<p>Dagens företag, vars utbud alltmer karaktäriseras av tjänster, måste lära sig att anpassa sig till denna nya kundorienterade värld. Idag har kunderna stort utbud av varor och tjänster vilket innebär att företagen måste anstränga sig extra hårt för att ha nöjda och lojala kunder. Att ha nöjda kunder innebär inte automatiskt att dessa kunder är lojala. Kundlojalitet är viktigt för att företaget ska fungera på lång sikt. Syftet med uppsatsen är att se vilka slutsatser som kan dras om kundlojaliteten hos Bergslagens Sparbanks privatkunder i relation till hur nöjda de är. Vi vill även se hur vi kan utläsa den sanna kundlojaliteten hos Bergslagens Sparbanks privatkunder. Genom postenkäter och intervjuer sammanvävda med ett teoretiskt efterforskningsarbete har resultaten kommit fram. Ett abduktivt arbetssätt tillsammans med en kombinerad kvantitativ och kvalitativ undersökningsmetod har möjliggjort för författarna att uppnå det utforskande syfte uppsatsen utgått ifrån. Bergslagens Sparbanks privatkunder är i allmänhet nöjda med sin bank. Dock har det framkommit att det finns saker som banken kan förbättra.  Vi har dessutom sett mönster som visar på att det finnas både sann och falsk lojalitet bland bankens privatkunder. Åtskilliga kunder i Bergslagens Sparbank har haft banken sedan lång tid tillbaka, de flesta i elva år eller längre. Många har dessutom uppgett att familjen alltid har haft samma bank vilket innebär att ”traditionen” förts vidare till yngre generationer. Detta är ett tecken som visar på hur kunderna blir lojala. Vi visar att det finns ett samband mellan kunders attityder om Bergslagens Sparbank och deras kundlojalitet.</p> / <p>Today's businesses, whose range of product and services is increasingly being characterized by services, must learn to adapt to this new customer-driven world. Today, customers have wide selection of goods and services which means that companies need to strive extra hard to have satisfied and loyal customers. To have satisfied customers does not automatically mean that these customers are loyal. Customer loyalty is important for the company to work in the long run. The purpose with this research project is to see what conclusions can be drawn on the customer loyalty of Bergslagens Sparbank private customers, in relation to how satisfied they are. We also want to see how we can find the true customer loyalty of Bergslagens Sparbank private customers. By mail questionnaires and interviews interwoven with theoretical research the results have emerged. An abductive reasoning technique used with a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods has enabled the authors to achieve the exploratory purpose of this research project. Bergslagens Sparbank’s private customers are overall satisfied with their bank. However, it has become clear that there are things that the bank can improve. We have also seen the patterns that indicate that there is both true and false loyalty amongst the bank’s private customers. Many of the customers in Bergslagens Sparbank have been with the bank for a long time, most of them for eleven years or longer. Several of them have also stated that the family has always had the same bank, which means that it's a tradition that has passed on to younger generations. This is one of the signs that show how customers are becoming loyal. We show that customer attitudes towards Bergslagens Sparbank are affecting customer loyalty.</p>

<p>Recent research on links between dimensions of consumer-based brand equity, as well as links to consumer involvement, has shown that it is a significant predictor of purchase behavior.</p><p>The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the affect brands have on consumer involvement. We attempt to investigate how consumer-based brand equity affects the level of consumer involvement.</p><p>Based on consumer behavior theory and previous research of these areas, gathered primary data (an empirical investigation of students’ attitudes) is analyzed to gain an understanding of how the aforementioned concepts relate to each other.</p><p>The findings indicate that there are correlations between consumer-based brand equity and consumer involvement, and that there is more to investigate in this area. Suggestions for further research include a similar study with more measured variables for each dimension, and analyzing them separately instead of creating indexes.</p><p>The results of this dissertation may be useful for marketers and manufacturers of the specific products investigated, as well as products of similar nature, in order to apply focus to the attributes which consumers value most.</p>

<p>I denna studie har en jämförande studie mellan privat och offentlig sektor genomförts gällande arbetstagarens inställning till sin arbetsgivare. Studien bygger på en hypotetiskt deduktiv metod i vilken vi försöker verifiera vår hypotes. Hypotesen är att arbetstagare inom privat sektor känner större tillit och lojalitet till sin arbetsgivare. Vidare avser vi att studera hur arbetstagarnas inställning till sin arbetsgivare påverkas av de grundläggande tillits- och lojalitetsfaktorerna. De faktorer som ingår i undersökningen är ledningens hänsyn, kompetens, ärlighet och öppenhet, belöningssystem samt ledningens förmåga att inte svika sina arbetstagare. Hypotesen prövas sedan mot de analyser som görs utifrån empiriska data. I undersökningen ingick 168 respondenter från ett flertal olika arbetsplatser. Av dessa var 76 stycken anställda inom privat sektor och 92 stycken inom offentlig sektor.</p><p>Resultatet visar att arbetstagare inom den privata sektorn har en mer positiv inställning till att ställa upp för sin arbetsgivare. Att de offentligt anställda har en mer negativ inställning är en tendens som samtliga redovisade påståenden verifierar. Gällande delen av analysen som specifikt behandlar de tillits- och lojalitetsgrundande faktorerna visar resultatet att arbetstagare inom privat sektor i större utsträckning anser att deras arbetsgivare hanterar faktorerna på ett bra sätt. Ett resultat av detta är arbetstagarnas beteende, vilket skiljer sig åt i de två sektorerna. De privat anställda ställer i större grad upp för sin arbetsgivare exempelvis när det gäller övertidsarbete samt att de ger en mer positiv bild av sin arbetsgivare till personer utanför organisationen. Sammanfattningsvis konstaterar vi att vår hypotes verifieras, det vill säga arbetstagarna inom den privata sektor har en mer lojal inställning till sin arbetsgivare än vad arbetstagarna inom den offentliga sektorn har.</p>

<p><strong>Background:</strong> The customer relationship is becoming more important for companies within the Swedish furniture design industry due to competition for market shares. The market is getting more crammed while the interest for furniture design amongst people is increasing, therefore furniture design companies need to find effective ways to attract loyal customers. Research has been made to show the importance of collaboration between companies and this is something that can increase the market share for the involved partners and reach a greater customer base. To maintain these customers it is essential to establish the right communication at the right time. Another area that will most likely increase and that companies can gain by communicating to potential customers is Green thinking. By marketing a company’s environmental work it can develop a stronger relationship with its customers. These areas might have significance in maintaining loyal customers in the future of the furniture design industry.</p><p><strong>Research Question: </strong><em>What challenges does a Swedish furniture design company face when trying to gain or maintain customers?</em></p><p> </p><p><strong>Objective:</strong> The objective with this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding and analyse the<strong> </strong>issues and challenges new or already established Swedish furniture design companies face related to gaining or maintaining their customers. From the emerging responses about the relating areas of marketing and communication, collaboration, the green perspective and the conditions on the Swedish market, we aim to conduct thorough interviews with furniture design companies on the Swedish market. From the complied and analysed answers we intend to connect the challenges to the chosen theories to understand the importance of customer loyalty and the importance of it for companies in this industry.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Method: </strong>In this thesis the research strategy used will be of qualitative nature. The research design will take the form of a comparative study where we will investigate 4 companies and analyse their perspective on the areas that we aim to investigate. Thorough interviews with the chosen companies will be carried out in order to grasp the interviewees’ perspective on the subject rather than our own.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Conclusions:</strong> The findings of our research shows that smaller enterprises might struggle harder than bigger enterprises due to lack of resources. The lack of resources can negatively affect a company’s communication and marketing channels such as their environmental friendly work. Since expensive certificate that proves for eco-friendly products and services could be hard to obtain. The well established companies within this industry do not seem to adapt quickly to modern communication tools such as blogs or other social medias. This can be explained by the company culture and old heritage within the companies. Companies within this industry seem to lack of a clear strategy or well formed plan of how to reach and maintain customers. Therefore companies could benefit by having a clear strategy towards receiving loyal customers since it would clearly give them an advantage in this competitive market according to our findings. There also seem to be a lack of collaboration between companies which could also help companies to gain market shares and reach more customers. The furniture design industry is a competitive market and to endure the market conditions a focus on customer relationship and customer loyalty might be the best solution.</p><p> </p>

<p>ABSTRACT</p><p>Title: Loyalty Club. An Online Brand Relations Management Project</p><p>Amount of pages: 46 (61 including abstract, references and annexes)</p><p>Author: Michaela Ristiniemi</p><p>Tutor: Peder Hård af Segerstad</p><p>Course: Media- and communication D</p><p>Period: Spring 2007</p><p>University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University</p><p>Object: To research how an interactive relation online could be created between a brand such as Matrix and their customers, on the Swedish market.</p><p>Method: Qualitative interview</p><p>Material: Interviews with Matrix product manager and hairdressers</p><p>Main results: A relation online works the same way that a relation does offline; that even if the Internet as medium works fast and effectively, the relation is built over time. It is a communication process which requires much attention, where it is the consumer that to a large extent runs the relations company. This sort of relation can be very valuable for the hairdressers since it can save time and trouble where it is needed and develop them as professionals, and for the brand it can give loyal customers when they themselves become loyal to the customer. The online space, or “loyalty club”, should be simple and contain only information that the hairdressers are interested in, and what that is, is found through the dialogue with them. This is a new development and it meets skepticism as does most of the new occurrences, but much points to that it is the future of communication and more so for the generation that was brought up with the Internet and thus interacts with it naturally. The core question of In ernet is that it is used to organize timespace, with the freedom to act independently.</p><p>Key notions: Communication, time-space, interactivity, dialogue, relationships and loyalty.</p>

This study focuses on the variability of Canadian's value added meat purchase patterns by animal species, by level of processing, by branding and by grocery store chains. The results highlight that meat price, advertising and household socio-demographic characteristics and regional segments are strongly related to meat demand. The findings also indicate that there is no one correct pattern of meat product development across animal products from different species. In addition grocery store meat purchase exhibits little store loyalty most households purchase meat at more than one store chain regularly. The implications of the study suggest the importance of meat marketing segmentation by socioeconomic and household demographic factors in the development of marketing programs and product promotion for the food industry in general and meat industry to expand sales by targeting marketing strategies. Public health implications include the fact that habit persistence is important and likely an impediment to behaviour changes. / Agricultural and Resource Economics

<p>Att ha en fungerande kommunikation mellan kund och bolag är viktigt för att en verksamhet ska kunna fungera. Genom kommunikation byggs även lojalitet där kunderna återkommer i framtiden och blir därigenom mer lönsamma för ett bolag. De förändringar inom IT som ägt rum i samhället har förändrat den kommunikation som finns mellan kund och bolag, inte minst inom banksektorn där kunder numera kan utföra nästintill alla ärenden online. Då den personliga relationen mellan personal och kund minskar är det svårt att upprätthålla nivån av lojala kunder. De flesta större aktörer inom bank- och försäkringsbranschen har, för att skapa lojala kunder, i olika utsträckning infört så kallade helkundskoncept där målet är att få en kund att samla alla sina tjänster i samma bolag.</p><p>De två övergripande frågorna som behandlas i denna uppsats är dels hur arbetet med helkundskoncept har förändrats i och med ökat IT-användande och dels om helkundskonceptet kan bidra till att öka kundernas lojalitet gentemot det undersökta bolaget och dess varumärke.</p><p>Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka hur den ökade användandet av IT påverkat det valda företaget samt hur arbete med helkundskonceptet utvecklats över tid och vad det har inneburit för såväl kunder som företag.</p><p>Den teoretiska bakgrunden behandlar ämnen som varumärkens funktioner, marknads- och kundkommunikation, återkoppling från kunder samt lojalitetsbegreppet. Undersökningen gjordes som en fallstudie av ett bolag som verkar inom områdena bank, försäkring, pension och fastighetsförmedling. Data samlades in dels genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med ett antal ledande befattningshavare och dels genom en marknadsundersökning gjord av företaget PFM Reserch.</p><p>Resultaten visar att det blivit svårare att nå och kommunicera med kunderna efter den ökning av digital kommunikation som ägt rum. Detta beror till stor del på att fler ärenden uträttas online vilket gör att de personliga relationerna blir lidande och att lojaliteten minskar. Helkundskoncept är ett sätt att motverka den minskande lojaliteten genom att det blir för arbetsamt för kunden att byta bolag när den väl samlat allt hos en aktör. Kunden får även lägre priser när den endast använder sig av en leverantör vilket tillsammans med den enkelhet som kan upplevas när allt är samlat på samma ställe talar för att kunder ska samla alla sina tjänster hos samma bolag. För bolagets del har det visat sig att helkunder stannar längre och är mer lojala, de har färre skador än andra kunder samt att de över lag har en större tolerans mot bolaget vid missnöje.</p> / <p>It is important that communication between a customer and a company works properly. Loyalty is in many ways based on the communication and the bonds that exits between a customer and the personnel of a company. IT has made it possible to execute many seines online which also have affected the communication and customer loyalty. One possibility to keep the customers loyal is to apply the total customer concept which means that the customer gather all his services to only one company in order to receive more beneficial offerings. In this study I have investigated how IT has affected a bank- and insurance company and if the total customer concept is approved to bring more loyalty to the company and the trademark. The result shows that it is harder to get in touch with the customer today than before and that customers is less loyal than before the IT revolution. The total customer concept is one possibility to gain more loyal customer who also becomes more profitable to the company.</p>

The issue of customer loyalty is a main concern for grocery retailers. Retailers need to know how loyal customers are to their grocery stores; if some customers are more loyal than others; and, why that would be so. Is customer loyalty due only to how well a store manages to satisfy its customers, or are consumers inherently loyal to a greater or lesser degree? At the root of this issue is the basic question of what "store loyalty" implies. Although the concept "loyalty" is widely used within marketing, there is no consistent interpretation of the term. Rather, "loyalty" is used for describing related, but different, phenomena, and thus a choice has to be made of which of these phenomena to cover in a specific study. In grocery shopping, households have been shown to use several stores; hence a question of great consequence for retailers is to understand how and why households divide their purchases across stores. To contribute to the understanding of this phenomenon, this thesis focuses on the degree of behavioral loyalty and its causes. The thesis is based on an empirical study of household grocery shopping that uses a purchase diary, a questionnaire, and in-depth interviews as data collection methods. One of the main findings of the research is that the degree of behavioral loyalty is affected by shoppers' evaluations of stores, that is, a factor a store manager can influence, but also by shopper characteristics such as the degree of price orientation and interest in personal contact with store personnel. An extension of the findings from the quantitative part of the study is provided by the in-depth interviews that explore how households manage the entire task of grocery shopping. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk., 1999

Background: The customer relationship is becoming more important for companies within the Swedish furniture design industry due to competition for market shares. The market is getting more crammed while the interest for furniture design amongst people is increasing, therefore furniture design companies need to find effective ways to attract loyal customers. Research has been made to show the importance of collaboration between companies and this is something that can increase the market share for the involved partners and reach a greater customer base. To maintain these customers it is essential to establish the right communication at the right time. Another area that will most likely increase and that companies can gain by communicating to potential customers is Green thinking. By marketing a company’s environmental work it can develop a stronger relationship with its customers. These areas might have significance in maintaining loyal customers in the future of the furniture design industry. Research Question: What challenges does a Swedish furniture design company face when trying to gain or maintain customers?   Objective: The objective with this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding and analyse the issues and challenges new or already established Swedish furniture design companies face related to gaining or maintaining their customers. From the emerging responses about the relating areas of marketing and communication, collaboration, the green perspective and the conditions on the Swedish market, we aim to conduct thorough interviews with furniture design companies on the Swedish market. From the complied and analysed answers we intend to connect the challenges to the chosen theories to understand the importance of customer loyalty and the importance of it for companies in this industry.   Method: In this thesis the research strategy used will be of qualitative nature. The research design will take the form of a comparative study where we will investigate 4 companies and analyse their perspective on the areas that we aim to investigate. Thorough interviews with the chosen companies will be carried out in order to grasp the interviewees’ perspective on the subject rather than our own.   Conclusions: The findings of our research shows that smaller enterprises might struggle harder than bigger enterprises due to lack of resources. The lack of resources can negatively affect a company’s communication and marketing channels such as their environmental friendly work. Since expensive certificate that proves for eco-friendly products and services could be hard to obtain. The well established companies within this industry do not seem to adapt quickly to modern communication tools such as blogs or other social medias. This can be explained by the company culture and old heritage within the companies. Companies within this industry seem to lack of a clear strategy or well formed plan of how to reach and maintain customers. Therefore companies could benefit by having a clear strategy towards receiving loyal customers since it would clearly give them an advantage in this competitive market according to our findings. There also seem to be a lack of collaboration between companies which could also help companies to gain market shares and reach more customers. The furniture design industry is a competitive market and to endure the market conditions a focus on customer relationship and customer loyalty might be the best solution.

Vår sociologiska studie är baserad på intervjuer och en enkätundersökning. Vårt syfte är att öka allmänhetens förståelse för arbetsförmedlares yrkessituation. Vi intervjuade både arbetsförmedlare och arbetssökande med utgångspunkt att undersöka hur relationen dem emellan påverkas av lagar och regler. Vi har använt oss av kvalitativ metod då det är en förutsättning för att besvara vår problemformulering. Vi har även ett kvantitativt inslag i form av enkäter för att få bredd och generaliserbarhet.   Vi har analyserat vårt resultat utifrån sociologiska teorier. Vårt resultat, som presenteras i analysen, visar att de flesta arbetsförmedlare känner sig begränsade på grund av det strikta regelverket då de inte kan göra allt de skulle önska för sin kund. Den största begränsningen upplevs dock vara tidsbrist, vilket vi kopplar tillbaka till hur lagarna styr verksamheten. Även allmänhetens negativa syn kopplar vi tillbaka till de lagar och regler som omgärdar Arbetsförmedlingens verksamhet. / Our sociological study is based on interviews and a questionnaire survey. Our aim is to increase public understanding of employment counselor’s situation. We interviewed both employment counselor and unemployed people to explore how the relationship is influenced by laws and regulations. We have used a qualitative method because it is a prerequisite for answering our problem formulation. We also have a quantitative element in the form of surveys to get width and generalizability.   We have analyzed our results based on sociological theories. Our result, which we present in the analysis, shows that most employment counselor feel limited because of the strict rules that prohibit them to do everything they wish for their customers. The main limitation however, is perceived to be the lack of time, which we link back to the laws governing the organization. The public’s negative view we also connect back to the laws and regulations surrounding the employment service organization.