År 2013 var den globala omsättningen för modeindustrin ca 76 tusen miljarder svenska kronor (Office of Textiles and Apparel, 2014). Bara i Sverige omsattes det 229 miljarder svenska kronor år 2012 inom denna sektor, en ökning på 11 % från föregående år (Tillväxtverket, 2014). Att modebranschen är under ständig utveckling och ökar i tillväxt kan man se då dessa siffror stiger varje år. Statistik från 2014 visar att trots denna ökning så överlever endast 47 % av nystartade modeföretag de tre första åren (Statistic Brain, 2014). Så hur lyckas man som modeföretag i early stage-fasen att med begränsade resurser stärka sitt varumärke och hålla sig kvar på marknaden? I denna studie berörs olika delar så som traditionell marknadsföring, okonventionell marknadsföring, branding samt transparens, där huvudfokus ligger på företag i early stage- fasen av sin uppstart. I uppsatsen genomfördes sju intervjuer med svenska modeföretag som är eller nyligen varit i denna fas för att få ett resultat med så hög validitet som möjligt. Brist på kunskap och kapital är inte ovanligt i denna bransch och med ökad medvetenhet hos konsumenter om de olika processerna, så kan det ibland uppstå svårigheter att försvara sig som nystartat företag. Då modebranschen är i ständig rörelse med stora förändringar från säsong till säsong måste man som nytt företag vara beredd på reformation samt att alltid tänka innovativt. Det är även viktigt att vara uppmärksam på kommande och rådande trender gällande alla aktiviteter ett företag arbetar med. Eftersom olika marknadsföringsstrategier både kan hjälpa och stjälpa ett varumärkes position på marknaden är den stora utmaningen att hitta rätt metod för just sitt företag (Easy, M. 2009). Resultatet av denna studie kommer alltså att bygga på de kvalitativa intervjuer som genomförts med de utvalda företag som har valt att medverka. De beskriver hur deras uppstart sett ut när det kommer till branding samt hur de i olika kanaler väljer att marknadsföra sig. I dessa intervjuer tittar vi även närmare på hur de lyckades starta sin verksamhet och vilka kapitalmedel de använt, deras syn på okonventionell marknadsföring samt hur marknadsföring och branding hänger samman.

The online consumer engagement is becoming very significant for companies striving to build their relationship with their consumers. Social media gives an opportunity not only to reach consumers in a passive way, but to engage them in active communication and to upload content that is consequently updated and drawing followers´ attention. Successful online consumer engagement can improve consumers’ loyalty and trust in the brand. Therefore, it is important for a company to be aware of actions that can encourage consumer engagement on social media. The goal of this study is to help marketers achieve higher consumer engagement that will consequently lead to more loyal customers.

This report documents the creation of Narco-Imágenes.com, a multi-media website featuring the fashion, iconography, and stock character images related to the “narco” or “narco-traficante” (drug trafficker) as seen in recent film and television from Colombia, Mexico, and the United States. / text

Blind Items examines the multimedia production of celebrity through the eighteenth century, especially the way in which the same texts, images, anecdotes and poses were recycled and updated to evoke a series of public notables. In the multimedia explosion accompanying the Enlightenment, cultural productions typically read as static and self-contained – from mezzotint prints, shilling pamphlets and novels to popular songs, fashions, jokes and gestures – were instead constantly repurposed to suit successions of public figures, each passing luminary determined by the present cultural moment. Surveying three arenas in which eighteenth-century celebrity was manufactured – fashion, sex, and sport – my archive demonstrates that even canonical authors and artists of the period built their careers on the passing celebrity of others, and indeed maintained the relevance of their productions by perpetually remaking and updating their celebrity referents. Blind Items contests critical assumptions regarding the singularity of celebrity, instead focusing on interchangeability, commutability and disposability. In so doing, the project troubles ongoing assumptions regarding the rise of the individual, as it explains why modern-day celebrity still retains aspects of the Enlightenment mold that first gave it shape. / text

"Performing 21st-Century Girlhood: Girls, Postfeminist Discourse, and the Disney Star Machine," explores the economic and discursive functions of contemporary girlhood within Disney Channel's talent-driven transmedia franchises. Ideological, discursive, and narrative textual analyses of Disney Channel programs and paratexts are augmented by examination of the corporate motives and dominant discourses reproduced by Disney personnel in annual reports and in popular and trade publications referencing Disney's stars and girl-driven franchises. This exploration of girls' visibility as Disney performers, media producers, and public citizens brings several disciplines into conversation with one another, addressing issues in girls' cultural studies, media industries scholarship, celebrity studies, and theories of postfeminism. I take an intersectional feminist and critical cultural studies approach to media texts and meaning-making, with particular attention to power relations and cultural contexts. The political and economic aspects of this research demand that I also work to illuminate the significance of media industry logics within the production and distribution of media for girl audiences. I argue that the Walt Disney Company has a vested interest in reproducing certain postfeminist and subjectifying discourses of girlhood, which have become integral to its success in an ever-expanding web of media and consumer markets. While Disney Channel's girl-driven franchises constitute the case studies, my analysis reaches beyond the clear focus on gender and age to theorize girls' increasing visibility in the context of contemporary consumer culture and issues of postracism, citizenship, subjectification, and agency--issues that require continued interrogation as Disney distributes and expands its franchise properties globally. / text

As the global economy has evolved, many companies have expanded their operations overseas in a constant search for potential markets in which to sell their products and services. As these companies seek to establish themselves abroad, it becomes imperative to train and to retain local employees. Despite this pressing need, Japanese companies have been widely criticized for failing to retain the services of experienced local employees. The retail industry, in particular, experiences a high degree of employee mobility and requires instant solutions for adjusting to the fast changing environment in which its firms operate. However, many companies believe in the rationality of their corporate systems without questioning suitability to the local circumstance. This thesis uses an anthropological approach to evaluate the company building process of a leading Japanese fashion enterprise (referred to by the pseudonym “Ichi”) in Hong Kong. In adopting this approach, I seek to explain the formation and expression of Ichi’s corporate ideology, and its interpretation by the firm’s employees. This analysis focuses on two primary themes: Ichi’s managerial control and the way employees attempted to satisfy company expectations in a purely superficial manner. Specifically, I adopt a participant-observation approach over fifteen months to provide a comprehensive illustration of the activity within Ichi’s Hong Kong stores. The first part of this thesis suggests that Ichi uses its corporate ideology, Ichi DNA, to control employees through its corporate system including training, ranking, remuneration, and promotion. Ichi’s implementation of its corporate system in Hong Kong seeks to apply its ideology to local employees to promote a “shared” set of values and its own institutional culture, thus unifying important principles across the company. This suggests that industrial familialism, which many scholars have identified as unique to Japanese corporate culture, only superficially illustrates the nature of Japanese companies. This thesis further demonstrates that during the implementation of Ichi’s corporate ideology, store employees individually or collectively distorted reports of their performance to attain personal career goals. This challenges the widespread perception that “harmony” is a genuine characteristic of the Japanese company. By examining the actions of different nationalities, the thesis also shows that Store Managers manage human relations within their stores primarily on the basis of different interpretations of the corporate ideology rather than their ethnic backgrounds. This similarly refutes the presumption that Japanese companies are ethnocentric in nature. Evidence from this study demonstrates that the general assumption of the efficacy of scientific management must be reexamined, as the company’s managerial practices and relationships with its employees are more heavily influenced by worker politics than the firm’s rational structure. By exploring the company building process and the effect of dynamic human relations on it, this study seeks to address the gap between corporate ideology and those practices that exemplify it, contrasting starkly with studies that claim that Japanese firms are uniquely culture- or ethnocentric. / published_or_final_version / Japanese Studies / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The online shopping industry has been growing over the past decade (Statista, 2014). Former researchers identified consumers’ utilitarian and hedonic online shopping motivations. A qualitative research was conducted to understand the utilitarian and hedonic online shopping motivations of students to shop fashion online. A phenomenological interviewing method was used to generate detailed and in-depth descriptions of the seven students’ experiences of the University of Borås. Respectively three utilitarian and four hedonic online shopping motivations emerged out of the data and could be linked the motivations identified by Vignali and Reid (2014). This paper analyses the utilitarian online shopping motivations respectively convenience, price and discounts and selections and hedonic online shopping motivations respectively enjoyment, sociability, trend discovery and exclusivity. Regarding the utilitarian online shopping motivation convenience several convenience dimensions emerged out of the collected data and matched the dimensions identified by Jiang, Yang and Jun (2013) respectively, respectively access, search, evaluation, transaction, possession and post-purchase convenience. Regarding the hedonic online shopping motivation enjoyment, several dimensions emerged out of the data and could be linked to dimensions identified by Monsuwé et al. (2004) respectively escapism, pleasure and arousal. Some of the linkages that could be found by comparing former research were also found in the data collected. Regarding the utilitarian online shopping motivations, information availability identified by Vignali and Reid (2014) could be linked to evaluation convenience and product availability identified by Vignali and Reid (2014) could be linked to access convenience. Regarding the hedonic online shopping motivations, relaxation shopping identified by (Ozen and Engizek, 2014) could be linked to escapism, social shopping (Ozen and Engizek, 2014) to sociability and idea shopping (Ozen and Engizek, 2014) to trend discovery. The analyses on the linkages further deepened the understanding of both utilitarian and hedonic motivations of students to shop fashion online.

Globalization has led to that companies’ within the textile industry, now source manufacturing overseas. Supply chains are therefore now ultimately longer, with a lot of activities and people involved. Control and implementation of strategies is now something that companies need to considerate in the supply chain, in order to reduce lead times, meet the unpredictable demand of today’s consumers and compete against other retailers. One important task in this is for retailers to have an efficient PD and sample process, due to the fact that it's in this stage where the retailers still have time to make changes and prevent problems along the supply chain. The Conceptual Framework; describes that the textile industry is not high represented in the use lean even if the strategy doesn’t need large investments in technology or training. A great part of succeeding with lean lies in the development phase, and to build a well developed and thought out system to be able to create future products. In the methodology chapter the authors have chosen to perform a case study on a branded retailer. By conducting interviews, observations and value stream mapping, the researchers can approach the study from different angles in order to double check the results, which tends to increase the validity and reliability of a study. The study's empirical materials are based on seven semi-structured interviews with employees at the case company, two observations on fittings and a Value stream mapping (VSM) of 5 different styles. This was done in order to create a deeper understanding of the sample process and the activities involved and identify non-value adding activities. Discussion; the researchers have noticed that depending on the production country and product type, the sample process looks very different. This can be a result of that people working in the process don’t have a standardized way in handling problems and instead do it in their own way. The results that case company generated could be concluded that there are several problems in sample process, which is further discussed in the analysis chapter, where there are a number of lean tools that can eliminate the identified problems. The conclusion that the researchers made is that working with Lean PD can help the company to improve their capabilities and do more with less, by sorting out the unnecessary activities with a focus on standardizing. The literature say that VSM and 5S are most common in textile companies, but the researchers have seen, through this research, that other lean tools are applicable and appropriate in the PD as well.

Fashion and the contemporary environment as a whole, is a complex environment that requires retailers and wholesalers to adapt to the changes that constantly occurring. This adaptation is in a bid to ensure that more profits than loses are realized by the company. For this reason, companies have to use various methods to determine the best ways to improve their products. Companies resolve to introduction of new product to the market but the acceptance of new products to the fashion industry is not an assured factor but rather a gamble. This is mainly because of the industry’s characteristics. The main aim of this thesis is to analyze the methods that may be used to improve the accuracy of new products. The fashion industry has characteristics that may be considered as challenges because for instance, when a product is launched, one has to determine whether it is by a reputable designer or whether it is a trend, and with the fashion industry, trends are mainly turned into such by celebrities who introduce a certain design to the world for adoption. These challenges or characteristics are carefully analyzed and examined with the necessity of the introduction of new products analyzed. Data collection, being the main backbone of this thesis and multiple-case study method, is used to answer the research question as “How can structured analogy method be used to improve the forecast accuracy for the footwear products in the fashion industry “.Samples for case study have been chosen from footwear category. Structured analogy method is used to determine the accuracy of the information gathered from literature review.

With the arrival of the Europeans, the dressed body became a discursive forum upon which to negotiate the possession of land and the legitimate right to govern in Latin America. In conquest chronicles, the Aristotelian notion that mother nature marked the bodies of those she destined for slavedom came to be applied as a primary discursive tool to justify Spain’s claim to sovereignty. Amerindian forms of dress (or lack thereof) served as visual markers of mental and moral inferiority, lack of civic principles, and an inability of indigenous peoples to self-govern. This study examines the persistence of these impressions of inferiority in modern day body politics. It also questions the applicability of concepts imported from Europe that are involved in the configuration of sovereignty as its formulation changed from something imposed by the conquest to a political principle upon which Latin America’s political communities defined themselves. I analyze the representation of politically charged bodies in four 20th century narratives that dialogue with three crucial moments in the evolution of sovereignty in Latin America (the conquest, the independence movements, and modern-day popular revolutions). Drawing from recent political theory, which views sovereignty as a continually evolving multifaceted social practice involving a wide variety of cultural and legal practices, this dissertation examines the complex processes by which bodies, both physical and symbolic, become vested with political significance. In response to Moira Gatens’s work, which argues that just as theory has abandoned neutral and abstract conceptualizations of material bodies, bodies politic should similarly be examined as historically situated practices determined by specific power relations (gender, class, race, etc.); I propose that we, scholars of Latin American Studies, must find the equivalent of what Luce Irigaray, referring to women’s bodies, calls ‘our body’s language.’ This dissertation observes that the link between sovereignty and the dressed body in Latin America begs further examination, and that we must develop a set of terms and concepts that capture the specific cultural, political and ideological circumstances behind how the body performs at a material and symbolic level in Latin America’s quest toward sovereignty. / Romance Languages and Literatures