Problemformuleringen i denna uppsats har framställts på uppdrag av ICA Maxi Karlstad. De upplever att deras kunder inte är medvetna om att ICA Maxi erbjuder ett bageri i sin butik, där sex bagare bakar allt bröd från grunden. Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att undersöka och beskriva vilka faktorer som påverkar de förväntningar som en kund har på en produkt samt att ge förslag på hur man kan förändra dessa. I uppsatsen återfinns dels en enkätundersökning där 105 personer fick besvara 18 frågor om deras inköpsvanor när det gäller bröd samt frågor om ICA Maxis bageri. Utöver detta så genomfördes även en mindre intervjustudie där 21 personer fick ge mer uttömmande svar om deras inköpsvanor och förutfattade meningar när det gäller bröd. Uppsatsen innehåller således både en kvalitativ och en kvantitativ undersökning. Resultatet av undersökningarna visar att de flesta tror att brödet som bakas i bageriet kommer från halvfabrikat som värms upp i butiken, så kallad bake-off. Det är dock även en stor mängd respondenter som inte har sett någon marknadsföring av bageriet och som inte är medvetna om att bageriet existerar. Slutligen ger uppsatsen en rad förslag för framtiden om hur ICA Maxi kan förändra sin marknadsföring så att fler kunder blir medvetna om att bageriet finns. Några av dessa förslag är: -          Bygga om bageriet så att kunderna får handla det nybakade brödet över disk som på ett traditionellt bageri. -          Flytta delar av bageriet till Fast Food caféet. -          Fortsätt arbeta med att synliggöra bagarna i butiken. -          Fortsätt arbeta med att erbjuda provsmakningar i butiken, komplettera dessa med recept som kan delas ut till kunderna.

Stora köpcentrum i utkanter av städer drar till sig innerstadens kunder då de erbjuder lägre priser. Detta ökar pressen på mindre, centralt belägna butiker då de riskerar att konkurreras ut och därmed hotas även utvecklingen av städers centrum. Syftet med denna uppsats är att utröna hur väl ICA Torgkassen, en mindre centralt belägen daglivarubutik i Uppsala, lyckats med implementeringen av sin unika differentieringsstrategi, och om strategin påverkar kundunderlaget. I det teoretiska avsnittet behandlas olika konkurrensstrategier och teorier för marknadsföring. Vi har valt att kombinera McCarthys modell ”Marknadsföringsmixen” med Philip Kotlers modell ”Differentieringens styrka” i en ny modell för analys. Det empiriska avsnittet behandlar data vi samlat in genom en kvalitativ intervju med en av ICA Torgkassens ägare, en personalenkät och en kvantitativ kundenkät. ICA Torgkassen har gjort det medvetna valet att differentiera sig genom miljöprofilering. Undersökningsresultaten visar att endast 18 procent av butikens kunder hört talas om miljöprofileringen, detta tyder på att differentieringen kan bli starkare. Svagheterna har i denna undersökning visat sig, till största delen, bero på bristande marknadsföring samt dålig utbildning av personalen.

This study concerns retail brands in the food retail industry and focuses on premium products. The research is investigating how ICA can best use premium products to increase their profitability. The study is thus based on their brand ICA Selection and investigates three sub purposes concerning the customers’ perception of the products, their purchase behavior and their willingness to pay a price premium.   To investigate, theory concerning brand resources was utilized, involving both brand equity and brand management. To measure brand equity, the authors adapted a customer mind set and utilized Aaker’s framework and the specific industry developments made by Anselmsson, Johansson and Persson. Accordingly, this theory is based on five brand equity attributes: perceived quality, brand associations, loyalty, awareness and uniqueness. These attributes were thereafter developed to explain food premium products. The brand management theory used was Kapferer’s brand management strategies, in order to assess ICA’s strategic advantages and disadvantages.   The research was quantitative and the authors utilized a visit self completion questionnaire, in order to describe and investigate the purpose. The questionnaire was handed out according to a systematic sampling method, to customers at the 4 different concept ICA stores in Umeå.   Based on the findings, the authors concluded that in order to increase the profitability of ICAs food premium products, the following strategies should be considered. First, the customer awareness of ICA Selection must be increased and the customers must be educated about the benefits of the product. Moreover, the premium brand should aim to provide value for money, high intrinsic product quality (i.e. taste, ingredients etc) and an improved store image. These factors will help defend the price premium.  Furthermore, to attract buyers, the brand has to have a high enough brand status and a sufficiently attractive and functional packaging. This research has therefore concluded how to efficiently allocate the resources and obtain an increased customer satisfaction. This may in turn increase the profitability of ICA Selection. However, it is of course important to also take into account the external environment, such as the recession and competition, when deciding on the brand strategy.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) ämnar hjälpa företag att förstå kunders beteenden för att möjliggöra förvärvandet av nya kunder, underhålla befintliga relationer samt skapa lojalitet. Förståelsen för hur företag bör hantera kundrelationer har fått stor uppmärksamhet under de senaste åren vilket har utmynnat i relationsmarknadsföring på one-to-one nivå. ICA är det enda företaget inom den svenska dagligvaruhandeln som erbjuder sina kunder skräddarsydda, individuellt anpassade erbjudanden. Denna uppsats syftar således till att undersöka hur ICA använder CRM i ett försök att skapa mer lönsamma kundrelationer genom one-to-one marknadsföring. Studien genomfördes huvudsakligen genom intervjuer med två nyckelpersoner inom CRM på ICA. Undersökningen har visat att ICA har en genomarbetad och integrerad CRM-strategi, dock är vissa delar mer utvecklade än andra. ICA har insett vikten av att använda kundinformation för att skapa nöjda kunder men skulle kunna utveckla användandet ytterligare. Exempelvis skulle analyser av kundgrupper med specifika behov, kommunikation via fler digitala medier, ett ökat samarbete med leverantörerna samt ett mer proaktivt agerande troligtvis förbättra CRM-strategin och leda till mer lönsamma kundrelationer.

Uppsatsen behandlar ICA:s egna märkesvaror (EMV) och dess senaste satsning på lokalproducerat: ”Smak på lokalt”. I uppsatsen undersöks hur ICA kan förstärka sitt varumärke genom just EMV och lokalproducerat. Kvalitativa intervjuer har genomförts med olika personer inom ICA-koncernen, dessa personer har valts ut utifrån deras expertisområden; EMV, Sortiment & Inköp, Kategori och ”Smak på lokalt”. Resultatet visar på att ICA arbetar aktivt med att stärka lojaliteten till företaget, dess varumärke samt att öka kundlojaliteten. Detta sker genom kontinuerlig lansering av nya produkter, unika produktlinjer samt satsningen ”Smak på lokalt” som har visat sig vara mycket framgångsrik. ICA:s senaste EMV satsning; ICA I Love Eco har även den fått mycket positiv respons. ICA är noggranna med kvalitetssäkring av deras produkter och kräver att producenterna skall använda sig av ICA, godkänd standard. ICA försöker ständigt att förbättra kvalitén och priset på sina produkter för att öka kundlojaliteten till EMV. Satsningen på ”Smak på lokalt” har flera utgångspunkter. Det handlar om att man möter olika behov hos konsumenten, bra erbjudanden som kan stärka varumärket.

ICA is the largest general dealer in the Swedish market as well as the largest supplier to the independent ICA-dealers. The principal and one of the biggest stakeholders of this thesis is the department Supply Chain Development who is responsible for the development of ICA’s Supply Chain. The purpose of this study is to examine how ICA’s sales are affected by weather and to make recommendations on how ICA should proceed with its work regarding this issue. By leveraging their forecasts by including weather, ICA hopes that their logistical metrics amount of spoilage, service levels and number of inventory days will improve. This thesis describes how ICA is working with weather currently, and furthermore it discusses the existing literature within this area. Extensive statistical surveys have been conducted in order to identify the products that are affected by weather, and to examine how they are affected by different weather variables. Finally, the thesis gives recommendations to ICA on how they can improve their forecasting by taking this study’s results into account. Presently ICA has no consistent approach when it comes to considering weather’s impact on sales. Each individual product planner uses his own experience and gut feeling and there is no central guidance or other quantitative information there to help them. This thesis is organised around two major statistical studies. First, a correlation study examines the correlation between sales and deviation from mean temperature. The weather parameter was selected following recommendations from earlier studies and from SMHI - the national weather institute in Sweden. The study was conducted on ICA’s entire assortment and identified which items that were affected by weather. These turned out to be about a hundred in number and were affected mainly during the summer; however a few items were also affected in the winter. Most of the affected items were rather logical regarding weather’s effects on sales and have also been pointed out by planners as products that are likely to be affected by weather. Following that, several regression analyses were conducted on the selected weather affected assortment. The regression analyses were conducted with various combinations of one or more weather parameters as explanatory variables. Surprisingly, in most cases the deviation from mean temperature alone was the parameter that best explained the variance in sales figures. The result or output of this thesis is a value for the expected change in sales for a selected assortment, given a change in deviation from mean temperature. The recommendations given at the end of this thesis explains how ICA in a simple and cost effective way could implement the study's results in their daily work. The proposal is to divide the work by what should be done centrally by the forecasting department, and by what should be done individually by each planner. The forecasting department should regularly collect weather forecasts over different time periods, calculate the deviation from mean temperature and distribute it to the supply planner. After that, it is up to the supply planners on how to best take advantage of this information by taking into account other unique factors affecting each category, such as campaigns, holidays and daily indexes that in many cases have more effect on sales than the weather.

Hearing aid devices are used to help people with hearing impairment. The number of people that requires hearingaid devices are possibly constant over the years, however the number of people that now have access to hearing aiddevices increasing rapidly. The hearing aid devices must be small, consume very little power, and be fairly accurate.Even though it is normally more important for the user that hearing impairment look good (are discrete). Once thehearing aid device prescribed to the user, she/he needs to train and adjust the device to compensate for the individualimpairment.We are within the framework of this project researching on hearing aid devices that can be trained by the hearingimpaired person her-/himself. This project is about finding suitable noise cancellation algorithm for the hearing-aiddevice. We consider several types of algorithms like, microphone array signal processing, Independent ComponentAnalysis (ICA) based on double microphone called Blind Source Separation (BSS) and DRNPE algorithm.We run this current and most sophisticated and robust algorithms in certain noise backgrounds like Cocktail noise,street, public places, train, babble situations to test the efficiency. The BSS algorithm was well in some situation andgave average results in some situations. Where one microphone gave steady results in all situations. The output isgood enough to listen targeted audio.The functionality and performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated with different non-stationary noisebackgrounds. From the performance results it can be concluded that, by using the proposed algorithm we are able toreduce the noise to certain level. SNR, system delay, minimum error and audio perception are the vital parametersconsidered to evaluate the performance of algorithms. Based on these parameters an algorithm is suggested forheairng-aid. / Hearing-Aid

Problem – The essential problem being analyzed in the research paper is the methods of improving supply chain flexibility under certain circumstances and constrains that are imposed on the company. Purpose - The paper aims at providing suggestions on improvement of supply chain flexibility for ICA AB (Clothing) based on comparative analysis on sub-case study of ZARA. The major part of analysis is based on investigation of the relationship between supply chain characteristics and firm performance of both companies that is crucial for finding out areas for improvements for ICA supply chain. Design, Methodology and Approach – The research is based on qualitative analytical approach using two basic case studies on Northern Europe’s leading retailer ICA AB and the largest international fashion retailers ZARA. The main idea of comparing these two retailers is that they have different supply chains in terms of its set up, responsiveness, postponement and level of flexibility. The main method of the research is comparative analysis of two supply chains based on literature review, personal interviews with companies’ representatives (Director of Logistics and Supply Chain Department, Supply Chain Manager – Operating and Category Manager Non-Food) and provided internal materials of the company. Frame of references – Based on various sources of literature concerning supply chain flexibility, enablers for flexibility management in global supply chain, value chain flexibility, manufacturing flexibility, comparison between flexibility and adaptability in supply chain and flexibility as a determinant of supplier selection. We, as researches, also included in the analysis how flexibility relates to company’s performance in the supply chain context. Research questions and Limitations – In order to solve the problem in the research there are certain questions to be answered and supported in empirical study. The first question is how the supply chain looks like for the same products (textile products) in two different companies in terms of its flexibility. The second question is connected to enablers of the supply chain flexibility improvement in specific business environment, namely retailing, after comparative analysis of the aforementioned supply chains. The research provides limited number of suggestions in certain supply chain aspects for ICA AB. As concrete case studies were analyzed, wider and broader range of solutions of increasing supply chain flexibility could not be provided. It is necessary to take into account the fact that the focus company has its own position in the market, strategy, mission, financial strength and available resources. Conclusion - The research paper includes the analytical review of theoretical base on supply chain flexibility and focuses on further understanding of it in textile industry. The paper provides suggestions on improvement of supply chain flexibility for fundamental case study of ICA AB (Clothing). These suggestions are given for improving the flexibility of supply chain in four areas after conducting the comparative analysis based on Model of Supply Chain characteristics and Firm Performance. The analysis was grounded on model modified by authors. While conducting the analysis the authors realized the necessity of dividing Firm Performance into two main types, such as Financial Performance and Non-Financial Performance. This can be considered as authors’ academic contribution and also has its practical implications. The comparative analysis was grounded on the main case of ICA AB and sub-case study of ZARA.

In this thesis, the effect of registration process is evaluated as well as several methods proposed for 3D face recognition. Input faces are in point cloud form and have noises due to the nature of scanner technologies. These inputs are noise filtered and smoothed before registration step. In order to register the faces an average face model is obtained from all the images in the database. All the faces are registered to the average model and stored to the database. Registration is performed by using a rigid registration technique called ICP (Iterative Closest Point), probably the most popular technique for registering two 3D shapes. Furthermore some variants of ICP are implemented and they are evaluated in terms of accuracy, time and number of iterations needed for convergence. At the recognition step, several recognition methods, namely Eigenface, Fisherface, NMF (Nonnegative Matrix Factorization) and ICA (Independent Component Analysis) are tested on registered and non-registered faces and the performances are evaluated.

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