research partly misses studies around why employees tend to act in certain ways while interacting with their customers. To understand the reasons of why they act in these particular ways, we need to know which factors that can be crucial when it comes to the employees? behaviour in these situations. By knowing the underlying reasons of using a special way to communicate with customers, it is much easier to achieve a clearer overview of the subject.

The aim of this study is to describe the market for Digital Signage in Sweden and give the reader an increased insight and understanding of the problems that suppliers and buyers of Digital Signage may encounter. The study is abductive and based on a number of qualitative interviews with representatives from potential buyers, an existing user, a supplier and a number of companies with insight into Digital Signage. Our findings show that the companies in this study have not yet reached the stage of being ready to invest in a system for Digital Signage, since the effects on for instance increased sales and potential savings on marketing communication have not yet been clearly proven. Furthermore the study shows that it is important that a supplier has a fundamental understanding of the business model of the buyer. In addition to this, service, support and IT-related issues are of great importance for the potential buyers.

I ett litet företag finns en risk att ledningen fokuserar så mycket på kärnverksamheten att övriga administrativa verksamheter åsidosätts. Exempelvis finns det risk att företaget inte har full kontroll på sina lager.Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att beskriva och analysera värderingen och styrningen av lagret hos ett litet handelsföretag med butik och i förekommande fall ge förbättringsförslag.Vi har dels studerat lagar och rekommendationer avseende hantering av lager samt litteratur inom området lagerstyrning i handelsföretag. Dessutom har vi intervjuat företrädare för ett typiskt litet handelsföretag.Det undersökta företaget uppfyller gällande lagar och rekommendationer, men inte så mycket mer. Vidare använder sig företaget mestadels av känsla och erfarenhet i sin lagerstyrning. Förtaget använder alltså inte formella analyser och metoder i någon större utsträckning, om ens någon.

Chemicals are everywhere in todays society, in humans, animals as well as nature, and they are difficult to avoid. The chemical industry is regarded to be the fastest growing industrial sector, accounting for ten percent of the global economy. A large amount of chemicals are used to produce hygiene products and cosmetics, products that in Sweden only are consumed in quantities of 110 tons per day. Researchers find it increasingly difficult to determine which chemicals that are dangerous and which that are safe, and how they might affect us in the long run. Correlations have been found between chemicals, diseases and other health effects such as cancer, allergies, reproductive and endocrine disorders.

Hedge funds have the past few years become an increasingly popular investment alternative and in the last decade hedge fund assets managed have quadrupled to USD 2000 billion, a growth rate of around 25-30% per year. One explanation for this substantial increase is that hedge funds' minimum limits on capital invested has declined, which have made ??them available to retail investors. The recent turmoil in financial markets has also contributed to investors finding their way to hedge funds, whose goal is to generate stable returns regardless of how the market develops.Using Sharpe?s, Treynor?s and Jensen's performance measures, I have investigated whether hedge funds manage to generate higher risk-adjusted returns than traditional managed funds.

The economic development and industrialization that has taken place in many parts of the world during the past century has brought about a huge increase in economic welfare. During this process, it has repeatedly been debated whether the gains from economic development are shared by everyone or just a few. In the field of economics, vast research has been conducted on this particular subject ever since the 1950?s. The most famous contribution might be said to be Simon Kuznets article, Growth and Income Inequality from 1955 and the ?inverted U?-hypothesis that was formulated on the basis of that article.

The Swedish consumer electronic industry has recently experienced an increasingly intensive price war. The price war has forced some operators in the business to declare bankruptcy, as the only way to compete has been by driving down prices. A challenge that retail chains in the consumer electronics industry is facing is to increase their margins. If store personnel can success with upselling, the companies will increase their profits. The purpose of this paper is to examine if the sales people in the consumer electronic industry can influence the customer to buy a more expensive product and what the effects the upselling has on the customers' attitudes.

Sweden is a country that has made some progress in developing energy efficient solutions. The problem in Sweden is that many houses and apartment buildings are old and have inefficient ventilation- and heating systems. This energy is lost when systems are inefficient, which then results in huge economic costs. Luckily, more and more people are becoming aware of this, which means that Sweden is on track to become even better within energy efficiency.Energy use for the housing- and service sector amounts to 166 TWh of total use at 616 TWh. Without distribution and conversion losses, these figures show that the housing- and service sector accounts for almost 40 % of the country's total energy consumption.

Diskussionen om den svenska vården är ständigt aktuell, särskilt den som rör de tio till tolv procent som utgör privat verksamhet. De ekonomiska drivkrafter som finns i ett företag med vinstintresse kan anses vara oförenliga med vård av god kvalitet. Det är viktigt att kunna balansera incitamenten kvalitet och vinstintresse för att undvika att patienter eller brukare blir missgynnade. Den privata vården och omsorgen tampas med dagens rådande organisationskultur som säger att det är fult att tjäna pengar på vård. Den offentliga sektorn i sin tur arbetar mot kvalitetsmål vare sig de är företagsekonomiskt effektiva eller ej, samtidigt som de brottas med svårigheter gällande krav på ökad ekonomisk effektivitet, åtstramningar och problem med att mäta graden av framgång baserat på prestationer.

This paper is about how transport companies in the future will be able to adapt their activity to an environmentally sustainable development without the effect of negative company economic consequences. Today, the environmental threat is a global problem and knowledge about that effluent of carbon dioxide have a negative impact on the climate is generally known. A transport system that works well is important for Sweden, but the sector has a negative impact on the environment. Regulation and legislation for increased environmental requirements often meets resistance and fear that the work will be hampered by increased costs for environmental work that can lead to an international decrease in competitiveness. The transport companies have outside pressure from the society to do something about the environmental issue, however the companies? customers are not ready to pay a higher price for environmental work.

A growing need to strengthen ones position on the market, even as a city in competition with other cities, has resulted in an increasing number of municipalities developing brand platforms. When the city of Umeå developed their platform, they identified decision makers and investors as one of four important target groups.The aim of this study is to explore the portrayed image of the city of Umeå in two Swedish trade journals which addresses the specific target group decition makers and investors in both public and private sector. The aim is also to compare the image of Umeå in the two papers, to the ambition of the municipality, expressed in the brand platform.In order to make the observations as firmly established as possible, the method of the study is a combination of a quantitative content analysis and a qualitative text analysis. The study draws on the theories of Eli Avraham and Philip Kotler, concerning how to improve city images and how to market a specific city among others. The study shows that the city of Umeå in large extent is portrayed in accordance to the ambition which the municipality expressed in the brand platform.Umeå is displayed as an expanding city.

Bees are of importance for the global food security. In Europe 84% and in the World 35% of all the agricultural crops are dependent of animal pollination (Winfree et al., 2011:1). In agricultural production there is a huge lack of pollinators (Azien & Harden, 2009). A problem that is widely spread. In Sweden the problem becomes clear when looking at the statistics of the number of bee colonies during the last 20 years, where it has been a decline with 63 % (Statistiska Centralbyrån & Jordbruksverket, 2011).

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of using more promotion material to enhance the in-store communication of sales promotion. In the retail industry today the research regarding the benefits from using various in-store promotion materials is limited, thus this study was carried out to bring clarity to this subject. The study is carried out in two pharmacies and the design of the study was to add more promotion materials to one store, while keeping the other store in its normal condition and then let the stores change conditions after one week e.g. latin-square design. The data collection of this study consists of four different methods: sales data, a questionnaire with 182 customers, an observation study of 300 consumers and an eye-tracking experiment with 41 participants.

The purpose of this study was to illuminate dentists? work with guarantees. A case study was performed by personal interviews with dentists from both private and public sector. The result showed how dentists work with guarantees and how they motivate their guarantee obligations. We found that service guarantees? shaping and application should be simple and obvious.

There is an increase of financial integration, which can be seen in recent mergers of banks, financial institutions etc. in the European Union especially in the Nordic countries. However there are some weaknesses in providing consumers cross border services in the sector of banking, such as cross border bank account transfer of payments. The existing transaction costs do not encourage cross border services. Nevertheless a customer of a global or European bank can anticipate to be treated the same way in all of its branch offices inside the EU countries.