The purchasing of management consulting services has traditionally been characterized by informal and relation based interaction. However, case studies have shown that there is a movement towards more formalized and structured purchasing procedures among buyers of management consulting services. The purpose of this study is to investigate the prevalence and the implications of this professionalization. To investigate to what extent certain mechanisms of professionalization have been implemented on the Swedish market, a survey directed to Sweden?s 500 largest companies was conducted.

How does IT-consultants reason in their consulting process regarding the development of a clients IT-based internal recruitment system? The purpose with this paper is to investigate how an IT-consultant is reasoning in a consulting process and investigate whether consultants are using established models and methods in their work. We have chosen to work with a qualitative examination to attain our purpose. In our work gathering the empirical facts we have been working with a case study, an observation and a simulation exercise. The combination of these has made it possible to carry out the paper and produce the most correct data possible.

The aim of this study is to create understanding of why companies should collaborate with artists and how artists and businesses build strong partnerships. We also want to understand the development of relations between the music industry and companies, together with the problems, possibilities and implications it has for both artists and corporate identity and brand. The music industry has been changing rapidly during the digital revolution and new problems and opportunities have emerged which the music industry can choose to either embrace or renounce. This study is made with a qualitative approach based on interviews with relevant individuals from the music industry. We have carefully chosen these individuals to counterpart different Segments of the music industry and to execute our purpose from various perspectives.

The purpose of this study was to find out whether young women´s conceptions on femininity are based on school culture or other possible factors. The theory chosen for this study is the sociological perspective. A theory where sociologists such as Emile Drukheim, Talcott Parsons and Pierre Bourdieu are all prominent. The discussion links to Habitus and their theories on social, cultural and collective groups. A qualitative method has been used.

How does IT-consultants reason in their consulting process regarding the development of a clients IT-based internal recruitment system? The purpose with this paper is to investigate how an IT-consultant is reasoning in a consulting process and investigate whether consultants are using established models and methods in their work. We have chosen to work with a qualitative examination to attain our purpose. In our work gathering the empirical facts we have been working with a case study, an observation and a simulation exercise. The combination of these has made it possible to carry out the paper and produce the most correct data possible. Conclusion: We state that IT-consultants do not use any theory-based methods, they use process methods created by themselves and their company.

Today automotive manufacturers are facing a crisis with increased pressure to strengthen their brands. To prevent declining results many automakers have chosen to extend its brand to other industries i.e. various forms of brand extensions. Automotive manufacturers have developed an international strategy for what merchandise to offer. The strategy has received an overall positive response, however, it does not apply well within the Swedish market where merchandise is sold in less quantity than abroad.

AbstractThe aim of this examination paper is to get an overview on the ?no-maintenance? windowsthat exist on the Swedish market, like plastic and aluminium windows.By way of introduction the reader gets knowledge in the background and problemformulatethat this subject has. This introduction explains why it has become so popular to changeyour windows into plastic- and aluminium windows and there is an existing scepticismagainst PVC and aluminium as construction material for windows.The main part of this report is constructed by Segments of interviews where bothproducers of windows and stakeholders gets to answer questions about their viewing onno-maintenance windows from a material and construction point of view and where theproduction is headed to in the future. This is followed by an evaluation of a questionnaireon how pleased the house owners that changed their old windows to no-maintenancewindows are, followed by an inspection of windows made up from wood and an aluminiumclothing, windows made from only aluminium and PVC-based windows. It ends with atheory part about the materials PVC and metal based upon facts included in literature.By reading this report you can draw the conclusion that no window can be entirely nonmaintenancebut that the materials PVC and aluminium still are good substitutes for woodto lessen the maintenance..

Many? luxury? companies? within? the? fashion? industry? today? choose? to? extend? their? brands downwards? in? order? to? reach? new? customer? Segments? and? hence? increase? their? profitability.? A? brand? extension? strategy? that? leverages? the? core? values? of? the? luxury? brand? is? a ?new ?possibility ?for ?luxury ?brands ?to ?position ?themselves ?towards ?a ?broader ?customer ?base.?? Meanwhile? there? is? a? risk? that? the? extension? dilutes? the? image? of? the? luxury? brand? and? has? a? negative? effect? on? the? company? in? the? long? term.? Thus? a? tradeoff? exists? between? becoming? more? accessible? and? maintaining? the? exclusivity? of? the? luxury? brand.? The? objective? of? this? thesis ?is ?to ?investigate ?how ?luxury ?brands ?that ?perform? downward ?brand ?extensions ?to? reach? new? markets? can? succeed? with? this? strategy? without? diluting? the? brand? image.? This? is? achieved? by? studying? the? perceptions? of? the? new? target? segment? towards? the? extension? of? luxury? brands.? The? results? of? the? study? show? that? the? risk? of? brand? dilution? is? minimized when? the? core? values? of? the? luxury? brand? are? transferred? to? the? brand? extension? while? the extension ?at ?the ?same ?time ?is ?successfully ?targeted ?towards ?the ?specific ?customer? segment..

Just how far is it possible to make learning of new parts for recognition and robot picking autonomous? This thesis initially gives the prerequisites for the steps in learning and calibration that are to be automated. Among these tasks are to select a suitable part model from numerous candidates with the help of a new part segmenter, as well as computing the spatial extent of this part, facilitating robotic collision handling. Other tasks are to analyze the part model in order to highlight correct and suitable edge Segments for increasing pattern matching certainty, and to choose appropriate acceptance levels for pattern matching. Furthermore, tasks deal with simplifying camera calibration by analyzing the calibration pattern, as well as compensating for differences in perspective at great depth variations, by calculating the centre of perspective of the image.

Social networks have become an important factor in today?s society. Companies as well as individuals are using these platforms to interact with one another on a daily basis. This phenomenon has mostly been acknowledged by companies on B2C markets where these social network sites are being used to communicate their brand. On B2B markets however, the usage of these platforms have not been as optimistically implemented.

This master thesis includes a description of how a number of sensors are put together in a sensor platform. It also gives a description of how localization and mapping has been performed with data collected from the sensor platform. Localization is a prerequisite for most of the tasks that can be requested from an autonomous mobile robot. In many situations the GPS signal is not available and hence an additional localization system is required. One approach is to apply localization based on landmarks extracted from the robots surrounding.

The purpose of this study is to highlight the maritime students' views on and visions for their future career. The results will be used by maritime academies, ship owners and unions to develop their activities in the desired direction and work together for a well-functioning labour market in shipping in the future. To determine the students? views and visions, interviews were conducted with graduating students at the maritime academies in Sweden. The results show that the reduced Swedish merchant fleet worries students, but that the majority is positive about finding a job after graduation.

This paper describes the process of building a machine translation lexicon for use in the train and transport domain with the machine translation system MATS. The lexicon will consist of a Swedish part, an English part and links between them and is derived from a Tradostranslation memory which is split into a training(90%) part and a testing(10%) part. The task is carried out mainly by using existing word linking software and recycling previous machine translation lexicons from other domains. In order to do this, a method is developed where focus lies on automation by means of both existing and self developed software, in combination with manual interaction. The domain specific lexicon is then extended with a domain neutral core lexicon and a less domain neutral general lexicon.

Listed corporations achieve effectiveness through segmentation of investors. Categorization of like- minded investors diminishes goal incongruence. This thesis aim to examine an Investor models accuracy, provided by a Professor Emeritus in Economic Psychology in 2001. This model Segments investors as active, passive, speculative and naive investors. This thesis has a demarcation to private investors on the Swedish stock market. It has a deductive and qualitative approach as the purpose is to study the Investor model.

This thesis contains a usability evaluation of ?Barnplay?, a Swedish video-on-demand service targeted at children. The objective of the study was to identify usability issues in the video service and to develop measures on improving the user interface, with special focus on adaptation to the broad target group of 3-11 year olds.The study was conducted by first mapping established practices in designs of VOD-services targeted at children, followed by interviews and usability tests with children between 2-11 concerning their use of ?Barnplay?. Based on the initial data collection, a prototype was developed and then evaluated by usability testing and A/B-testing.The main conclusion of the study is the need of better individual adjustment of the video content selection to better appeal to different age Segments within the target group.