Over the course of the past the agricultural sector has been characterized by radical market changes. Changing market conditions have forced owners of agricultural and forestry businesses to make further investments. This increase in investments has led to a greater need for external capital, which has increased the relationship between banks and owners of agricultural and forestry businesses. The financial sector is characterized by strong rivalry, which forces banks to create strategic positions in the financial market. Since agricultural and forestry businesses are generally seen as secure customers by banks, due to high property and land values, the competition between banks with agricultural and forestry businesses as customers has amplified.

Problem Discussion: Today the banks manage three central products: mutual funds, mortgages and bank accounts. Banks have authority and credibility, the services and the products they offer and sell can sometimes be difficult to understand. Customers are offered a large number of investment options with varying risk profiles. These developments have created an increasing need for knowledge and information among customers. The financial advice that the financial firms provides, remains a very important activity from a customer view.

ABSTRACTInternet use in Sweden is among the highest in Europe. The increased availability and use of the Internet has changed people's behavior patterns. This, in turn, has made many companies choose to offer their products and services online. This means that there is less personal contact and that customer relations can be described as having gone from face-to-face to face-to-screen. Swedish banks have come a long way in terms of adapting its operations to customers? demand in a global environment that is digitizing at a rapid pace.

Since companies have realised the importance of customer loyalty and since the service sector has gained higher significance in recent years, we found it interesting to study what leads to customer loyalty in service companies. The theories we have chosen to consider are customer loyalty, service quality, service guarantees, affinity marketing, loyalty programmes and customer clubs, the customer in focus and other factors that influences customer loyalty. To find out how service companies are working with cus- tomer loyalty, we have conducted a case study within three service companies. Our findings are that customer loyalty has a significant importance for the companies we studied. Quality and personnel were the factors we found had the greatest impact in service companies concerning customer loyalty.

In recent years, customer profitability has become a focal point of academic discussions on business performance. However, researchers remain divided as to how evaluation of customers ought to be conducted, resulting in uncertainty of how accounting systems should be adapted to prevailing conditions. This paper aims to investigate the application of customer accounting techniques and the role they play in the organisational and commercial context in which they take place. In a case study of Billerud, a Swedish company providing materials and services for packaging solutions, the interplay between customer accounting techniques and customer relationship characteristics has been examined through the application of a theoretical framework developed by Lind and Strömsten. Particular emphasis has been put on deviations from the prescribed pattern of the framework.

Title: Strategies for competition ? a study of the Swedish contact lenses market.Authors: Pernilla AArskog and Annika Lange.Background: As a market gets more mature and the competition increases, it is more important for a company to apply the right strategic perspective. There are four fundamental strategic perspectives for a service-oriented business: a core product-, a price-, an image- and a service perspective. This study is a about service management and take its point from the theories from the Nordic School about strategies for competition, customer value, perceived customer quality and customer loyalty.Purpose: The main purpose with this study is to analyze and evaluate how the actors at the Swedish market of contact lenses should compete to gain further competitive advantages.Method: The study includes four qualitative interviews with two traditional opticians and two Internet based businesses, but also a survey with 106 contact lens users is included.Analysis: In the analyse part of this thesis it was concluded that the traditional opticians conception about their customer not agrees with what the customer evaluate as important. Many of the customers have thought about changing their optician, and besides that do not recommend their optician, and can there for not be categorize as loyal customers.

A majority of the payments that are carried out today are executed through the electronic payment systems. Payments that are executed through these systems are administrated by payment service providers, these providers are, in general, banks. In spite of the socio-economic importance of payments and payment intermediation, there is an uncertainty regarding the legal status of payments and payment intermediation. Some describe payment intermediation as transport of means of payments, while some describe it in terms of claims and intermediation of information. There is, in other words, a need for clarification.

The bank market for farmers in Sweden is dominated by Swedbank and Landshypotek. One of the most aggressive challengers is Länsförsäkringar Bank, which in 2009 had seven per cent of the Swedish bank market for farmers, but 57 per cent of all new lending. This paper deals with the problem of new banks to break into the bank market where farmers are slow in terms of change in their attitudes and loyal to their banks. The study has been carried out in cooperation with Länsförsäkringar Gävleborg which is a new actor in the banking market and thus eager to take part in the outcome of the study. This essay thus seeks to examine the attitudes farmers have against bank switching and the factors that influence their choice of bank.

Syfte: Att studera vilka faktorer kunder tycker är viktiga vid val av bank och försäkringsbolag. Att se hur väl företagen känner till kundernas preferenser vid val av respektive tjänsteföretag samt att se vilka likheter och skillnader det finns vid val av 2 tjänsteföretag inom den finansiella sektorn.  Metod: Undersökningen gentemot kunderna genomfördes med hjälp av en enkätundersökning och personliga intervjuer vid respektive tjänsteföretag. Enkätundersökningen har redovisats i form av diagram och tabeller medan intervjuerna har redovisats i löpande text. Resultat & slutsats: Kunderna ansåg pris, räntor, ett bra bemötande och engagemang samt personalens kompetens vara viktigast vid val av både bank och försäkringsbolag. Bankkunderna ansåg att närhet till banken och att ha en bra relation till banken var viktigare än vad försäkringskunderna tyckte.

During the recent financial crisis there has been an intense debate regarding small enterprise?s possibilities to borrow money. Statements from interest groups and results from surveys among Swedish non-financial companies indicate that their situation has worsened. Credit worthy enterprises that under normal circumstances would not have any problems getting financing are now facing financial difficulties. In contrast, an economic report from the Bank of Sweden concludes that Sweden does not suffer from a severe credit rationing due to the financial crisis.

Unga utgör framtiden och är ett segment som banker vill knyta till sig. Det finns emellertid en svårighet för banker att veta hur de ska nå de unga. Denna uppsats beskriver hur unga väljer bank. Resultatet visar att unga är känsliga för familj och omgivningens påverkan, och det är det som i första hand styr deras val av bank. De har även höga krav på tekniska lösningar och det är där utvecklingen bör ske för att nå de unga..

Problem: That the stakeholder?s expectations don´t answer to what auditors can and may do have been a problem for several years. This problem was defined for the first time by Liggio at 1974. Since 1974 there have been several researches about the expectation gap for auditors.Purpose: The purpose of our study is to research what the audit effort in HQ Bank means for the expectation gap.Theory: The theories in our study discuss the audit profession, the definition of the expectation gap, how trust develops between individuals, the regulations that the authorities discuss and a review of earlier researches in this subject.Method: We have done a qualitative study in which we interviewed approved auditors at PwC and Convensia in addition we interviewed the chief lawyer at the Swedish financial supervisory authority to answer our purpose.Conclusions: The conclusion of our study is that the expectation gap exists between the auditors and the stakeholders. Another conclusion is that the incidents in HQ Bank have influenced the expectation gap in a negative direction, to reduce the expectation gap we suggest that adjustments of the regulations must be done and that the auditors themselves must inform their stakeholders what auditors can and may do..

This thesis concerns the Swedish credit card market to a younger public and specifically Nordea as a card editor. The purpose is to investigate whether a Swedish bank can, and want to build long term relationships with a young public through credit cards, and if so, how they do this.The theoretical background formulated by researchers Bendapundi and Berry consists of four key factors of relationship maintenance; trust, dependency, dedication and constraint. These key factors are also assembled in an analytical framework. The empirical findings mainly consist of interviews with three employees at Nordea. They describe a recent segmentation of the bank?s customers with the issuing of a new credit card; Mastercard Silver.

The structures of organizations have gone through a dramatic change over the last years; as a result customer service is no longer a small side activity but a critical part in customer relationship management. Development in information technology has created opportunities as well as challenges for organizations when it comes to providing a customer service with capacity of sensing and responding to customers' needs. Previous research shows a relationship between customer response capability and customer knowledge processeses, this study investigates and confirms this relationship. However, findings show that dedication and understanding for customers needs has a direct impact on both customer response capability and customer knowledge processeses, this result indicates that customer knowledge processes and customer relationship management are difficult to differentiate. Furthermore, this study explores IT-related resources impact on customer response capability and customer knowledge processes.

The aim of this thesis is to describe how service companies through adjustment of the customer?s zone of tolerance can influence customer?s perception of the service during the processes of service delivery and create customer satisfaction. The method used was case study approach utilizing personal interviews, which were conducted at two service companies. The study showed that the aspects of the service that have greatest importance for the customer?s assessment of the service and customer satisfaction among others are personal treatment and that personel behave in the way that makes the customer feel itself taken good care of and unique.