Quality Assurance in Service Procurement --- Total Quality and Total Quality Management refer to popular management philosophies in organizations these days. The purchasing department has an important part in the strive for organizational quality as several studies show corporate spend is significant and increasing. In this master thesis I study the actions companies take to ensure quality in service procurement. I argue that managing quality when sourcing services is particularly tricky, because of the special characteristics that belong to services. The purpose of the study is to examine whether different actions are taken to ensure the quality of different kinds of services.

Title: Management control of facility efficiency in municipalities - A case study of Halmstad municipalityLevel: BachelorSeminar date: 2012-05-31Authors: Markus Nilsson & Sara MattssonAdvisor: Sven-Ola CarlssonKey words: Control management in municipality, facility efficiency, management by objectives, internal rents and incentivesBackground: The public sector owns and manages a large property portfolio and in the municipalities, the properties are always a big cost item. Because of the outside world changes and the public interest, the properties should be used as efficiently as possible.Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe how control management of facilities looks like a municipality. The paper also seeks to explain how employees work to make the facilities more efficient in a municipality.Methodology: The authors use a qualitative method with open interviews.Theoretical perspectives: The choice of theory was made with the field of management control and facility efficiency in mind. The theory therefore includes management by objectives, internal rents and reward systems, motivation and communication within organizations.Empirical foundation: The organization has undergone a reorganization 2010/2011. There are no clear incentives to reduce facility costs.

Vårt syfte är att studera svenska konsumenters uppfattning om cause-related marketing på den svenska marknaden samt om detta påverkar deras köpbeslut. Undersökningen avser de CRM-kampanjer där företag samarbetar med välgörenhets-organisationer och tar fram specifika produkter för detta ändamål, som således kombinerar två varumärken. Vi har utgått från ett konsumentperspektiv då vi anser att detta på bästa sätt uppfyller vår problemformulering och syfte. Vi har utfört en kvalitativ studie för att möjliggöra förståelse av de bakomliggande anledningarna till respondenternas svar. Vi har använt oss av teorier om cause-related marketing och co-branding samt TORA-modellen vilken rör köpbeteende.

The tourism industry in Sweden has expanded in recent years and the increasing industry has meant that customers are in need of a reseller for their trips abroad. Today there are three types of retailers available. These are : Traditional travel agencies , tour operators and online travel agencies.Online Travel agencies are the most modern online option for customers. Their existence has made it easier for the customer and reservation can be made anytime and anywhere. The competition has intensified between the three retailers and the traditional alternatives must find new ways to survive.

During the autumn of 2007 I carried out an investigation within the bank and finance Sector. The aim of the investigation was to see how informal aspects could be understood in relation to equality within Bank AB? The main question was: Which are the obstacles and opportunities for equality within Bank AB? To answer the main question I asked the following questions to the material: Are there any gender related different within the organization? How are men and women represented within the internal magazine? Which are the conceptions related to sex/gender within the organization? The investigation is based on a survey, the internal magazine was investigated and finally interviews took place. Throughout the investigation I used organization theory in a gender perspective. With the gender organization theory I examined concepts as structures, leadership, symbolism and changes associated with equality.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the Swedish Public Relations and Communication profession from the Stockholm Accords point of view. The Stockholm Accords are an attempt to reflect Public Relations and Communication Management practice as it stands today and to provide a global common ground for the practitioners.The method used for this study is a quantitative research method conducted by a web survey answered by more than 400 Swedish communication managers. The questions posed were examining these managers view of their profession compared to the Stockholm Accords.The research shows that the Swedish way of implementing communication in the organization broadly corresponds to the Stockholm Accords when it comes to internal and external communication. However, there are some areas where Swedish communication practice diverges from Stockholm Accords. The issues which link governance, management and sustainability to communication have a much wider distribution of responses.

The furniture retail industry in Sweden has gone trough large changes during the last decades. Today the industry is tough and in the maturity stage where few new companies enter, especially if they do not have a unique offer. The furniture companies have become larger and fewer, the changes have lead to difficulties for smaller and medium sized companies to grow and be profitable.Our purpose is to analyse, evaluate and compare three smaller companies in Stockholm with the intention to find what kind of marketing strategies they are using to survive on the Swedish market. First we interviewed the three companies to see what they do to survive on the market, then we asked 100 persons to fill in a questionnaire to see if they had the same opinion as the companies described.With help from theories we prepared questions which laid the foundation to the empirical part of the essay.The result from this study shows that the three companies differ from each other when it comes to using relationship marketing and placing the customer in the centre. All of them are aware of the importance of doing so, but because of different limits and possibilities they can not fully adjust everything to the customer.

A description and analysis of the sales process of ERP systems is presented; also the consequences for the parties involved are discussed. The chosen methodological basis is an inductive research design consisting of a case study based on interviews. The analysis of the empirical data is done with a proposed analytical framework. Based on the agency theory, the analysis is tightly knitted together with opportunism. There are three controlling factors: relationships (relationship marketing), contracts (principal-agent theory), and competition.

This essay reviews the situation for small actors in the Swedish clothing industry. In this essay we assume that loyalty is a requirement for survival on the competitive clothing market. Four small actors have been analyzed up on theories on loyalty, brand equity, relationship marketing, service marketing, quality, interactive marketing, distribution and value creating activities. The chosen actors are Fifth Avenue Shoe Repair, Boutique Sportif, Jenny Hellström and Ida Sjöstedt. The conclusion of the essay is that it is possible for small actors on the Swedish clothing market to build loyal relationships with their customers.

After the formation of the European Union internal market in 1992, member state specific obstacles and barriers were largely removed. This was especially the case in harmonised industries where standardisation and technical regulation have led to legal certainty. Despite this, a large range of trade regulation continues to remain distortional to trade, in addition to the ongoing tariffs and subsidies. The key trade regulations relate to a number of areas involving technical regulations such as production labelling and the protection of intellectual property rights. Whilst policy makers claim justification based around the need to correct market failure in delivering desired outcomes, the question is whether these regulations are appropriate responses to market failures or if they have simply been imposed in an attempt to protect domestic markets.

Syftet med denna uppsats var att undersöka musikens roll och betydelse inom event marketing. Idag är event marketing ett vedertaget och accepterat marknadsföringsverktyg och en effektiv väg att nå konsumenter. För att föstå hur hur företag inom denna sektor använder sig av musik för att påverka människor och hur strategiska val rörande musiken utförs gjordes en fallstudie på tre olika företag inom event marketing industrin. Studien visade att musik är en betydelsefull beståndsdel inom event marketing för sin förmåga att påverka och skapa stämmninglägen samt att valet av genre och artist har en stor inverkan på evenemangets image och att eftertänksamhet måste ingå vid dessa val..

Service quality occurs in service encounters where both customers and employees come together in an interaction. It is therefore important that the staff give their best because the interaction usually takes place in real time, which is referred to as the moment of truth.The aim of this study was to find out how luxury hotels are working to ensure good service quality, and how the staff are motivated to deliver this service. We wanted to examine this from a management perspective, and an employee perspective. Information was gathered through various interviews, where the staff at the Hotel Kämp in Helsinki and at the Sheraton Hotel Stockholm participated.Survey results show that employee motivation, training and empowerment have a significant impact to provide service in high quality. The results also show that the surveyed hotel, to certain level work in the same way, but it reveals some differences even when both hotels are part of the same concern..

One-to-one marketing är en extrem variant av relationsmarknadsföring. Begreppet myntades i början av 1990-talet och ligger till grund för en ny syn på marknadsföring. Många företag har försökt att använda sig av teorierna kring begreppet, men få har hittills lyckats fullt ut. One-to-one marketing främjas av att kunden inte behöva återupprepa sig varje gång man köper företagets produkt eller tjänst. Detta medför att kunden kan tjäna på att vara i en relation med ett företag som använder sig av one-to-one marketing. Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka om vårt valda företag planerar att använda sig av one-to-one marketing i sin marknadsföring och om deras uppfattning av begreppet stämmer överens med vad teorierna säger.

This report describes the development of a RESTful web service for mobile applications. The web service makes resources from an existing system called kompetensdatabasen ("the competence database") available. Kompetensdatabasen holds information about the capabilities of consultants and about assignments carried out at the IT consultant business Nethouse AB.The web service was developed according to the principles of REST and ROA (Resource Oriented Architecture) which puts focus on making resources available. The resources are made available through the HTTP protocol and the methods associated with it. This means it was designed to use the same technologies as the world wide web.

The purpose of this study is to investigate two Handelsbanken offices and how they work in similar ways when dealing with internal communication. The goal is to answer if and in what way the managers` and the employes perceive their internal communication at the two bank officies. By a comparation between the two decentralisized officies the aim is also to study what differences and/or similarities that exists in internal communications?Are managers and employees satisfied with the communication that flows in the organization? I find it interesting to investigate in wheather there exist a similarity in the internal communication between the managers and the employees since it is a decentralized organization.I have made five semi-structured interviews with two managers at two different Handelsbanken offices. Additionally two interviews with two employes at one of the offices and also one interview at the other Handelsbanken office.By the study I have found that all respondents have a positive impression according the internal communication.