Research has concluded that meaningless differentiation with trivial attributes sometimes can be a successful strategy. However, the effect varies with respect to certain aspects such as the price of the product and the decision context. How the characteristics of the consumer influence the effect of trivial attributes has until now been unknown. This thesis investigates how the consumer?s level of knowledge and personal involvement influence the effects of trivial attributes on product preferences and product attitudes.

The relationship to professionals has proved to be a helping factor for personswith severe mental illness, but it is also a relationship characterised by anunbalanced power relation. The aim of this study was to compile and analyze theknowledge of what persons with severe mental illness themselves consider to behelping in the relationship to professionals, and to specifically analyse this from apower perspective. The analysis was conducted using Foucault?s ideas of powerand knowledge, and an empowerment perspective. The method used was anarrative review.

The aim of this paper is to define the perceived consumer values that physical record stores create in order to compete with other distribution technologies. A qualitative method has been used, based on interviews with managers of three records stores in Stockholm. Interviews with their customers have been conducted also. The content has been analyzed with passable theories and the two sources have been compared when adequate.The conclusion of the study is that the physical record stores create many different consumer values, and that many of these are hard to transfer to other distribution technologies. One of the most important values for the consumer is that the personnel have a broad knowledge about music.

Term: Spring term 2007Study objects: Reitan Servicehandel AB, Vi-butikerna, ICA Sverige ABPurpose: The purpose of this study is to analyse how procurement is used as a strategy to achieve better competitive strength, within the retail food industry.Theoretical: The theoretical chapter illustrates different procurement organisations, multiple and single sourcing, brand equity, consumer behaviour and involvement, Efficient Consumer Response including supply chain and category management and finally Demand Chain Management.Method: For the case studies, three food retail companies have been interviewed: Reitan Servicehandel AB, Vi-butikerna and ICA AB. To illustrate how consumer behaviour influences retail food market, several secondary consumer research studies have been analysed.Conclusions: The results indicate that the procurement organisation can achieve a better competitive strength by a centralised organisation, which make it possible to improve conditions of terms when ordering higher purchase volumes. The sourcing strategies can improve a company?s power within the supply chain. All companies within the study had a very good knowledge about consumer behaviour.

Consumer involvement in the product development process, co-creation, is being practiced by numerous companies. Previous research has investigated how consumer participation in co-creation affects consumer attitude. However, little is known about how co-creation affects the attitudes of the observervers of co-creation. The effect of observed co-creation on consumer attitude should be important when deciding whether to apply co-creation or not, as the observing consumers make up a larger part of the consumer collective than the participating consumers do. The paper at hand aims to investigate how observed co-creation affects consumer attitude and purchase intentions.

The process of gift-giving is something that occurs all around the world, and most people are both givers and receivers of gifts. While receiving a gift is often associated with joyous feelings, purchasing and giving a gift may not generate the same feelings. The worries of giving a gift may include anguish of finding the right gift for the right person, and not to mention it shall be appropriate given the situation. This paper aims to describe consumer attitudes in various gift-giving occasions. To give another perspective the paper also discusses and describes the term of self-gifting, when the giver and receiver is the same person - you.

Voluntary organisations provided the first consumer guidance in Sweden. The government'sinterest in the question started during the second world war and has ever since increased.Since the 1970's the local authorities, with support from the community, have played animportant roll in consumer policy work. Due to the economic recession of recent years theappropriation to consumer guidance work has been cut down. The work has been rationalisedand libraries have more frequently been used to spread consumer information.In Stockholm the municipal has been responsible for local consumer information since the1940's. Co-operation with the library of Stockholm has occurred in different forms.

During the latest 50 years, the Swedish porcelain tableware industry has gone from being rather successful to experience significant problems. Our empirical study attributes these problems to underlying changes in consumer buying behaviour, whereas current generation theory supports our findings. The younger generation has significantly different preferences compared to older generations, with less focus on quality and more focus on variability, and there is reason to believe that these findings also are applicable to other consumer purchases. The successful porcelain companies of tomorrow will be the ones that continuously can adapt to these and further changes in consumer buying behaviour..

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of consumer generated advertising as a marketing tool to encourage online word of mouth. Subsequently, the researchers aim to examine if there are certain design factors in consumer generated advertising that influence the effectiveness of consumer generated advertising in encouraging online word of mouth. The study conducts a multiple case study of several consumer generated advertising campaigns. It consists of in-depth studies of these cases in combination with quantitative analyses of the encouraged word of mouth. The different cases are examined on several design factors that could possible increase the volume of encouraged word of mouth..

Breaking through the clutter and getting consumers? attention is a constant battle for marketers. Could consumer magazines be the solution to the problem? It is not a new marketing method but consumer magazines do not look like traditional marketing and they offer consumers value. Since these are qualities that could increase consumers? will to take part of commercial messages, it might be a method that deserves more attention.

It is important to Ockelbogårdar to have knowledge about different needs by the segments on a market, while they can bring a product into line with consumer needs by marketing. To survey the needs of consumers, demographic segmentation could be in use. It is about to survey the most importent factors or advantages the consumers have in their living environment.The purpose of the essay is to investigate how Ockelbogårdar could make their marketing better against several target groups, in the existing building population, by distribute the consumers into segments. On the basis of the investigation and the segments that will introduces, Ockelbogårdar can offer the consumer a living which fits the indivdual consumer.A poll have been done by the conusmers of Ockelbogårdar. The poll have been delivered by post and a quantity data about the needs of the consumer have been evaluated.

There are many eco-brands on food products. It can be confusing for the consumer to know which one to trust or choose and since July 2012, there is an EU law and a mandatory EU organic label that must be displayed on all food products marketed as organic, eco or bio.Organic brands from a consumer perspective have previously been studied in England. This is a similar study in the form of focus groups, to explore and examine how consumers perceive and trust organic brand or labels in Sweden. It also explores which knowledge consumers have regarding why a product has an organic brand and what it means.The study shows that consumers perceive organic brands by brand recognition rather than knowledge regarding what each label means. It also shows that the consumer is confused by and skeptical to the wide range of markings and symbols on organic food products.

The research done in the field of product completeness/incompleteness is limited. The lack of research causes a knowledge gap in the retailing industry, concerning the actual effects on consumer choice, as well as on the overall store evaluation. This report tests the current theories of the subject, and also further aim to explore the effects of completeness/incompleteness on consumer's product choice. The results display an inconsistent effect on consumer's product choice when the completeness/incompleteness in a grocery store is tested. Some products benefit by being incomplete, while others show no such effect.

Packaging has had little impact in marketing literature. Research has focused on a single transaction approach. Lately researchers are looking at packages as a tool for brand building purposes. Thus, the focus is moving towards a multiple transaction approach, where packages can affect the consumer also after the purchase. For a range of goods extrinsic cues has been shown to have stronger effect on consumers' evaluation than intrinsic ones.

A purchase decision can be seen as a multifaceted context that raises many unanswered questions. Understanding the consumer's evaluation of alternatives is complex and should be studied at a deeper rather than wider scale. There is a problem for retailers to understand how the consumer manages a purchase decision in a retail setting with durables goods that generates a higher effort. The aim is to describe the decision rules used by the consumer and how they are expressed in this context. A better understanding of which ones they use and how they are conveyed will help retailers to create effective marketing solutions that generate positive outcomes as increased profitability and customer satisfaction.