The purpose of this thesis is to examine the organizational buying behaviour in the purchase of travels abroad. We have conducted a case study of two companies, one medium sized and one larger. Our empirical studies have shown that the companies? buying process is divided into two types, the process of recruit a new travel supplier and the process of a straight rebuy of a regular travel service. In the recruiting process we found that the evaluation process of the purchase is an ongoing process that contradicts estab-lished theories.

Background: Critical conditions to become an attractive supplier of knowledge based IT-services in the B2B market are many. Besides the fact of supplying a service of high quality one must as a supplier communicate values which are understandable and desirable for a new buyer. Buying a knowledge based IT-service involves several risks; the consultant might not have sufficient knowledge or have difficulties understanding the corporate culture and collaborating with other staff within the client?s organization. Since services are intangible offers and it can be intricate to put right price level for something which can only be evaluated when the project is finished, puts severe strain on suppliers competing with other companies in the same market when looking for new clients.

The lifecycle of fashion products get shorter and shorter. Companies in the fashion business needto make sure that they can offer their customers the right products, in the right quantity at theexact right time. The competition on the fashion market today is tough and if companies aregoing to be successful they need to have access to the most reliable suppliers, and also offer theircustomers products with high quality to attractive prices. It is therefore of highest importance toevaluate and choose the right sourcing strategy. Product category and type of organisation aresome of the factors that will determine which strategy that is most appropriate.

This thesis aims on adding another piece to the puzzle that is the supplier relationship research. Taking its base in a series of articles regarding the transformations of global supply chains into more long-term profitable ones. Two research questions are presented, one regarding long-term supplier relationships and one regarding the main criteria?s while evaluating new suppliers. With an emphasis on the long-term relationship and profitability are five medium sized Swedish manu-facturers examined through semi-structured interviews.

Citizens? interaction with governments is an area with unique implications for channel management. Governments need to take the citizens perspective into further consideration in order to be successful in delivering high-quality e-services. This paper aims to determine if a categorization of citizen-initiated contacts from a citizen-centric perspective can be a valuable basis for decisions regarding e-service development. The study consisted of three steps.

This essay aims to explore continuity in water centric cult within the period of the Christianization of Scandinavia (ca 800-1100 AD) and to understand the changing of symbolism of water in pre-Christian cult and early Christian religion. It has previously been thought that Christian priests took over the old holy wells and renamed them after saint, all to ease the pagan people into a Christian lifestyle. But archaeological evidence shows that the cult at these wells, and other water centric sites, where almost completely abandoned a few hundred years before the Christians came to Scandinavia. The Christians should not have felt the need to transform this tradition since it was only practiced in a very small and supposedly private scale. On the contrary, religious activities at these wells seems to increase with the new religion and perhaps this is explained by Christianity itself.

I denna studie så kommer jag att analysera MMORPG-spelet World of Warcraft genom att utföra en analys i hopp om att isolera spelmekanismer och element som kan anses vara välfungerande och väldesignade. Jag kommer dessutom att bryta ner World of Warcraft till dess kärnkomponenter med hjälp av Interaction Centric Framework modellen som ett komplement till denna studie. Resultaten visar att World of Warcraft använder sig av många slags egenskaper och designval som skiljer sig själv från andra spel, som att dra ner på story element och att destillera spelets kärna till en väldigt grundlig ?morot-och-piska? formel som låter spelaren kunna spela oavbrutet utan att känna något skäl att sluta spela. .

The purpose of this thesis is to discuss how a Swedish public library approaches their costumers. I will show how a library interacts with their costumers compared to a business, which has a different economic work frame, a building materials supplier. My aim is to pinpoint differences and explore new methods for the library in order to improve their service.The theoretical frame of the thesis is based on Richard Norman's notion the Moment of truth. The moment of truth is the moment when a business has to convince their customer that they offer both the product, proficiency and service that the customer needs. Service encounters at two organizations have been observed and their differences and similarities compared.

The aim of this study is to describe the market for Digital Signage in Sweden and give the reader an increased insight and understanding of the problems that suppliers and buyers of Digital Signage may encounter. The study is abductive and based on a number of qualitative interviews with representatives from potential buyers, an existing user, a supplier and a number of companies with insight into Digital Signage. Our findings show that the companies in this study have not yet reached the stage of being ready to invest in a system for Digital Signage, since the effects on for instance increased sales and potential savings on marketing communication have not yet been clearly proven. Furthermore the study shows that it is important that a supplier has a fundamental understanding of the business model of the buyer. In addition to this, service, support and IT-related issues are of great importance for the potential buyers.

To implement an ERP-system is not an easy process. The success of the implementation depend on many different variables. The most important one is perhaps the requirement process, to define what the organization wants and expects from the system. In this study, the advantages of a process mapping are examined, in relation to the phase where the requirements are expressed in an ERP-implementation. The conclusion is that a process mapping generates an increased communication with the supplier of the ERP-system, hence the business knows their processes and thereby what they want from the system.

So- called ?Network Based Defense? (NBD) was introduced in Sweden in connection with the transformation of the Swedish Armed Forces in 1999. NBD is based on the U.S. variant Network Centric Warfare (NCW), which in turn is derived from research on the concept of Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). In Sweden the concept was introduced and included not only the Armed Forces but was intended to also support the Swedish civilian agencies in order to create networks and hence share the available information and thus more effective crisis management and to provide more "bang for the buck." In developing the concept of NBD the Swedish Armed Forces used both economic and human resources, in the form of research, new technologies, new organization and new methods.Between year 2004 and 2006 the Armed Forces once again entered the process of reorganization.

The European economy today is built on small and medium sized enterprises (SME?s) and SME?s recieve a lot more attention in the litterature now. Even though SME?s have earned more attention in the litterature there is a significant lack of information regarding purchasing and supplier selection in these companies?. This report aims to create bigger understanding of SME?s and their purchasing by showing how seven swedish SME?s select their suppliers.

The Swedish alcohol market has for many years been in the hands of the government. The question of the monopoly, its being or not being, has for a long time engaged both Swedish citizens and politicians. Since joining the European Union it has also been on the European agenda, trying to adapt Sweden to the more liberal alcohol politic in Europe.The suppliers find themselves acting on a completely different market than a market based on free competition. The suppliers are faced with one retail channel to the stores which creates dependence and uneven power balance towards the retailer. In addition to this, their marketing activities are strictly limited due to the laws and claims.

Background: Many companies have outsourced their IT-operations and their expectations of what this IT-outsourcing will contribute to the business are high. Cost cuts are not always a natural outcome of IT-outsourcing. Many companies that have outsourced their IT-operations consider it to be problematic and complex to exercise management control and reach cost control which was the purpose of the IT-outsourcing. Purpose: To describe and analyze what affect IT-outsourcing has on a company?s management control system and a company?s possibility to exercise cost control.

Background: Performance measurement as a management control tool has received considerable academic attention. As the number of inter-organisational relationships, such as customer-supplier relationships, increases, there is a new scope for performance measurement as a management control tool. In order for a company to assess the effectiveness of its supplier relationships it has to define, measure and evaluate variables that are critical for the success of the relationship. The role of management control, and thereby of performance measurement, has increasingly been discussed in theory. However, empirical research in this area is still somewhat limited.