ICA is the largest general dealer in the Swedish market as well as the largest supplier to the independent ICA-dealers. The principal and one of the biggest stakeholders of this thesis is the department Supply Chain Development who is responsible for the development of ICA?s Supply Chain.The purpose of this study is to examine how ICA?s sales are affected by weather and to make recommendations on how ICA should proceed with its work regarding this issue. By leveraging their forecasts by including weather, ICA hopes that their logistical metrics amount of spoilage, service levels and number of inventory days will improve. This thesis describes how ICA is working with weather currently, and furthermore it discusses the existing literature within this area.

Horses are by nature herbivores, specialized on grass, and graze during the main part of the day. The horse has neither changed this basic behaviour nor the function of gastro-intestinal tract, when the horse was domesticated by man. A horse on pasture has an even production of saliva and gastric acids. The buffering effect of the saliva makes the pH in the stomach above four throughout most of the day. With abnormal long breaks of eating, the pH may decrease, causing an increased risk of gastric ulcer.

The Swedish National Rail Administration has changed in the past decade, from its origin after a less dramatic separation from the Swedish State Railways to becoming an authority with its own identity. Today the National Rail Administration is a large organisation with several different departments, each with its own unique function. To operate train services the railway needs to be ?in shape?, leading to a need for maintenance, reinvestments and new investments. For this purpose, the National Rail Administration carries out public procurement where contractors, who are able to perform maintenance and new construction, submit tenders.

The purpose of this master thesis is to map and analyze the appropriate valuation approaches used for Intellectual Property rights and develope a model for valuing patents. This project has been executed on behalf of Electrolux?s Group Intellectual Property and is intended to be used for managerial purposes.Project limitations include patents that doesent concern technology oriented products and services, real option methods, financial forecasts, decisions concerning patents taken by the R&D division, patent applications in general and taking into account unexpected future management decisions regarding patents.Electrolux?s Intellextual Property team applies, manages and protects the groups Intellectual Property rights including patents, designs and trademarks. With an increased globalization and the rise of emerging markets, incentives have increased further to protect and safeguard the group?s innovations.Mainly there are three different valuations approaches for valuing intellectual property rights, these include the income based approach, cost base approach and market based approach.

China is a unique market that differs from the Western market in many ways. Companies are not required to publicize financial reports, and furthermore a heavy focus on business relationship building can make it hard for companies to have high quality streams of data to get insights about their markets. For a consultant company to successfully enter the Chinese market and helping producing and technological global firms improving their insights on the Chinese market, the consultant company needs to understand which the important factors are and how those factors can help in creating value for their potential customers. To help the analyzing and consultant firm called Kairos Future, a qualitative case study was conducted on 16 different global companies with focus on industrial production. The case study was mainly conducted through face to face interviews with decision makers who had a broad understanding of their respective companies.

AbstractThe topic ?The effects of music in the supermarket on consumer behavior,sales, and customer state of mind? was assessed to try and analyse the emotionaldifferences that may occur as well as the sales variations that may arise fromplaying music in a supermarket. The reason for this study is that grocery storesare very common and abundant in most neighborhoods, as is man?s necessaryconsumption of food. In almost every city grocery stores must compete hardagainst each other in order to succeed in offering the most appealing options toconsumers.

AbstractThe topic ?The effects of music in the supermarket on consumer behavior,sales, and customer state of mind? was assessed to try and analyse the emotionaldifferences that may occur as well as the sales variations that may arise fromplaying music in a supermarket. The reason for this study is that grocery storesare very common and abundant in most neighborhoods, as is man?s necessaryconsumption of food. In almost every city grocery stores must compete hardagainst each other in order to succeed in offering the most appealing options toconsumers.

There are many old dams in Sweden and, since few dams are constructed today, the main task in risk assessment on the existing dams is often to reduce the risk of failure. RIDAS (Swedish Guidelines on Dam Safety) is used when designing new dams and assess the existing ones. The guidelines include stability requirements for different failure modes, e.g. overturning and sliding, which imply that the load effect from e.g. uplift and ice load need to be less than the resisting loads or moments.

Eventing is often called as the formula 1 in equestrian sports and comprises three disciplines: dressage, show jumping and cross-country. The sport provides excitement, challenge and joy and is the ultimate sport for intelligent riders and horses. Many are fascinated by the challenges the sport offers while other consider it foolhardy to ride a cross-country. Eventing is not a risk-free sport and has even been given the label of being one of the world´s most dangerous sports. What do those risks mean to the horse? And particularly, is it associated with good animal ethics to use the horse for eventing? Finding answers to these questions is not easy as it probably is not a clear and simple answer.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how Bahamas, a magazine belonging to the antideutsche current in German left-wing politics, acted during a two year period between the summer 2001 and 2003. When explaining the anti-deutsche phenomena and the editors? politics it is common to take the currents own history-writing as a fact, thus presenting the development of the current as a reaction to outside factors and impulses outside. In this thesis it is stressed that the editors are far from only passively reacting, rather the opposite is true. I claim that the editors have a fixed ideology that they strive to implant in to certain parts of the radical left.

With the advance of the modern information society, the importance of reliable identity authentication has increased dramatically. Using biometrics as a means for verifying the identity of a person increases both the security and the convenience of the systems. By using yourself to verify your identity such risks as lost keys and misplaced passwords are removed and by virtue of this, convenience is also increased. The most mature and well-developed biometric technique is fingerprint recognition. Fingerprints are unique for each individual and they do not change over time, which is very desirable in this application.

I dagens Sverige konsumeras årligen stora mängder kläder. Nyproduktion av textil har en betydande miljöpåverkan med bland annat stor åtgång av vatten samt mängder av kemikalier. Ett alternativ till allt nyproducerat skulle kunna vara andrahandsmarknaden för kläder.Syftet med studien är att undersöka om de kvinnliga kunderna hos butikerna Myrorna och Beyond Retro konsumerar färre nyproducerade plagg för att de konsumerar second hand- och vintagekläder.Vi har använt oss utav en kvantitativ undersökning där vi intervjuat totalt hundra stycken respondenter i anslutning till Myrorna och Beyond Retros butiker. Vidare har vi genomfört fem stycken kvalitativa intervjuer med vana konsumenter hos ovannämnda butiker, för att fånga deras resonemang bakom svaren.De kvantitativa intervjuerna visar på att en liten majoritet anser sig konsumera färre nyproducerade plagg för att de konsumerar second hand- och vintagekläder. Samt att det överhängande motivet bakom köpen var att second hand- och vintagekläder är unikt och trendigt.

AbstractOur life-experiences and our background form the way we act and the activities we are involved in. The overall purpose in this thesis has been to study what habits are to be found in different activities related to the outdoors and how these habits have been developed. Hopefully this work can contribute to a better understanding of the meaning of habits in our lives and thereby play a part in a further differentiated talk about habits and knowledge in society. The background and my theoretical approach has been three views of habits:In practice these patterns of habits are not separable so this approach should be seen as a way of making the development of habits clearer. Another purpose is to study how the following concepts can be related to habits: Reflection, master-apprentice, episte?me, techne, phronesis, interest and tacit knowledge.

The intention of this final thesis is to examine how to create a schoolyard that inspires children at the age of 6 ? 12 years to play and give them possibility to develop. To get a lot of knowledge in this subject, I have combined studies of literature with practical studies at Hosjöskolan in Falun. During my practical studies I have done interviews, walks in the area with the children and visited other schoolyards. I have based a design proposal for the schoolyard of Hosjöskolan on these studies.

I ett samhälle där det råder allt större konkurrens mellan företag och produkter, och då kunderna blir allt mer krävande, har Cause Related Marketing (CRM) blivit något av en unik win-win strategi. CRM innebär att ett företag tillsammans med en välgörenhetsorganisation skapar ett samarbete för att marknadsföra och sälja en produkt för välgörande ändamål och därmed nå ömsesidig vinst.Syftet med uppsatsen är att se vilka effekter CRM kan ha i jämförelse med traditionell marknadsföring. Vi har valt att undersöka varför företag väljer att engagera sig i välgörenhet och om man kan använda ett sådant samarbete som ett marknadsföringsverktyg.Den metod vi använt för studien är en kvalitativ metod. Till vår hjälp har vi använt oss av tidigare forskning inom ämnet samt genomfört intervjuer med företag som varit relevanta för studien. Företagen som medverkar är verksamma inom detaljhandel eller dagligvaruhandel och samtliga har valt att engagera sig i Rosa Bandet.Slutsatser som dragits genom studien är att CRM är en strategi som alla företag inom detaljhandel och dagligvaruhandel kan använda sig av.