Goal: To describe which evaluation method is used by Swedish Retailers to assess a potential retail location and to describe to what extent the retail brand effects this strategic decision. Design: Analysis of ten interviews with companies within five retail sectors in Sweden. Main study: Indication of what methods are used to evaluate a location and how a company's retail brand affects the decision. Results: Retailers use a mix of theoretical methods to evaluate the location attributes and possible profit. Most common among mixtures was an application of the analog method, residual method or the checklist method in combination with a financial assessment.

The most vital for a business is to understand how to please and satisfy its customers in order to make them loyal to the company. Companies weapon for competition in the retail business is defined through the retail mix. The retailer however often have limited resources whereas they have to prioritize between the factors included in the retail mix. The main purpose for this paper is to investigate what kind of internal connections that may occur between the factors in the retail mix, with focus on the job satisfaction as a catalyst on driving the values of the parameters included in the retail mix, where the factor service is the starting shot for the others included..

This is a project in Entrepreneurship and Creativity on masters? degree. The purpose was to verify whether the Swedish Retail trade within the beauty care business was ready for an in-troduction of colour cosmetics. Through the qualitative research grounded theory, I made several phone interviews with independence retail traders within the Swedish beauty care business. The selection of respondents is based on statistical facts and geographic coverage of Swedish beauty care shops.

Studiens syfte är att utveckla storbankernas Retail Banking verksamheter genom att studera detaljhandeln, de nya bankaktörerna och storbankerna. Det empiriska materialet baseras på åtta semistrukturerade intervjuer med chefer inom bank- och detaljhandelsbranschen Studien konstaterar att storbankerna måste utveckla sina Retail Banking verksamheter för att bemöta konkurrensen från andra bankaktörer. Genom förbättrade CRM-system, bättre nyttjande av distributionskanaler och mer försäljningsinriktade organisationer är storbankerna redo för framtidens Retail Banking..

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.

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.

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.

The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has lately gained popularity throughout the globalized world. Swedish Retail industry is no exception. Though increased levels of explicitly claimed responsibilities of companies, a number of other facts points out a development that contradicts this trend. Labour conditions and forms of employment is substantially retrograding, with an increased level of insecurity characterizing the Swedish Retail labour market. At the same time, almost all Swedish Retail companies explicitly state claims on social responsibility.

The Swedish food retail market contains of three major actors, ICA, KF and Axfood, all in all dominating 75 percent of the total market shares. The scant number of retailing actors indicates that the Swedish food retail market is a highly concentrated oligopoly, which as a fact has given rise to definite discussions and argumentations concerning the market situation. But is the food retail market imperfect and how do we reach a workable competition? Economic theory does not provide any clear answer on these questions, but is rather divided into two fundamentally different approaches to define competition: the static and the dynamic perspective on competition. In an attempt to examine the competition on local Swedish Retail markets, the purpose of this study is to carry out an econometric model estimating the situation.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how salesperson control can be exercised in a retail store environment. A case study has been performed on a Swedish fashion company emphasizing the relationship between the company?s upper level management and their retail store operations in order to describe, analyze and classify the prevailing management control mechanisms. The paper presents an agency theoretical approach to the relationship applying behavior- and outcome based control theory, performance measurement theory and incentives theory in order to give a comprehensive image of the control system. The main finding is that the company?s management control system as applied to the sales force in its retail stores can be categorized as mainly behavior-based despite several explicit outcome-based features..

This thesis attempts to clarify the impact of cultural differenceson customer expectations of service level. Furthermore, wewant to determine whether or not expectations of service differenough to be quantifiable between two countries, Sweden andthe US, mostly regarded as similar in business practices. The conclusion showed that higher ratings on four of Hofstede?s five cultural indexes were associated with higher customer service expectations overall, and in all four SERVQUAL dimensions. This research contributes to retail internationalization and customer expectations theory.

The purpose of this thesis was to illuminate and create a deeper understanding of how small niche retail businesses within the apparel industry position themselves. We aimed to investi-gate how these small niche retail businesses create their position and how they communicate these positions to their target market. To be able to investigate the positioning-process within these small niche retail businesses a case study was conducted based on interviews with two respondents from two different companies and observations of these businesses physical envi-ronments. The study indicated that the small niche retail businesses mainly make use of emo-tional aspects and their assortment range to create their position. To communicate their posi-tion to their target market they mainly use their in-store personal selling and their assortment range..

More and more companies have realized the impact their employees' appearance has in creating an overallpositive experience for their customers. Hence, many retailers use some form of employee clothing or aspecific dress-code for their in-store workforce. The subject is in spite of this poorly investigated,especially in an ordinary retail environment. The purpose of this study was therefore to portray the effectsan introduction of a unitary employee clothing may have on customers as well as on the in-storeemployees. The experiment was conducted in two retail stores, belonging to a Swedish Retail chain.

ABSTRACTTitle: Basel II ? The New Basel Capital Accord and its influence on small Swedish banks and their retail banking and risk management.Seminar: May 24th, 2007Course: FEK318 Bachelor thesis in Business Administration, 10 Swedish creditsAuthors: Mattias Kjellberg, David Uhlmann & Ivana ZubacAdvisor: Joakim WinborgKeywords: Capital cover, capital requirements, Basel II, credit giving, credit risk, risk management, retail banking, small banks, pillar 2Problem: What influence does Basel II and the new updated management of credit risks in pillar 1 and the active risk control in pillar 2 have on small Swedish banks retail banking?Purpose: Our essay seeks to explore what influence pillar 1 and the new updated management of credit risks in the new capital accord Basel II have on small Swedish banks and what influence pillar 2 have. We also want to explain if Basel II has influences on small Swedish banks credit analysis and possible effects in their risk management and pricing.Methodology: In our essay we use an inductive approach and our chosen research method is the qualitative one. We have chosen to look into four small Swedish banks, and the empirical data is obtained from telephone interviews with selected respondents from Länsförsäkringar Bank, SkandiaBanken, GE Money Bank and ICA Banken.Conclusions:? The work with credit scoring does not get influenced by Basel II if the Standardised Approach is chosen.? Banks that?ve early implemented high technological systems in the organization, that small banks normally do, have gotten an easier transition to Basel II.? Basel II will result in a risk adjusted pricing and a more fair credit market.? Internal Ratings-based Approaches is very demanding to develop, but at the same time it?s a more risk sensitive approach.? Pillar 2 results in a more sophisticated work for the small banks.? Basel II results in a further price press on residential loans in Sweden..

The logistic business Svenska Retursystem AB was founded by the Swedish Retail sector in the year 2000, and their introduction of a grey plastic crate to the supply chain for perishable goods changed the situation for the swedish horticultural sector. The new system revealed several challenges to be tackled by all actors, from the small family firm to the bigger organisations. Whereas the initiative comes from the customer himself, from the horticultural sector ?s point of view, a refusal of the new packing is a hard decision to take. It is however interesting that a comparison between the two systems, shows in favour of the corrugated board boxes, not only concerning environmental aspects but also for economical and ergonomical reasons.