The Swedish sports retail industry has experienced extensive growth during the last decade, and this has attracted new entrants to the market, both start-ups and international followers. This has inevitably put more pressure on incumbents, which are now confronted with major challenges as how to retain their customers and market shares. Customer loyalty has been proved to be an important factor for customer retention and proposed to constitute inertia of switching behavior. In light of this problematization, the purpose of this study is to describe the underlying factors of loyalty and whether purchase habits could further explain customer loyalty. The aim is also to understand the strategic implications of the factors involved.

This thesis? objective is to evaluate the recently proposed Shy (2002) approach of estimating consumer switching costs. We apply Shy?s method for estimating switching costs on the Swedish markets for bank deposits and telecommunications. The evaluation has been achieved by comparing estimated results to economic theories, related empirical studies, and our expectations.

The main purpose of this study was to investigate which enter- and exit barriers that exist on the banking market for small enterprises located within the region of Gotland. The reason was to examine and identify which barriers that could affect the mobility among small enterprise bank customers on the bank market. To identify the barriers, the study was carried out partly by a quantitative survey with 33 small business owners respondents located at three different concentrated small enterprise areas within the region of Gotland. And partly by qualitative interviews that were conducted with two employees at Länsförsäkringar Gotland Bank.The result indicated that the enter barrier mostly depended on the aspect that business owners of small enterprises believed that bank switching were complicated. The business owners did also consider bank switching as time demanding.

This thesis focuses on Chinese?Swedish code-switching of bilingual children in Sweden. The purpose is to, through a case study, study what Chinese?Swedish code-switching looks like in daily conversations between bilingual children and their parents. Three main questions are formulated from the purpose of the thesis, foucusing on the types and frequencies of code-switching, the grammar of code-switching, and the motivation of code-switching.The linguistic material comes from voice recordings of naturally occurring conversations between three children and their parents, which are transcribed afterwards.

The case study we conducted describes market for transmission of terrestrial digital TV. The purpose of this study is to find out what hinders potential entrants from entering the market as well as to discuss possible competitive strategies for potential entrants. Our conclusion is that even though the market for transmission of terrestrial digital TV can be viewed as attractive due to its fast growth, there are barriers to entry that block companies we identified as potential entrants from entering the market. The industry experience of the current market players (Teracom and Boxer) along with their knowledge of the consumers and the fact that Teracom is a multi-business company are some of the factors to be taken into consideration. Switching costs is the most important barrier to entry for the industry.

This thesis is performed in collaboration with Kraftpowercon AB in Surte, Sweden. Focus has been on to identify the powerlosses in one of Kraftpowercons halfbridge DC-DC converters. First theoretical calculations are made, the calculations is verified with measurements of six different operation modes. In a later stage, methods like soft switching and synchronous rectifying are proposed to increase the efficiency for the converter. To achieve softswitching for the halfbridge, the LLC resonant converter topologies are implemented and examined.

The purpose of this thesis is to map out and investigate how the banking sector affects a customer?s willingness to change bank, and what the switching costs are for a customer when making these changes. A case study was performed through qualitative and quantitative questionnaires and interviews. The qualitative part was carried out to create hypotheses. The hypotheses was tested in a quantitative survey to be able to either accepted or rejected these them.

The aim of this study is to investigate English teachers? communication when teaching English in grade three in Swedish schools. The investigation seeks to find out what language is, and why it is, dominant and how the proportions in the teachers? uses of English and Swedish in time are distributed. The study also describes what attitudes teachers have to the English language and if, if so how, two categories of strategies, namely body language and code switching are used.The study was performed in two steps with different methods for collection of qualitative empirical data.

China is considered as one of the world?s fastest growing economies and the future of China looks promising. Even though the Chinese market attracts many new foreign companies to enter the market there are entry barriers which companies may encounter as obstacles, which will aggravate the market entry in China. As a result companies loose business opportunities and therefore it is of great importance for Swedish companies, which are planning a Chinese market entry, to identify which entry barriers that are considered to be the most difficult obstacles to overcome.The purpose of the thesis is to examine which entry barriers that are generally considered to be the most difficult obstacles for Swedish companies to overcome when entering Chinese markets and to rank the five most difficult entry barriers to overcome.Information about these entry barriers have been gathered from Swedish companies, which have carried out successful market entries in the Chinese markets, through an e-mail questionnaire.The result generally shows that the most difficult entry barriers to overcome in China were: bureaucracy, property laws, language, cultural differences and difficulties finding local partners. The ranking of the entry barriers? result shows that bureaucracy is the most difficult obstacle to overcome, followed by cultural differences, language, relations and access to distribution channels.We conclude that companies experience different difficulties overcoming these entry barriers, which depends on the companies? size, years in China, markets and if the entry barriers were considered controllable or uncontrollable.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the accessibility in public libraries for persons with dyslexia and visually impaired persons. In order to do this, library services, information and attitudes have been studied. Data have been collected through interviews and studies of documents, in particular guidelines for library service to disabled persons. The theoretical starting point of the analysis is Professor Michael Bucklands different aspects of access to information. He discusses six types of barriers that must be overcome if access is to be achieved.

The aim of this thesis is to analyse the most common economic effects of countries pursuing trade facilitation. Trade flows are constrained by non-tariff barriers and through trade facilitation these barriers can be decreased. We will study the effects of trade facilitation from a theoretical perspective and evaluate a number of empirical studies. Several different trade barriers will be identified as well as those regions and countries that will gain the most from trade facilitation. We draw the conclusion thatlarge gains would prevail for all countries and that the consumers, businesses and the state all benefit from trade facilitation.

Rapporten beskriver ett examensarbete genomfört på uppdrag av Motoman Robotics Europe AB i Torsås. Uppdraget gick ut på att hitta en lösning för att helautomatiskt kunna växla svetspistoler med en Motoman HP-20 industrirobot. Projektet har i första hand varit ett utvecklingsarbete med fokus på en fungerande praktisk lösning. Arbetet har fortskridit i nära samarbete med och handledning av konstruktörer på företaget samt stöd från vår lärare. Resultatet har blivit en kompakt och estetiskt tilltalande konstruktion som uppfyller kraven som uppdragsgivaren ställt..

Overall aim of this master?s thesis is to describe and identify perceived barriers in Swedish businesses within solar energy field and analyze, based on four theoretical viewpoints, how these barriers can be handled. In other words how can the barriers be overcome or eliminated to better succeed in the commercialization process? The method applied is qualitative in which data has been collected through phone interviews originated from seven Cleantech businesses which operate within solar energy. Furthermore this thesis has a descriptive- and an explorative purpose.

As the usage of loyalty programs increases, this study takes a new approach to examine how these programs influence consumers? attitudes toward brands. This paper is influenced by the recent findings that question the capability to create a clear picture of the effects of loyalty programs by conducting quantitative research. This is based of the differentiation between attitudes and actions, leading to the fact that quantitative research have only captured the actions of members of loyalty programs. In contrast to that, this paper uses qualitative interviews to create a more in-depth point of view.The paper immerses the reader in the theoretical viewings of what loyalty is and how it emerges from satisfaction.

The aim of this master thesis is to gain greater knowledge of interpersonal communication. This study explores on one hand how interpersonal communication can be used as an important part of reference work in a Swedish electronic synchronous reference service, and on the other how interpersonal communication affects the relationship between user and librarian. By using communication theory and establishing a positive relational contact with the user in the electronic environment, the outcome of the reference encounter can be successful for both the librarian and the user. Furthermore, the importance of recognising relational barriers is of great relevance to the relational contact. The scope of this master thesis is to find what relational factors are used and can be used in the interaction between user and librarian.