AbstractA general store is a grocery store that is located in the countryside. In today's modern society, it is difficult for general stores to compete with the supermarkets and discounters in terms of price and supply. The purpose of this thesis is to create an understanding of both the rural merchants and its customers? perspective on a well-­?functioning general store. We have conducted a case study of three general stores where we interviewed the merchants about how they do to please their customers? needs and identify key elements of a well-­?functioning general store.

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.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate whether placement, using a special display, of ecological products, will have an effect on consumer buying behaviour and thereby sales of these products. When talking about sales we refer to the amount of ecological products that are being bought, habitual and unplanned, as a response due to the placement of the products in-store. To further elucidate the purpose, the thesis will focus on if the placement of the products itself will have an impact on the customers? attitude towards buying ecological products. A deductive approach was applied where we did a quantitative study using triangulation to receive data to reveal if the placement of ecological products had any effect on the sales of these products.

This thesis is concerning private brands on special display. ICA Gott Liv! was used as a study object and a latin square design was employed, using 2 ICA Kvantum stores. Two displays were built in order to compare which created the most awareness and interest, one with the best selling Gott Liv! product and one with four randomly chosen Gott Liv! products. The data was collected using triangulation, questionnaires, sales data and observations were conducted in the two stores. The results indicated that private brands works as well as manufacturer brands on special display and a display with four randomly chosen products creates more interest and higher sales than the display with the best selling product..

We have a business proposal. Instead of the consumers visit the country side in order to purshase we are interested in starting a shop with only regional produced products in the city. We have our base in a part of Sweden called Östergötland, therefore we have investigated the market for such a store in Östergötlands biggest city, called Linköping. The conclusion is that the store must sell food produced in the region. Another conlusion is that the store must be located near a bigger supermarket. Our main selling points are quality and that the food is produced in the near region.

In todays' society e-commerce is growing at a rapid speed. 4,6 % of all retail sales on the Swedish market are done on the Internet. In the makeup category, which will be the category of focus in this study, 9 % of all the sales were done on the Internet during the last quarter of 2011. As it is today many suppliers do not have enough knowledge about e-commerce and instead of focusing on the development of the channel the focus should instead be on the development of the users of the channel.The purpose of this study is to understand the buying process with respect to the existing theories. The focus will be on the two stages information search and evaluation of alternatives.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the connection between store layout and how it affects us as shoppers. We formed our research questions based on literature. The study was based on observations of shoppers without their knowing they were observed. We didn?t tell shoppers since the science of shopping says that shoppers pattern of movement is something that?s subconscious and if the shoppers had known it would have affected the result of the study.

Today most studies regarding marketing are made on traditional marketing channels, answering questions like which jingle is best or which TV-channel a company should focus their marketing budget on. There is also the science regarding the best way of marketing on Social Networking sites or how to get as many 'likes' as possible, and so forth. However research has also been made in the field of in-store marketing and how a retailers or brand owners can affect customers in "the moment of truth". Until now most of these studies discuss how to get the attention of the customer in the store since both time as well as level of commitment in general is scarce when a customer is in a grocery store doing the necessary weekly- or complementary-shopping. It seems like most of them make the very same conclusion; catching the attention of a customer is vital to sell them your product.

Context: Congruent ambient scents are not used extensively in marketing and there is only some research in this area within the Swedish retail. Moreover, there are not many studies that show how ambient scents influence customer behavior in a Swedish clothing store.Purpose: Examine and analyze which of the ambient scent vanilla and white orchid that suite and can provide a signature fragrance to the clothing store Kompaniet in Kalmar. The purpose of this study is therefore to compare how these scents affect the customers? behavior in the servicescape.Method: A deductive research strategy with an experimental design. The experiment was performed in Kompaniet in Kalmar.Theory: Our theoretical framework consists of sensory marketing, male and female shopping behavior, the sense of smell and ambient scent in the servicescape atmospherics.Results: Here we present a presentation of Kompaniets servicescape.

It has been found that customers in the home market perceive the retailer?s store image more positively than customers in the host market, even though this study has found that theretailer?s store image is generally perceived very positively by customers in both examined markets. In addition, this thesis has found that there is a significant difference in how IKEA?smanagement and customers perceive its store image. It can also be concluded that IKEA management perceived store image more positively than customers.

Due to the harsh competition among Swedish food retailers, in-store marketing is a crucial component in the stores marketing strategy. In an attempt to differentiate among its competitors, COOP Sweden has begun to use concave store shelves. Although the food retailing industry is one of the most studied, no research has been conducted on the concave store shelves. The objective of this study is to describe how these shelves effect the customer perception of the assortment, their experience of the store environment and their buying behavior. An S-O-R framework is used as an overall basis in order to outline the effects investigated in this paper.

Purpose: The aim of this study is to inquire into the congruency of store image perceptions, projected by Ikea and Ilva, and how Danish and Swedish consumers perceive the aforementioned stores? images in their respective domestic market. Also, the aim sets out to evaluate the success of these stores? images on consumers and on transference to host markets. Further, the aim is to discern specific store image attributes captivating Swedish and Danish consumers.

The store manager can make great benefits of having an eye on how the staff works towards the customer, because the personnel is an important tool when competing with other stores. This paper is focusing on the part that relates to the staff in the store, which is one of the key tools in the competition for customers after the customer made it to the store. Many stores have guidelines which the staff should follow when they meet with customers. If the staff is too tightly controlled by these guidelines, customers can perceive the first encounter with the staff as artificial and as if the genuine friendliness does not exist. It is important that the staff looks at the individual customer and treat every customer in a personal way and that the staff can see the customer?s needs.

Every year 67000 tons of food is wasted by Swedish Retail stores. The waste implies financial losses for the retailer and it has a huge impact on the global environment. Reducing in-store food waste is thus a win-win situation for both retailers and society. The most effective way to reduce waste is primarily by optimizing the logistics of supply, but customers expect a store with a wide range of products and stuffed shelves. Thus there will always be products about to expire.

The interest for organic food has grown a lot over the last 15 years. Even so, only 3.5 % ofthe share of wallet in Sweden goes to organic food. The purpose of this study is to examine and describe how retailers can get consumers to buy more organic fruits and vegetables. The study was carried out by visiting six Coop Konsum-stores, of which three performed poorly and three performed well in organic sales. We conducted interviews with the department managers, customer surveys and in-store observations.