Research on the power of customer involvement, and in particular recommendation is very resourceful. Many studies have mapped the reasons for why customers are willing to recommend, however they often ignore potential differences among brands and how that may affect these reasons. This study is built on a quantitative survey investigating how consumers interact with brands, depending on category affiliation. The categories used were Bhat and Reddy's symbolic and functional, consisting of three brands respectively where each brand represented a different product type.The evolvement of social media has also transformed the platform of recommendation from physical to virtual and changed the way people connect. Thus, taking the investigation further, potential differences between symbolic and functional brands was tested in different social media platforms.

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..

I denna uppsats studeras investeringsprocesser i det divisionaliserade företaget Södra Skogsägarna ekonomisk förening. Studiens syfte är att beskriva och förklara företagets investeringsprocesser och i vilken utsträckning dessa processer är standardiserade. I studien analyseras dessa investeringsprocesser utifrån befintlig teori. Studien visar att investeringsprocesser initieras i den operativa verksamheten för att sedan drivas fram i den operativa verksamheten och i ledningen på enhetsnivå. Beslut fattas på alla nivåer i företaget efter investeringars storlek.

Many archaeologists have been intrigued by how often symbolic houses of varying forms are used on the burialgrounds of the Scandinavian Bronze Age. Some scholars even claim that to deal with the dead did not mean to set them apart from the world of the living during this period. Since several examples show that there seem to be an active connection between the ship-setting and different types of symbolic houses, this study seek to demonstrate and interpret how the ideology behind these symbols vary between three regionally different Swedish areas: Halland, Småland and Gotland. The purpose is to show that the way chosen to shape the symbols materially not only had fundamental impact on the organization of the burialground itself, but also on how the surrounding world came to comprenhend and use them. This study suggests that even though the special shapes of the graves and the gravefield itself can carry meaning, the materialization of the monuments can be interpreted as incorporated in a practice of remembrance in where the individual shaping of the grave most probably formed part of a greater story..

The subject of this paper is to examine the view of diversity among ten teachers and three principals in the Swedish compulsory school. The purpose is to investigate how they relate to the diversity and in what ways it is involved in their work.The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieus basic ideas of habitus, capital and field are used as a theoretical starting point. The study is mainly based on interviews supported by literature in the subject area.The findings show that diversity is associated with ethnicity among all informants. The drawn conclusion is that this is partly due to the mediated picture but also since ethnicity mainly serves as a starting point in the literature..

Earth?s resources have been exploited unsustainably. If an entire conception of exploitationof natural resources does not change now, this will entail enormous costs in the future.This insight has lead to a recently increased interest in clean technologies among privateequity capitalists. In the fourth quarter of 2006 about 10 percent of all private equityinvestments made in the US market were placed in the cleantech industry. Despite a goodinvesting climate in Sweden, Swedish capitalists have shown little interest in cleantechinvestments.

The aim of this study was to examine how women in a voluntary organization, KRIS (C.R.I.S. Criminals' Return Into Society) express their experience of help and support from voluntary and professional organized social work. This was an empirically based study with, qualitative approach. The methods of data collection were unstructured interviews and participant observation.The central question was which importance KRIS possible may have in the process of the women's return into society from involvement in crime and drug abuse. What can KRIS offer that the professional organization can't?The findings were that mutuality, mutual aid or mutual help based on shared experiences is hard to replace with support from professional organized social work.

How is research and science being used in political debate? An idea analysis of the debate about försäkringsmedicinskt beslutsstöd (decision tool in healthcare security)This is a case study on different types of research use (utilization) The aim of this paper is to examine how the politicians make use of expertise and research in the parliamentary debate surrounding the decision tool in healthcare security (försäkringsmedicinskt beslutsstöd). The aim is also to find out to what extent different types of research use are present in this debate. In this case study the qualitative method of idea analysis is being used on the empirical material. The tool of analysis is based upon the theories of research use by Amara et al.

Discussions of structural racism has now moved to the forefront of the Swedish society, and many researchers have sought to understand what form it takes, how it is manifested, how it is exploited and challenged. At the core of this debate we find the media, and its logic embedded with mechanisms of simplification and polarization.Media is our key source of knowledge and information, why it also affects our norms, beliefs and preconceptions. Media thus has the power to mediate, amplify or challenge how we conceptualize the world, and subsequently our (unconscious) racist beliefs.To investigate how media content is influenced by underlying colonial or racist assumptions and stereotypes thus becomes a way to investigate our understanding of reality.In accordance with postcolonial thought, structural and symbolic racism is embedded in language and hidden in images, and surface in the form of domination and feminization, and the portrayal of the subaltern ?Other? as passive and irrational.This paper thus departs from postcolonial theory and media logic to undercover hidden patterns of structural, symbolic and historically contingent racism in one of Sweden?s most prominent in-depth foreign TV-magazines, namely Korrespondenterna.Adopting Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this paper explores to what extent racist and colonial stereotypes are reproduced and/or challenged in Korrespondenterna?s representation of Sub-Saharan Africa.In line with postcolonial theory it is found that historically contingent racialized stereotypes are prevalent in Korrespondenterna, and that tendencies of portraying Africa and Africans as passive, feminine and irrational are prevailing.It is thus argued that media logic, imbedded with mechanisms of simplification, polarization and intensification, contributes to the use of colonial stereotypes in media, and thus to the mediation of structural and symbolic racism..

This C-essay is a qualitative study designed to create a basis for understanding how managers involved in school affairs perceive the impact of merit points on students? chances to continue on to higher education and how this will affect individuals' life chances.The study is based on three interviews with managers involved in school affairs. In this paper grades, merit points and socioeconomic class differences are discussed.The aim of this paper is to answer the following questions:? What impact does merit points in language studies and the way different languages are valued, in the system, have for the individual and for society?? Who are the winners in the new grading system and who are the losers; how are different socioeconomic groups affected?The material was interpreted with the help of a report written by Ingrid Nordqvist and Monica Langerth Zetterman called "Secondary School competition field-a regional perspective", a paper written by Helen Raven who did a study on grades, national tests and social reproduction and the Frenchman Pierre Bourdieu's theories.The results show that class differences will increase and that it will be difficult to rise in the social hierarchy in the future..

Scania?s discount rate - the return requirement of investments - refers to Scania?s WACC or weighted average cost of capital. The capital markets return requirement on equity and the credit market interest cost of borrowing is weighted to become the single discount rate, the WACC. The purpose of this study is to investigate which asset pricing model of APT and CAPM Scania should use in their WACC calculations. The company now uses a group WACC of 11 percent which is used in all company levels.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to increase the understanding of how a bank?s features and internal factors have affected its choice of method in calculating the capital requirement.Theoretical and Empirical Method: The research strategy of this study has been of a qualitative nature with a deductive approach. The choice of method was depth interviews with respondents from a targeted sample of Swedish banks. These respondents were chosen based on the knowledge they possess as key employees in the capital requirement process and their involvement in choosing their banks? method for calculating the capital requirement.

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to in a comparative and causal way explore whether there is a relationship between risk and return and also how it is perceived on the Nordic financial markets.Theory: The theoretical frame of reference applied in the thesis is considered relevant inthe perspective of the study?s purpose and research questions. We have among other theories used The Capital Asset Pricing Model, The Efficient Market Hypothesis and various Behavioural finance theories.Method: The study has its starting point in a quantitative approach with a quantitative data analysis supported by secondary data extracted from Thomson Reuters.Empirics: The empirics contains regression analyses made from calculated secondary data of 240 randomly chosen companies from Nasdaq OMX Stockholm, NasdaqOMX Copenhagen, Nasdaq OMX Helsinki and Oslo Bors.Conclusion: The study conclusions show that there are both a negative and positive relationship between volatility and actual return on the investigated markets. Considering this prior statement we can conclude that the Capital Asset Pricing Model can?t correctly describe the actual relationship between the parameters investigated on the current sample.

This essay aims to explain the fluctuations in the Swedish transition rate to higher education between 1923 and 2002. With theories of human capital, and screening, as points of departure, seven variables are selected and their correlation with the transition rate investigated by use of graphs and tables. The variables are unemployment, youth unemployment, the supply of academics, cohort size, number of high school graduates from programs preparing for ensuing studies, relative wage trends for worker categories with differing levels of education, and structural phase. Results show that no single variable nor the theories of human capital or screening can explain the fluctuations in transition rate in full. Instead I propose a theoretic model which amalgamates the above and places risk aversion as the driving force behind the individual?s educational decision.

Through participant observation in a local promoter group of hardcore punk shows inGothenburg and qualitative interviews with its members I have investigated links between taste in music, values and social structures in the hardcore punk scene. The theoretical framework of this essay is built upon the concept of subcultural capital, which is adapted from Pierre Bourdieu and developed by Sarah Thornton and Keith Kahn-Harris. The result shows how members among the hardcore punk scene create and preserve distinction towards others, while the distinction becomes important benchmarks for including and excluding practices in the scene..