A purchase decision can be seen as a multifaceted context that raises many unanswered questions. Understanding the consumer's evaluation of alternatives is complex and should be studied at a deeper rather than wider scale. There is a problem for retailers to understand how the consumer manages a purchase decision in a retail setting with durables goods that generates a higher effort. The aim is to describe the decision rules used by the consumer and how they are expressed in this context. A better understanding of which ones they use and how they are conveyed will help retailers to create effective marketing solutions that generate positive outcomes as increased profitability and customer satisfaction.

In Europe, the central governments are the ones to coordinate the international standards and strategies regarding GPP; Green Public Procurement. However in Spain a GPP program was introduced late and only applied to the Central Government Institutions, (AGEA) (BOE nr. 027, 2008). These means that smaller administrations, such as, Autonomous Regions, Municipalities and Town Councils were not included in the program. The absence of a national program which excludes those governments made them introduce their own criteria for GPP, and the difference in criteria varies from one government to the other.

Recent corporate challenges require effective communication in order to secure a company?s reputation. Companies as a result, need to be committed to a series of corporate social and environmental practices along with their financial commitments to their shareholders and investors. In fact, businesses are required to go above their ordinary operations and involve all potential stakeholders that can be affected by their strategies. Companies also need to communicate social, environmental and economic consequences of their activities along with their CSR commitments to their internal and external stakeholders in order to make a better corporate image and improve their market opportunities.

During the middle of the 18th century the development of Toyota Production System, TPS, started in order to streamline the processes. TPS was based on the principles of assembly line production but unlike previous performers Toyota let the manufacturing be constantly affected by demand. At the end of the 18th century TPS was described by Womack and Jones in the book "The machine that changed the world - the story of lean producion" where TPS got the name lean. The principles behind lean is to maximize customer value and eliminate waste which means making products and services more valuable to the customer. 1Lean was for a long time a philosophy and an approach limited to industries and production based companies.

The purpose of this essay is to analyze marketing in the sector of banking. The following purpose is also to make an attempt to predict how marketing of banks will be structured in the future. Banks have a central role in today?s society which is constantly changing and that is why we are curious in how banks use different marketing channels today and how and if it will change in the future. The essay is based on a qualitative method.

During the Swedish banking crisis in the early 1990?s, the government paid out 65 billion Swedish kronor to save Swedish banks from bankruptcy. In the process, two banks left the private sector to be taken over by the state. This thesis builds on a study from 1998 in seeking to quantify the financial end result for the Swedish government from the subsidies. Taking a cash flow approach and accounting for the time difference, it starts with the money paid out during the years of crisis and subtracts the money that has since been returned to the government by successful management of the relinquished assets.

In cooperation with the Gislaved company Lerocon AB [1], a separation module wasdesigned as a further supplement to the Module System. The aim of theprojectimplementation was that the separation module could be flexible enough to feed themetal pieces, screws, nuts and other items with large variations of size, appearance andmaterial composition. The module should also be cost effective to manufacture.A separation module is a design which is ment to streamline the work in industries withautomation of the lineoperations. The module feeds the details such as screws, nuts, washersand pieces of metal in a continuous flow in which traps separate the details from each other.Traps may vary depending on the purpose and of the details that are fed. Perhaps it isimportant for the user that the detail-orientation is right after the separation module, whichmeans that all the pieces witch aren´t are fed back in return.For companies and industries in lineoperations that can be made more efficient withautomation, are production flow an important watchword.

This thesis investigates how the level of implementation of New Public Management affects an organization?s efficiency. According to theory, a high level of implementation leads to a more efficient organization. This thesis is based on two case studies conducted on two units within Stockholms Stad. One of the units shows a high level of implementation of NPM and a high level of efficiency.

Today in Sweden, apples are mostly cultivated for direct consumption, i.e. dessert apples. Apple breeding aims at developing cultivars with new and improved qualities in order to meet the demands of different target groups and to increase the interest in apples on the market. Different target groups have different views on the qualities of an apple. The consumer, for instance, wants an apple that is tasty and beautiful, while the grower, in addition, wants an apple cultivar that is healthy, has good winter hardiness and a predictable, annual productivity.

This paper was written at the Baltic Business School in Kalmar. The purpose was to analyze and determine the importance of packaged holidays within the tourism and travel sector and how value can be created for the customer. This have been done with a focus on the chosen parts; customer needs and how packaging can create value, how companies can work to give the customer increased value through packaging, last but not least how companies segment the market and if there are specific segments that prefer packaging. We have applied the qualitative method through conducting four face-to-face interviews and one phoneinterview. The purpose of this paper is not to generalize, but to show patterns in the chosen subject.

The behaviour of consumers has changed rapidly during the last decade, and a healthy lifestyle and an environmental mindset has become part of everyday life. This is also something that has become prominent in the supermarkets, where the organic products are increasingly winning shelf space. Several consumer behaviour studies have shown that the attitudes towards organic products and labels are predominantly positive. According to traditional marketing theory, these kind of attitudes should affect consumers? purchase intentions in a positive manner, as well as the actual purchase behavior.

Within the interconnected global markets of today; people, products, and information travel at a pace never met before. In light of the global retail markets recent integration, consumers are opened up to new products and are beginning to develop a vetted interest in the heritage of those products. Within literature this process has been coined "Country of Origin" COO, and its impacts on consumer attitudes, product value- assessment, and overall behaviors has been one of the most emphasized areas of "international business" studies, during the last three decades. Numerous studies have shown a correlation between positive or advantageous associations to a country of origin, and the actual products representing and coming out of that country. It is by this synergetic process that so-called positive COO-effects are brought forth.The goal of this thesis stems directly from the still unexplored potential for Swedish firms to differentiate their products and brands on new international markets, through a strategic and coherent communication of relevant Swedish COO-effects.

The aim of this report is to give the reader insight into the development of theweb-based accounting application SuperBooky. Accounting is a complex task thatmany beginner entrepreneurs struggle with. The development of this application wastherefore focused on making accounting as convenient and as easy as possible. Theend product targets small enterprises and its functionality was designed with this inmind.To make sure that the application was designed in a user-friendly way, polls werecarried out among individuals with basic accounting knowledge. These polls werethen used as a basis when the application was under development, to ensure that itwas well-suited to the target audience.This project was carried out as a bachelor?s thesis for Chalmers University of Technologyand University of Gothenburg during Spring 2015.

The neo-classical conception of the market place does not provide a framework to account for ethical or moral action. As a result, the neo-classical model is unable to explain the impact of ethical and moral issues on business sustainability present in the modern economy. To address this limitation, this thesis investigates whether theories of ethics can help explain the motivations and actions of stakeholders within the field of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). In addition, the thesis explores whether theories of ethics are presented differently within aspects of the stakeholder model. Semi - structured interviews were conducted with various stakeholders within the CSR sector, including a NGO, a commercial firm and a CSR consultancy firm.

Due to their complexity and heavy wear from rail traffic, switches are a sensitive part of the railway infrastructure and moreover expensive to maintain. Furthermore, increasing railway traffic not only accelerates the wear rate but also obstructs the necessary maintenance measures. This paper examines the opportunities for a transition to a long-term maintenance strategy in the Swedish railway network. It contains a study of the maintenance strategy of Banverket, and also analyses statistics of errors in the railway infrastructure. The survey was completed utilising interviews with infrastructure managers, maintenance contractors, planners of railway operations and the Banverket material service department.