The majority of the Swedish population were self-provided within agriculture a hundred years ago. Times do change and today the situation is the other way around - most of us live within city boundaries and only few work with farming and related agricultural businesses. One thing that has not changed though, is the need of supplies from Swedish agriculture.What do we think of those products? Are we even aware of the connection between us and agriculture? The Federation of Swedish Farmers, LRF (Lantbrukarnas riksförbund), started their project to strengthen the link between consumers and producers in 2008.This paper is part of the project and its aim is to investigate consumers' views and values upon the effects and products from Swedish agriculture.Opinions and values have been studied through interviews influenced by phenomenology. The results show that the informants in general had a positive approach and thinking concerning the products and effects from Swedish agriculture.

Small business enterprises have escalated in Sweden during the last decade. However, new established companies are struggling to maintain their selves during the startup process and according to a survey from Tillväxtanalys, only 68 % of startup companies from 2008 were still active three years later. One of the main reasons is lack of capital and the most common approach to finance companies is to apply for a bank loan. In other words, commercial banks are of great importance for new businesses. Although, the problem arises when there is no previous history from the new businesses that the bank could base its credit assessment on.

Background: The Swedish fashion industry grows steadily, today it?s populated by many small and medium sized companies. Due to the big clothing chains dominant position small businesses risks to be ousted out of the fashion industry.Smaller companies may find it difficult to reach out to the customer by traditional advertising because their budgets are often smaller. It is therefore important for smaller companies to create loyal customers. If the smaller sized businesses in the fashion industry do not follow the rapid developments in society and focus on building strong brands and relationships, they will have problems with surviving in the long run.Problem definition: Which communicative factors are important in the choice of brand strategy to create a long-term survival for small and medium-sized companies in the fashion industry?Purpose: The purpose of the essay is to analyse and evaluate the brand as a communications tool for building a brand image.Method: The data which is being used in the essay is collected from interviews with companies and survey of each company's existing and potential customers.Theoretical perspective: Relationship Marketing Perspective and Transaction Marketing PerspectiveTheories: Brand Strategies, Total Communication, Brand Equity, Involvement Theory, Service Value Profit Chain.Empiric: The empirical data is primary data gathered from interviews with a representative for each company and from the questionnaires distributed to the customers of each company.Analysis: The analysis is an interpretation of the empirical material collected from interviews with each company and customers survey.

AbstractAccording to several researchers finance is scarce, scarcer for small businesses than for big enterprises. Small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs, that want to start exporting and sales or manufacturing abroad need capital to get ready. Which capital structure and financial costs do they have, and which forms of finance do they actually use for that purpose. New american research by Mansi, Reeb (2002) has suggested, that there is a positive connection between leverage and a negative one between financial costs and internationalization, and that a non-linear model better describes this connection.This study has gathered data in two ways: Through a questionnaire from 37 SMEs and balance sheet figures from totally 166 manufacturing SMEs. In order to examine, whether the company was active on the international market, 200 SMEs in south Sweden were asked, if they exported to, produced or sold on any other market than their home market.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether a so-called "expectation gap" exist between the accounting consultants and their clients. The excistence of an expectation gap has already been confirmed between auditors and their clients. Interviews were conducted with both accounting consultants and managers to find out what expectations they have for each other. The factors that influence the occurrence of an expectation gap and the size of them are many but the most important factor may be regarded as individuals' different needs and requirements. The gap can be reduced or entirely eliminated by ensuring the quality of an accounting consultant's work, for example, REKO and / or that management have more realistic demands that actually can be met.

Warehouses are a key aspect of modern supply chains and play a vital role in the success or failure of businesses today. Figures from the USA indicate that the capital- and operating costs of warehouses represent about 22 % of a company?s logistics costs while figures from Europe indicate 25 % (Baker & Canessa, 2009). Because warehousing is such an important function within a company, the authors chose to focus on this in their thesis. The purpose of this thesis has been to examine the significance of a Warehouse Management System (WMS) and item identification with attention to logistic efficiency.

Websites are often developed by small businesses, organizations or individuals which may lead to that the testing gets left behind; the focus is on getting a finished product that can be deployed as quickly and as cheaply as possible.Functional testing is important also for websites and a variety of aids exist. With the right tools and methods the development work is facilitated, and it leads to products with fewer faults.This report shows in the form of a case study how an appropriate tool for functional testing can be selected and how it can be used within development of a website. An analysis of the tools available is reported and JSystem is selected as the most appropriate for this case.It turned out that JSystem could not be used fully as intended in terms of deployment, but a well-functioning alternative solution was developed.A number of test cases were created without any unsolvable problems and JSystem performed well. In JSystem test cases in Java are created in Java, which gives a high flexibility..

Too much attention has been given to mainstream approaches in performance management and management accounting research, without taking in to account changes in the environment with the rapid growth of online retailing. This paper evaluates how and/or if performance management differs in online contexts by using a conceptual model developed by Ferreira et al (2009). The model and its components are tested on three multichannel- and six e-commerce businesses. The result and its analysis is commented on by two e - commerce experts. The result shows that the operation method of the models twelve components do not differ in terms of work methods in online and offline contexts.

Outsourcing is today a common phenomenon among businesses in most industries. The term outsourcing means transferring the responsibility of performing a certain function to an external supplier. There are usually certain methods to investigate the effects and the outcome of a function that is performed by the company itself. When this function is performed by an external party, the complexity of the function will increase.This leads us to our purpose: Based on different theories clarify how a company ensures a desired effect out of marketing when this function is outsourced to a certain retail- and advertising agency.In this essay we have defined us to study one of Sweden´s leading mobile operators who have outsourced their sales management to a retail- and advertising agency. To get an additional point of view, we have included one of the mobile operator´s intermediates, which is a selling agent whose sales function is led by the retail- and advertising agency..

SharePoint is a web based platform designed to provide internal communications and file sharing for businesses and organizations.In this project, we created a system consisting of multiple applications to be used together with SharePoint. These applications are meant to simplify the workflow for internal orders of products. The system is targeted towards companies that do not have a flexible approach to digital orders or companies that want to integrate this functionality into their SharePoint platform. The project includes, in addition to the creation of the system, installation of the software and the servers needed to run a SharePoint environment and their configurations.The system consists of four applications where one of these, the store application, is required for the system to be used at all. The other applications are an order management application, a purchase application and an incoming delivery application. Of these four, we have implemented the store application and the order management application. Our hope is that users will find the system easy to use and graphically appealing..

This report is focusing on problems with introducing standard enterprise resource planning systems (ERP) in businesses. A study has been carried out on a service and support department at a Swedish heat metering company, SVM North Node. The study aims to help the company become a better customer in choice and customization of a new ERP system. We make a description of the department studied and the work carried out there, on the basis of learning, knowledge and cooperation. As a final point we present some ideas on how computer systems could support their work, hoping that this will result in them making adequate demands on a new ERP system..

Social media has changed the way that corporations can communicate with their target groups. Instead of using one?way communications that has been significant for traditional massmarketing, social media has given corporations the possibility to truly interact with their clients and through the interaction build strong relationships. The interaction is an ideal process for corporations to create brand associations and strengthen their brand equity to position their brands in the minds of the consumers. But social media is also a devious medium because everyone are invited to contribute their opinion and news travel fast in social atmosphere, success and crisis can appear fast and out ofnowhere.

Smartphones have become more common as business tools within the workplace. With its many features and great flexibility, the smartphone has stormed the business world and become an alternative or complement to the laptop. As these mobile units' popularity has increased, the interest of businesses to invest in this new technology has increased, but has security kept up with the technology developments?This study aims to conduct a study to see if the companies in the IT industry have the same safety awareness for smart phones to laptops.The study shows that companies have greater safety awareness and higher safety requirements for laptops than smartphones. Meanwhile, both end-users and management are well aware of the risks and threats that the smartphone is facing..

This thesis analyzes the consequences of ?Lex Uggla? ? a law concerning the boundaries between firm and individual with respect to wealth taxation ? for small businesses, with more than 3 million SEK in over-liquidity. There are two main findings of this thesis. Firstly, the wealth taxation of non-operational assets seems to be an inefficient tax which costs the Swedish welfare system much more than it generates. Secondly, the change in actions among entrepreneurs following the extensive news coverage following the tax authority?s charges against the company of the well-known artist, Magnus Uggla (hence ?Lex Uggla?) illustrates that neither changes of rules nor new applications of rules is necessarily sufficient for an agent to change course of action.

Part 1 of 2  ? Lean philosophy ? five steps to get the workplace in order?Part one deals with the theory of what Lean and 5S are.Lean is a long-term approach that involves a quest to become the best on the market by increasing employee engagement, eliminate waste and focus on the right things.5S is a method of order in a system. Businesses around the world are using these 5S which stands for sort, straighten, shine, standardize and sustain. Part 2 of 2 ? Lean philosophy ? five steps to get the workplace in order?Part 2 deals with the practical about 5S and a short summery about the company Wibax AB where the degree thesis took place.Wibax has a a project which involves using 5S in practice and create order in the in preparation lab and in the control room.By finding a solution to this mess reduces the time that was previously spent on searching equipment. Instead of search, the workers can do the real work..