The concept of brand equity emerged inthe eightiesto justify the long term value of marketing investments. Brand equity signify the value that a brand adds to a product and is the result of the marketing of a brand. One of the most widely used strategies to enhance brand equity is to do a brand extension, which means that a firm uses an established brand to introduce a new product to the market. At worst, a failed brand extension can damage the brand equity, which Vinjamuri (2008) claims that the brand Axe is currently in danger of doing. This January Axe launched an extention including products for both men and women for the first time and Vinjamuri claims that this can disappoint Axe´s former target group (men between 14 and 27 years old) (Newman, 2012). In this thesis Axe´s brand equity among the extensions target group (men and women, age 14 to 27) in Sweden is studied to find out if the brand extension is likely to affect the brand equity in the target group.

The purpose with this study is to investigate funds that are environmentally friendly. Environment issues has become a large subject that affects all aspects in today?s society.  It is a global issue which has affected the awareness of environmentally friendly products and its benefits for the environment.How has this awareness affected the financial market?  In this study the authors have looked at six environmentally sound funds and six energy funds to answer the question if it´s better to have your money in traditional energy or in renewable energy.This study is made in an quantitative way, the data has been gathered from the internet database Morningstar. The energy funds have had its biggest assets in companies dealing with oil, and the environmentally sound funds have had its biggest assets in renewable energy. Bye looking at the different funds rate of return and relating that to risk managing theories of Sharpe and Treynor, the authors compared the two types of funds.During the period that was looked at during this study ( third quarter of 2007 until third quarter 2010) the energy funds outperformed the environmentally sound funds in every aspect. .

Since Africa?s decolonization a number of foreign economic actors have begun toemerge in several African countries and they prove a vital role in many ways. China isone of the largest actor and they have a long history of political and economic ties withAfrica. China act primarily in Africa to meet their growing economy?s demand fornatural resources, and by providing aid and trade with development countries in Africathey get important natural resources like oil and iron ore in return.

The use of bio fuel is increasing every year. Nowadays you will find different alternatives to oil and electricity heating system. In this essay I have examined what the economic conditions are to invest in a bio fuel furnace. I have chosen to assume from a specific farm and do a case study on this farm. Malmvik farm is located just outside of Stockholm.

The relationship between dividend policy and investment is a controversial area and the relationship between these two may differ depending on the company's priorities. The study examines this more closely by studying dividend policy's impact on investment and how it differs depending on the company?s market capitalization. The study is based on companies listed on the OMX Stockholm within the segments Large Cap and Small Cap, during the period between 2003-2012. Secondary data was obtained from each company's annual reports where relevant data was used to operationalized into measurable variables.

This paper is intended to provide a picture of which associations water can wake in the human mind from the perspectives of garden history as well as from that of environmental psychology. I hope to paint a fairly broad picture of our perception of water that can serve as a basis for discussion and as a starting point for different forms of design work in landscape architecture. The historical perspective emphasizes the importance of water as a condition for the emergence of gardens and in a wider perspective the importance of water in early cultures. Also, I describe a picture of how water has been used throughout the history of gardens from early Egypt to the baroque era. The garden history analyzed from an art historical perspective gives a picture of human associations to water, and the history behind these associations is presented. As a compliment to the art history approach, I have chosen to highlight our associations with water from the perspectives of environmental psychology and evolutionary science.

Hyresbostadsfonder är en ny placeringsform i Sverige som erbjuder privatpersoner, företag och institutioner att äga hyresfastigheter och erhålla avkastning från förvaltningsöverskott och värdeökning. I denna studie jämförs aktie- och obligationsfonder med en simulerad hyresbostadsfond ur ett risk kontra avkastningsperspektiv. Fonden baseras på data över den svenska fastighetsmarknaden från Svenskt Fastighetsindex och Investment Property Database, därför att placeringsformen är ny och det råder brist på historisk data från verkliga aktörer.Målet med studien är att besvara om hyresbostadsfonder är ett konkurrenskraftigt alternativ till aktie- och obligationsfonder. Utöver finansiella jämförelser redogör författarna eventuella dolda risker och nackdelar med placeringsformen.Resultatet från studien visar att hyresbostadsfonden har presterat bättre än både aktie- och obligationsfonderna under perioden 1988-2008. Bidragande faktorer till denna utveckling har identifierats och redovisats.

The thesis aims to examine how companies optimize the human capital from a value creation perspective. The value creation will be related to transfer of knowledge, recruitment, staff turnover and development. The thesis has a deductive approach and six qualitative interviews have been conducted. The results from the interviews will be strengthened with a quantitative data analysis of two measurements; value added per employee and human capital efficiency. The theoretical framework includes definitions of human capital.

Having an intranet as a source for information and communication is common in most contemporary organizations. Research shows that the intranet in itself does not have an explicit area of use, and that leaves every organization to make decisions of the associated functionality on their own. At the same time the strategic opportunities that the intranet could bring get lost somewhere along the way. This means that problems regarding the strategic use of an intranet becomes apparent and may result in loss of investments for the organization. The purpose of this thesis is to identify central choices that can be used as points of discussion and help organizations to work with their intranets on a more strategic level.

NCC ROADS Sweden east is a part of the NCC Corporation. The company mainly produces aggregates, asphalt and concrete. They have taken the environmental issues seriously and been working with that since the middle of the nineties. When manufacturing asphalt large a quantity of fossil energy is needed. The company is now about to make further progresses by manufacturing environmental friendly asphalt (?green asphalt?) with using bio-energy.

The purpose of the following essay is to analyze how the Swedish regional policy has been influenced by the regional policy in the EU. The study builds on the theoretical framework that is Europeanization, the top-down approach, which stipulates where you can find evidence of this influence. To obtain the information that I needed to answer my question formulations, which main question formulation are; in which way has the EU regional policy influenced the Swedish regional policy? I used the method of literature analysis. Both the theoretical framework alongside the chosen method pointed me to analyze the public debate in Sweden in the regional question.

Bakgrund: Det rådande pensionssystemet i Sverige består av sex så kallade AP-fonder. Genom åren har pensionssystemet flertalet gånger kritiserats för dess låga avkastning.Problem: Vår huvudfråga är att jämföra AP-fondernas risk och avkastning med aktiemarknaden som helhet, detta ska ske med hjälp av två jämförelseindex: MSCI World och SIXRX.Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att jämföra de fyra första AP-fondernas risk och avkastning med aktiemarknaden som helhet under åren 2002-2010.Metod: Vi har använt oss av en kvantitativ metod, genom att samla in information från AP-fondernas årsredovisningar och hemsidor. Vi har samlat in historisk data, som vi sedan har bearbetat och analyserat.Slutsats: De studerade AP-fonderna har presterat sämre än aktiemarknaden..

The purpose of this dissertation is to describe small businesses? opinions about the auditor as a business adviser as well as their need for advice, dependent on which stage of the lifecycle model they belong to. This dissertation has a qualitative approach as the authors wanted to gain a deeper understanding about the problem area. As the lifecycle model in this dissertation consist of three stages, the authors have interviewed six small businesses, two in each stage. The interviews were conducted with the owner and took place at the location of the business.

The Swedish energy company Vattenfall is currently the owner of the district heatingsystems in Nyköping and Motala. To be able to also offer cooling solutions tocustomers are becoming more and more important. This report describes the resultsof an investigation of the cooling market in the two cities and the potential needs forcooling today and in the coming 20 years. The total potential for the coming 20 yearsis estimated to be roughly 17 MW for Nyköping and 9 MW for Motala.Two possible district cooling systems for each of the two city centers was modeledand a comparison was made between different cooling techniques namely absorptionand compressor chillers.Absorption chillers driven with district heating during the summer is one way ofincreasing the load in a combined heat and power plant and thereby the possibleelectricity generation. The cost of heat production must be low for absorption chillerto be able to compete as an alternative.

Background: To maintain or increase the trust in the market, companies can disclose more voluntary information in the annual reports. According to prior research the annual report is the primary source of information for small shareholders and investors. Thus, it is of interest to investigate why companies chose to report the voluntary information inquired by this group. Purpose: We investigate some company-specific factors to decide whether these determine the extent of voluntary information, particularly inquired by small shareholders and investors, in the annual reports of listed Swedish companies. We also aim to discuss underlying causes for our result.