This thesis was performed at Scania?s purchasing department of non-automotive products inSödertälje, Sweden during spring 2007. The management of the purchasing department ofnon-automotive products believe that their internal customers might not have fullunderstanding of what the purchasing department does. This is a problem because the internalcustomers might not use the contracts negotiated by the purchasing department or they mightnot involve the purchasing department when making purchases.The purpose of this thesis is to examine if and how the internal customers? perception deviatesfrom the purchasing department?s perception regarding the task of the purchasing department.And also to create a communication package with the purpose of increasing the internalcustomers understanding of what the purchasing department does.

This project is an attempt at creating a bag that is both functionaland has an interesting and relevant visual appearance. I have found that a bag that is functional usually have adapted certain aesthetics which are appealing only to a very limited target group. At the same time many bags that are more focused on style can be downright disabling to the carrier. I wanted to create a functional bag, and to explore new functions doing this, while working with aesthetics that stayed relevant and interesting to my target group. The bag was designed for the company Åhléns and their label WERA Stockholm, and theircustomers was the target group.

Abstract The purpose with this essay is to get an understanding of how the christmascalender hasevolved throughout the history, and why its shape looks like it does. We have made ananalysis of the 21-centurys calendars to get a look on the content and tried to track a targetgroup. Which themes have characterized the 21-century and how can you put these in relationto earlier calendars? To get a greater insight in the design of the christmascalendar, we madean interview with SVT's Susanne Kvarforth. After this it came to our knowledge that they arelacking guidelines besides that their target group is 6-12 year olds.

It has been found that customers in the home market perceive the retailer?s store image more positively than customers in the host market, even though this study has found that theretailer?s store image is generally perceived very positively by customers in both examined markets. In addition, this thesis has found that there is a significant difference in how IKEA?smanagement and customers perceive its store image. It can also be concluded that IKEA management perceived store image more positively than customers.

Customer information is to be seen as an essential part in service development. The company should be aware of how their customers experience their services. The company can get access to customer information through complaints from their customers. All information obtained from the customers is not possible to use when developing new and existing services. The information has to be analysed before it is possible to use it for service development.This paper describes if Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) uses their customers as a source of knowledge when developing new and existing services and in that case how.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how e-commerce companies work with their relationships to customers. We have conducted a case study of two companies, Koll and Webbshoppen, both active in the e-commerce industry. Our empirical study has shown that it is important for e-commerce companies to create long-term relationships to their customers, but it can be difficult to create these relationships since the companies have little contact to the users of Internet. To build relationships, e-commerce companies market themselves through different types of media to create awareness. It is also essential to be situated high in search engines.

The purpose of this thesis was, on the mission of LRF Konsult Södra marknadsområdet, to research on why their customers were satisfied and/or dissatisfied. The research was performed in two segments: customers that had joined the company through acquisitions of other accounting firms and customers that had been in contact with LRF Konsult?s personal sellers.To be able to find the answer to our purpose we chose to do a qualitative study. Five interviews were performed with customers in southern Sweden, Skåne and Halland, to get their personal view of the service and of their relation to LRF Konsult and their contact person.The theories suggested that the satisfaction of the customers would increase depending on their relation with LRF Konsult and their contact person. Our research concluded the relation differed for each customer and that it was of great importance that the contact person at LRF Konsult understood and adapted the relation to what the customer wanted.

The study aims to understand the underlying factor why McDonald's customers return despiteprevious failure customer experiences. Why do customers come back to the company thatcontributes to the former dissatisfaction? McDonald's attempt to maintain unceasingpurposeful emergence fail at the local level, where the customer contact occurs. McDonald'sofferings and customers' bounded rationality results in that customers are satisfied with an"ok" experience, which adds to their low expectations of McDonalds. This makes clear thatMcDonald's does not have to make an effort through constant adaptation at the local level toachieve a "great" level of satisfaction.

The purpose of this thesis is to show what advantages and opportunities social media offer for B2B-companies (business-to-business), and how they can be used for marketing communications.We have studied how companies can use social media, for example evolving the organization, developing products/services, staying up-to-date, building relations, creating customer loyalty and engagement, building the company?s identity and image, and affecting the buying decisions. We have also studied how B2B-companies can choose media channels, set goals, and measure the results.We have carried out interviews, through phone and visits, with four chosen companies that fit our criterias: Swedish B2B-company that is successful in social media.The result of the interviews show that B2B-companies use social media for various purposes, for example networking (to create and build long term relations with other companies) and to improve the company?s image among the end customers. Most of our interviewees reach their end customers (consumers) in first place and customers (companies) in second place, since many B2B-companies do not yet use social media.Half of our respondents mention that social media should not be used for advertising and campaigns (one way communication).

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.

The store manager can make great benefits of having an eye on how the staff works towards the customer, because the personnel is an important tool when competing with other stores. This paper is focusing on the part that relates to the staff in the store, which is one of the key tools in the competition for customers after the customer made it to the store. Many stores have guidelines which the staff should follow when they meet with customers. If the staff is too tightly controlled by these guidelines, customers can perceive the first encounter with the staff as artificial and as if the genuine friendliness does not exist. It is important that the staff looks at the individual customer and treat every customer in a personal way and that the staff can see the customer?s needs.

The aim of this thesis is, from a business perspective, to examine how the pharmacy chain Medstop is working with their positioning in order to achieve competitiveness in the re-regulated pharmacy market. This is studied through a theoretical framework that demonstrates five forces that affects the competitiveness in an industry, the five-force model by Michael Porter.The thesis is a qualitative case study where data collection was done through interviews, literature, articles, websites and internal information from Medstop. The data was then complied into the theoretical perspective the authors have chosen for this paper, the five-force model by Michael Porter. This model was chosen because it gives a broad description of the competition a company faces by describing five different forces that affect the competition within a branch. The fact was collected on the basis of the marketing strategy positioning, and the essay is written from a business perspective.Our cunclusions are that the pharmacy chain Medstop are in their initial positioning and has chosen to position itself on the basis of their core values; credibility, safety and security.

This essay is a case study carried out at Flow Systems Ltd that foremost aims to treat the internal marketing at the company. The aim with the essay is to analyze and evaluate Flows internal marketing in connection with a process of change and how this reflects the external marketing in relation to customers.The method that has been used is qualitative in the form of depth interviews carried out with management, employees and customers. This type of data was chosen since it is a good way of gathering more specific information regarding the informants preferences about the company. Among other things the results of the interviews showed internal marketing deficiencies, but that has not influenced the customers in a negative way. The conclusion was that the inferior internal marketing does not affect the cooperation and the communication between the company and its customers, however it has a big effect on the employees..

The agriculture of today is getting larger and larger and it demands more efficient machines to handle these larger units. But all farmers don?t have the opportunities or don?t want to expand. What should they do if they want to remain on the farm? An alternative is to start a farm shop.

The purpose with this study has been, based on different public and private procurement conditions, to measure if there are any significant differences in the business relations between public- and private institutional kitchens. Furthermore, to observe what important influencing factors there are to maintain and develop a relationship between a producer and customer. The result of the analysis shows that there are important factors that influences on the trust in the relationship between a producer and customer. These factors are product- and service exchange, communication, strategic purchase and social exchange. In this examination we have showed that there are differences in the relationship between public- and private customers.