Marketing research has acknowledged the concept of authenticity. It is argued that consumers in modern society increasingly search for something real, in contrast to what they perceive as mediated and distorted. Producers of regional food brands has acknowledged this trend, and started to market their products as being authentic. Given the potential practical and theoretical contributions in studying the concept of authenticity in this context, this study aims to explore how consumers perceive these claims of authenticity. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to extend knowledge on how consumers come to perceive a regional food brand as authentic.

Social media has made it possible to have a conversation in real time through audio, images and text, with anyone worldwide. The easy availability of social media has created a new society. Companies and organizations have the opportunity to interact with their audiences and their target in a way not previously possible. Welcome to the Web 2.0 world!Social media is a collective name for the communication channels that allow users to communicate directly with each other in real time through text, image or sound. Examples of social media are blogs, SMS, Skype, Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, Linkedin and Myspace.The purpose of this essay is to explore social media's role and opportunities in terms of being able to influence companies and organizations marketing communication. We have used a qualitative approach and our thesis is based on a qualitative text analysis study where we have analyzed 13 articles (the articles are from scholarly journals, magazines and trade/professional) from 2007 to 2009.

Bakgrund: Information har länge varit en viktig resurs för företagen och Business Intelligence har gjort det möjligt för dem att analysera stora mängder data. En annan resurs som företagen värdesätter är tid och på senare år har tekniken möjliggjort att BI-systemen inte bara kan hantera stor mängder data utan även göra det på kort tid, eller i realtid.Frågeställning: Vad räknas in i begreppet realtids BI?Kan realtids BI användas för att skapa tidsbaserade konkurrensfördelar?Syfte: Kartlägga begreppet Realtids BI samt identifiera möjliga användningsområden för denna inom den tidsbaserade konkurrensteorin.Metod: Vi har använt oss av en kvalitativ metod där vi intervjuat konsulter och leverantörer inom Business Intelligence.Resultat och slutsatser: Studien visar att det inte finns någon klar definition av realtids BI, men två huvudspår har identifierats. (1) Realtidsanalys med innebörden att data finns tillgänglig för analys när användaren så kräver, samt (2) att realtidsdata uppdateras i nära realtid, vilket kan variera från några sekunder upp till ett par timmar.Dessa två spår inom realtids BI finner användningsområde inom olika områden av den tidsbaserade konkurrensteorin. Realtidsanalys kan användas för att uppnå den externa tidsprestationen i det att företaget snabbare kan identifiera rådande marknadstrender och har då möjligheten att snabbare uppdatera sitt produktutbud.

Det här kandidatarbetet undersöker hur Physically based rendering kan påverkar en 3D-grafikers arbete. Målet är att skapa förståelse kring physically based rendering och hur denna tekniken kan komma att påverkar en 3D-grafikers arbete. För att undersöka problemområdet skapades en virtuell miljö i 3D med hjälp av physically based rendering. Arbetsupplevelsen jämfördes senare med det tidigare arbetssättet. Undersökningen beskriver tidigare arbetsätt och hur arbetet har ändrats med physically based rendering.

In recent years, more and more people have started to live double lives. Blogs, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have created conditions so that we increasingly live virtual lives on the Internet. The gathering of people in this way entails both risks and opportunities for businesses. This study aims to explain how the phenomenon of social media has affected trade and service companies in a marketing and communication perspective. The idea for the essay came to us after we had observed how different behaviors in companies? concerning social media could vary a lot, and how we felt that this affected our personal view of the brands.

The purpose of this essay is to examine if the municipality has a real freedom of action to control the use of the land and the shaping of the buildings in a large and prestigious building project.In Karlstad there is now (2006) a large building project in form of a shopping mall. This project is in its final stage of completion and offers me a suitable case to examine. To undertake the purpose of the essay, the following research question is formulated:Do the municipality have a real freedom of action to control the use of the land and the shaping of the buildings in a large and prestigious building project as the Mitt I City project?In an attempt to examine the project and the planning process, three themes are applied. The first theme derives from the hypothesis that the part that initiate the process gets the upper hand as future discussions are taking place in relation to the original ideas.

A great amount of todays drivers? are constantly exceeding the speed limits on the roads. As a consequense of this, a large number of speed redusing devises, for example speed bumps, has been built around the country. As reports in local medias point out, the acceptance for these types of speed reducing devises, differs and there are many thoughts about location, construction and effect on the traffic safety. This paper approaches the complexity of these problems from the drivers? point of view, based on literature studies and a questionnaire. The goal is not to argue for or against speed reducing devises, but to try to find the source of annoyment and how to proceed further. Some of the problems turned out to be easy to fix, for example porly marked speed bumps.

Certification systems, that assess companies? work with social and environmental issues, have emerged in an increasing number of industries. Today, there are environmental certifications for the food industry, the forestry, the fisheries sector and several more. In apparel industry, certification for sustainable working conditions has been of major impact. The property sector is no exception from other industries.

As the volumes are entering the world of computer graphics the pure volume visualisation becomes a more important tool in for example research and medical applications. But the advance in haptics --- force feedback from the computer --- is behind. In volume haptics no equal to the proxy method so popular in surface haptics has yet emerged. Some implementations of volume haptics even use surfaces as intermediate representations so that surface haptics can be used.The intention of this work was to create natural feeling haptic feedback from volumetric density data using pure volume haptics. The haptic algorithm would be implemented in Reachin API for the Reachin Desktop Display, together with other parts to build up a usable volume visualisation environment.To achieve the feeling of stiffness and friction dependent on tissue type, a proxy based method was developed.

The aim of this essay is to study the decision making process and implementation of the principle of political participation and influence for Roma minority in Sweden. The results regarding the decision making process is structured through a discourse influenced policy analyses. Problem picture and recommended measures in the political documents representing the decision making process are analysed through theories of minority rights and equality. The implementation is seen through, by the author given minority discourse and the work in the roma council and analysed by the same theories already mentioned.The results show that regarding the decision process the aim of art.15 in the framework convention is based on the idea of equality while the Swedish documents relates more to an idea of the right to speak for the group. Regarding recommended measures, the framework convention gives several recommendations on specific measures for political participation while the Swedish documents focuses on the general politics of the state.

Introduktion/Problembakgrund: Earnings management (EM) är ett problem för både det enskilda företaget och samhället. EM innebär att företagsledningen manipulerar resultatet i syfte att vilseleda externa intressenter. Konsekvenserna av EM är ett minskat förtroende för den finansiella rapporteringen, vilket resulterar i en ineffektiv kapitalallokering. Tidigare studier i Nya Zeeland har konstaterat att sammansättningen av fastighetsportföljen påverkar benägenheten till EM. Däremot går resultatet inte att generalisera i andra länder, eftersom det finns skillnader i lagstiftningen.

Library architecture today is a complicated history. Public libraries are no longer merely a place for book storage, but also a virtual library a social meeting place and a place for study. All these diverse tasks and roles emerge in the democratic designing process of a new library and also transform into the architecture. The underlying process is the evaluation and negotiation of the libraries overall tasks and ideas, ideals and values. Multiple ideologies are incorporated in library architecture.

I denna uppsats underso?ker vi hur principer fo?r spelmekanik pa?verkar anva?ndares bena?genhet att bidra med inneha?ll pa? interaktiva webbplatser. Genom en empirisk studie av kvalitativ art ja?mfo?r vi tva? versioner av en testsajt, med spelmekanik implementerat i den ena versionen. Vi kommer fram till att spelmekanik fo?r att motivera anva?ndare att skapa inneha?ll kan designas utefter tre huvudsakliga delar; regler/struktur, ma?l och delma?l samt vinster. Regler och struktur a?r vad som a?r mo?jligt eller tilla?tet att producera samt kvalitetskrav pa? inneha?llet.

Sedan införandet av euro som gemensam valuta har interna obalanser inom euroområdet växt sig starkare till följd av reala apprecieringar i speciellt Portugal, Irland, Italien, Grekland och Spanien. Detta har lett till att ländernas internationella konkurrenskraft försvagats. För att få bukt med de interna obalanserna krävs det att länderna återfår sin internationella konkurrenskraft, deras varor måste bli billigare i jämförelse med deras handelspartner. Detta kan komma till stånd genom reala deprecieringar. Hösten 2008 drabbades världen av den djupaste ekonomiska nedgången sedan andra världskriget, något som förvärrade situationen för de krisande euroländerna.Uppsatsen belyser de interna obalanserna inom euroområdet och diskuterar teoretiskt på vilka sätt länderna kan få stånd till reala deprecieringar när det inte finns någon växelkurs att ändra mot de andra euroländerna.

In my study I have participated at the Fifth Dimension / Active Worlds site in Villa Gymnastiken in Ronneby, where I have worked both as an assistant to the project leader and as a researcher, but also as a participant together with the children. The children are working in a virtual world called Femtedim, created in a internet-based program named Active Worlds Education Universe. The Femtedim-world are bridging together two physical worlds in Ronneby and Copenhagen. My main focus is on an intervention that occurred in the 12th of March when the research-team in Copenhagen, which runs the project in Denmark, decided to create a new challenge for the children since some of them started to get bored. They added gravitation to the Femtedim-world, which lead to a few different reactions among the children. Most of the children didn´t like it and were very hostile towards the idea that they would not be able to fly around freely in the Femtedim-world.