The most vital for a business is to understand how to please and satisfy its customers in order to make them loyal to the company. Companies weapon for competition in the retail business is defined through the retail mix. The retailer however often have limited resources whereas they have to prioritize between the factors included in the retail mix. The main purpose for this paper is to investigate what kind of internal connections that may occur between the factors in the retail mix, with focus on the job satisfaction as a catalyst on driving the values of the parameters included in the retail mix, where the factor service is the starting shot for the others included..

Goal: To describe which evaluation method is used by Swedish retailers to assess a potential retail location and to describe to what extent the retail brand effects this strategic decision. Design: Analysis of ten interviews with companies within five retail sectors in Sweden. Main study: Indication of what methods are used to evaluate a location and how a company's retail brand affects the decision. Results: Retailers use a mix of theoretical methods to evaluate the location attributes and possible profit. Most common among mixtures was an application of the analog method, residual method or the checklist method in combination with a financial assessment.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how salesperson control can be exercised in a retail store environment. A case study has been performed on a Swedish fashion company emphasizing the relationship between the company?s upper level management and their retail store operations in order to describe, analyze and classify the prevailing management control mechanisms. The paper presents an agency theoretical approach to the relationship applying behavior- and outcome based control theory, performance measurement theory and incentives theory in order to give a comprehensive image of the control system. The main finding is that the company?s management control system as applied to the sales force in its retail stores can be categorized as mainly behavior-based despite several explicit outcome-based features..

Outsourcing is today a common phenomenon among businesses in most industries. The term outsourcing means transferring the responsibility of performing a certain function to an external supplier. There are usually certain methods to investigate the effects and the outcome of a function that is performed by the company itself. When this function is performed by an external party, the complexity of the function will increase.This leads us to our purpose: Based on different theories clarify how a company ensures a desired effect out of marketing when this function is outsourced to a certain retail- and advertising agency.In this essay we have defined us to study one of Sweden´s leading mobile operators who have outsourced their sales management to a retail- and advertising agency. To get an additional point of view, we have included one of the mobile operator´s intermediates, which is a selling agent whose sales function is led by the retail- and advertising agency..

Studiens syfte är att utveckla storbankernas Retail Banking verksamheter genom att studera detaljhandeln, de nya bankaktörerna och storbankerna. Det empiriska materialet baseras på åtta semistrukturerade intervjuer med chefer inom bank- och detaljhandelsbranschen Studien konstaterar att storbankerna måste utveckla sina Retail Banking verksamheter för att bemöta konkurrensen från andra bankaktörer. Genom förbättrade CRM-system, bättre nyttjande av distributionskanaler och mer försäljningsinriktade organisationer är storbankerna redo för framtidens Retail Banking..

This thesis attempts to clarify the impact of cultural differenceson customer expectations of service level. Furthermore, wewant to determine whether or not expectations of service differenough to be quantifiable between two countries, Sweden andthe US, mostly regarded as similar in business practices. The conclusion showed that higher ratings on four of Hofstede?s five cultural indexes were associated with higher customer service expectations overall, and in all four SERVQUAL dimensions. This research contributes to retail internationalization and customer expectations theory.

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.

This essay highlights the Swedish retail companies? engagement in ethics and environment issues as a part of the business concept. The Customer is today more aware about what is going on in the world than ever before. Two of the main reasons are the Internet and the globalization. In relation to the customer being more aware about the situation in the world today, the demand for products which have been produced in consideration of ethical and environmental values has increased.

Celebrity endorsement has been a popular advertising strategy all over the world for the past few years. The purpose of this thesis was to find out why companies choose celebrity endorsement as advertising strategy and how the celebrity endorsement process appeared in companies. We choose to interview two companies in the retail business and the interviews were conducted with the marketing managers for each company. This study provided that companies utilize celebrity endorsement to increase their sales, and it is important that the whole company is in the celebrity endorsement process discussion before the company choose which celebrity they will work with. .

The purpose of this thesis was to illuminate and create a deeper understanding of how small niche retail businesses within the apparel industry position themselves. We aimed to investi-gate how these small niche retail businesses create their position and how they communicate these positions to their target market. To be able to investigate the positioning-process within these small niche retail businesses a case study was conducted based on interviews with two respondents from two different companies and observations of these businesses physical envi-ronments. The study indicated that the small niche retail businesses mainly make use of emo-tional aspects and their assortment range to create their position. To communicate their posi-tion to their target market they mainly use their in-store personal selling and their assortment range..

The aim of this thesis is that through a case study, analyze and evaluate whether the customer is high - or low involved and connect with the choice of marketing strategy using a celebrity.This thesis is about how a celebrity can be used in marketing to affect a company's customers. The essay is facing the fashion retail industry, where three companies, Lindex, H&M and MQ, has been studied and compared. Lindex is using celebritiy Emma Wiklund by an internal collaboration within the enterprise. MQ is using various celebrities in various campaigns throughout the year and use them in external advertising campaigns. H&M is using interactive marketing with different celebrities in the form of, for example, guest collections for the company.

Title: Culture?s Affect on the Determinants of Customer Satisfaction in Retailing: The Case of a European Retailer in the U.S. and China Date of the Seminar: 29th of May 2007 Course: BUS 809 Master thesis in International Marketing Authors: Lisa Bustamante Chesley Norman Charlotte Valind Advisors: Johan Anselmsson Cecilia Cassinger Keywords: International Retailing, Determinants of Customer Satisfaction, Culture, United States, China Thesis purpose: Our study aims to identify the determinants of customer satisfaction of two national cultures in a global retail setting, in order to clarify what role culture has, if any, in customers? satisfaction with an international retailer. Further, this will uncover if a Western perspective of determinants of satisfaction is a universal means of capturing what satisfies customers across cultures in a retail setting.

The Swedish food retail market contains of three major actors, ICA, KF and Axfood, all in all dominating 75 percent of the total market shares. The scant number of retailing actors indicates that the Swedish food retail market is a highly concentrated oligopoly, which as a fact has given rise to definite discussions and argumentations concerning the market situation. But is the food retail market imperfect and how do we reach a workable competition? Economic theory does not provide any clear answer on these questions, but is rather divided into two fundamentally different approaches to define competition: the static and the dynamic perspective on competition. In an attempt to examine the competition on local Swedish retail markets, the purpose of this study is to carry out an econometric model estimating the situation.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka huruvida vår motivationsmodell som bygger på Herzbergs tvåfaktorteori, stöds och används av ledare inom organisationen Retail House för att motivera sina anställda på distans.Teoriavsnitten ledarskap på distans och motivation samt vår motivationsmodell ligger till grund för empiri, analys och slutsats. Studien har utförts genom kvalitativa intervjuer med tre företagsrepresentanter från Retail House. Uppsatsen finner att Retail House ledning motiverar sin personal i stor utsträckning enligt vår motivationsmodell. Dock har undersökningen visat att företagets speciella sätt att arbeta försvårar motivationsarbetet för ledningen, snarare än distansen till personalen. Det framkom att de faktorer som är bäst lämpade som motivationsverktyg för Retail House är feedback och lön..

Shoplifting is a serious problem due to the fact that about 2 % of a retail store's turnaround dis-appears annually. This paper discusses the problem with shoplifting where a closed retail display of glass can prevent this kind of misbehavior. Hitherto the scientific research regarding how consumers react to a closed retail display is non-existing. With this in mind we want to investigate and enlighten the phenomenon regarding consumer behavior and product appreciation. The study is carried out at a retailer in the beauty industry in Sweden both in stores where the selection of perfumes have been displayed behind glass and in stores in which they have been displayed with open access.