The luxury market has steadily grown from the industrial revolution and onwards. Changes in society, trends and the increased living standards has enabled more people to consume luxury goods.The world is going through a major economic crisis at the moment. Studies shows that companies that have focused on added value rather than lowering prices has survived past financial crisis. It is also obvious that companies act very different during times of crisis. Adding to the problem is trends that point to a more careful consumption and environmental awareness.

The Swedish retail business has been characterized by a small number of ruling distributors. These distributors have been affected negatively by the internationalization which has made it possible for international distributors to establish their stores in the Swedish market. These international distributors are focused on low price stores. Their establishment on the Swedish market has led to a decrease in market shares for the Swedish distributors, which has damaged their profitability. Another change that has affected the Swedish distributors is that the behavior and needs of the customers has changed.

To succeed, a word that can be interpreted in many different ways. In this thesis the authorshave highlighted the word succeed with success. There has been a case study of twocompanies, which managed to penetrate a competitive market which is still under expansion.These brands are popular and maintain a high standard. Boomerang and Vagabond are twoSwedish companies which not only managed to penetrate the Swedish market, but also aninternational market. These are two Swedish companies which started from scratch as anyother company.

Many companies choose to market their products and brands with help from celebrities. This is not a new phenomenon, though, this strategy is something that we consumers start to get used to and the risk that the consumer unconsciously unselects the message grows. A recently much-disputed theory is the use of incongruent marketing. This means that companies uses a marketing message with the objective to not match the consumer?s expectations.

In a time where information overload is a fact, well formulated messages is required and communication is a big contributing element for building Strong brands. In the north of Sweden, Norrmejerier is one of the big actors with dominance on the dairy factor market. Through making milk products that lands in the consumers refridgerators, they are not only working for economical interest but also for improving the nature of the north of Sweden. Through visual communication, Norrmejerier shows the consumers a beneficial view of the north of Sweden which corresponds to the populations own impression of their part of the country. This contributes to a feeling of belonging that makes strong and loyal consuments. The feeling of belonging is also reflected in Norrmejeriers commercial movies, that uses the consumers conscience to make costumers. By two group interviews and a semiotic analysis of Norrmejeriers commercial movies, this study aims to examine how Norrmejerier uses qualities of the north of Sweden when building their brand.

The authors study the effects of brand salience on how consumers form brand attitudes and how consumers value the importance of various brand attributes. The study was conducted through two separate tests, the one focusing on the link between brand salience and brand attitudes and the other focusing on the link between brand salience and evaluations of attribute importance. Both tests measured brand salience as the ease with which brands are recalled by respondents who have been cued with a specific product category. The results show that brand salience has direct effects on both brand attitudes and the evaluation of attribute importance. As brands are recalled, high brand salience for a brand creates a more positive attitude towards that brand in the mind of the consumer.

The retailing industry has an extremely high density of brands. In order to differentiate its offer, both retailers and suppliers, are constantly forced to come up with new ways to launch their products. A collaborative strategy between two brands is called co-branding, which means that both the private label and the supplier's brand are displayed on the new product packaging. Several studies have shown that a co-branding strategy is successful, but many operators are still reluctant to use co-branding in fear of long-term losses due to potentially damaged business relations. The objective of this study is to explain how the product- and brand related value for customers, retailers and suppliers is affected by co-branding between private labels and national brands.

Within the last year many companies have proactively started to communicate their flaws and weaknesses, believing that this will lead to they being perceived as more personal and human. Dominos Pizza is one of many examples of a company using this practice as a strategic tool for communication. However, the problem concerning the above arises as we found that there was a very limited amount of research defining the effects of communicating flaws, where the company's both dispatcher and initiator. Our study aims to fill the gap between this growing trend and the limited research explaining the communication effects. The study was carried out as an experiment where a total of 420 respondents participated.

The thesis provides with the broad overview about the consumer awareness of the gender dimension within brand personalities. The research contributes to branding theory and gender studies and demonstrates that consumer gender influences does not influence the perceived brand personality gender. However, it also shows that consumers prefer brands with a clear gender, but not necessarily the same gendered brands..

This study views literary authors as brands and their books as products. The essay examines if different marketing activities will influence attitudes and intentions towards these brands, depending on how famous the author is and how much knowledge the consumer possess about the product category. The theory, which the hypotheses are based upon, mainly consists of research about culture, brands, attitudes and intentions. The study is quantitative and has an experimental design consisting of different written scenarios. These scenarios are based on background information about a fictive fiction author and type of marketing campaign.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to analyze the application of sensory marketing in malls.Problem discussion: The competition between malls is increasing, where visitors are increasing demands on the shopping malls layout. Shopping malls surface and its atmosphere becomes essential in the design of a mall so it will be attractive enough. Sensory marketing can be an appropriate method to stand out from the crowd and attract visitors. Sensory marketing is a process of engaging visitor?s senses to create a strong relationship between the brand and visitors.

Studies conducted on event marketing have mainly focused on larger events. Managerial implications, marketing techniques, and theories in the field have hence dominantly addressed events of larger nature. Event marketing however is a growing phenomenon in the marketing mix. Brands are using event marketing to a greater extent. Brands are increasingly using small events as a marketing tool in order to create brand awareness and brand image; this goes for both small brands and large brands.

Kevin Roberts has extended the comprehension of strong consumer brands to a higher level where loyalty beyond reason is established. He calls this new status Lovemarks. As the concept of Lovemark has only been applied in B2C markets, this thesis is directed to find out the applicability of Lovemarks in B2B context. In order to fulfill the research purpose, three main questions are answered based on a cross-sectional research approach: What role do intangible factors play in B2B branding? Is the idea of B2C Lovemarks transferable to B2B context? How should a B2B Lovemark be characterized? The results of the qualitative interviews indicate insights of high investment and involvement, integrated brand communication, balance between function versus emotion, brand?s trustworthy personality, customer partnership, and finally, the potential establishment of B2B Lovemarks.

In a time of fierce global competition, where an immense amount of commercial messages reaches consumers around the clock and in every conceivable context, companies constantly seek to find new ways to reach out with their product. One way to do so, that has increased in popularity in recent years, is the use of gift bags. A gift bag may contain samples, miniature products and even products in full size, as a rule from several different brands, which the recipient receives free of charge. The gift bag is typically distributed at some form of event, such as store openings, fashion shows, theme parties and the like, and the receiver of the gift bag can then evaluate the content without any obligation to purchase. The ambition of the companies that choose to participate with their products in a gift bag is, of course, that the recipient will find their products satisfactory, and ideally, that he or she will continue to consume the brand in the future.There are numerous scientific research contributions related to the use of free samples, but very few that concern the gift bag, where a collection of samples from different sources and brands appear.

Background: The design industry is relatively immature in Sweden but large on the international market, where companies have used services from industrial design firms for a long time. Companies incresignly realise that design is an efficient mean to gain competitive advantages on the market. Several design companies fancy growth and to receive a wider market share to expand on the international market. One of them is Design Communicaton who has made a couple of acquisitions, to receive wider comptences and to cover different segments. That has lead to an increased brand portfolio with different subbrands, which can be complicated to handle efficiently in the internal and external communication.