Bakgrund och problem: Kundlönsamhetsberäkningar görs för att företag ska få kunskap om lönsamheten per kund. Informationen utgör sedan beslutsunderlag för styrning mot ökad total kundlönsamhet. För många företag finns det dock faktorer som inte är möjliga eller svåra att inkludera i en kundlönsamhetsberäkning samtidigt som de påverkar den totala kundlönsamheten. Företagen behöver därmed komplettera beräkningarna med dessa för att få en mer rättvisande kundlönsamhetsanalys som möjliggör styrning utifrån företagets helhetsperspektiv. Svårigheten för företagen är därför hur dessa faktorer ska hanteras och värderas samt användas i företagets styrning. Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att skapa förståelse för hur företag genomför en kundlönsamhetsanalys inkluderande de faktorer som används som komplement till de traditionella kundlönsamhetsberäkningarna samt hur företagen styr utifrån dessa. Metod: För denna studie har en kvalitativ forskningsstrategi tillämpats där en fallstudie har använts. För intervjuerna har en semistrukturerad intervju med öppna frågor använts där en intervjuguide har legat till grund för strukturen på intervjun. Slutsats: Studiens resultat visar att företag anpassar och väljer kalkylmetod för kundlönsamhetsberäkning utifrån verksamheten. De värderar sedan de kompletterande faktorerna till stor del genom kunskap och erfarenhet. Kundlönsamhetsanalyserna används som beslutsunderlag för styrande åtgärder främst avseende förbättring av företagets processer, prioritering av resurser samt påverkan av kundernas beteenden i syfte att uppnå optimal kundlönsamhet för företaget. / Background and problem: Customer profitability calculations are needed for companies to obtain knowledge of the profitability of their customers. The information then constitutes the basis for decision-making for the managing to increase total customer profitability. For many companies there exists some factors which are impossible or difficult to include within a customer profitability calculation, however these factors affect the total customer profitability. Therefore companies need to complement the calculations with these to receive a more accurate customer profitability analysis which makes managing towards the company’s comprehensive view possible. The difficultness for the companies is how these factors should be handled, valued and used within the companies managing. Purpose: The purpose with this paper is to create understanding about how companies fulfill a customer profitability analysis that concludes factors which are used as a compliment for the traditional customer profitability calculations. The study also includes how companies manage their organizations based on the customer profitability analysis. Method: A qualitative study with semi structured interview has been used. An interview guide has been the basis for the structure of the interview. Conclusion: When analyzing the empirical material, we found that companies adjust and choose the calculation method for customer profitability calculations based on how the business is structured. They value the complementary factors mostly through knowledge and experience. The customer profitability analysis are used as a basis for decisions regarding managing actions regarding improvements of the companies processes, priorities of resources and the influence by the customers behavior for the purpose to achieve an optimal customer profitability for the companies.

The wood products industry is influenced heavily by family ownership along the entire value chain. Although family ownership affects each link of the wood products value chain, there has been little research into the importance of products originating from family forestland. Specific attributes of products, such as origin or environmental certification, have been considered part of a business���s marketing strategies. This study evaluates the relevance of family forest wood product origin and environmental certification for Oregon consumers who participated in this study and Oregon specifiers and industrial customers. Data was collected from consumers, and specifiers and industrial customers in Oregon. Conjoint analysis was employed with softwood lumber as the product and price, wood origin, and environmental certification as the features. Results from this analysis for consumers show that wood origin is the most important factor followed by price and environmental certification. However, for specifiers and industrial customers, price is the most important factor followed by environmental certification and wood origin. "Family" is seen as the most preferred wood origin level for both buyer groups in the study. / Graduation date: 2013

Titel: Hur påverkar kontantlösa banker relationen till kunderna? Nivå: C-uppsats i ämnet företagsekonomi Författare: Sofia Ågren och Nanette Brorén Handledare: Per-Arne Wikström Datum: Juni 2013   Syfte: Syftet är att belysa hur förändringen med bankernas kontanthantering i Sverige påverkar relationen med deras kunder med anseende på kundernas syn till de nya bankkanalerna.   Metod: Denna uppsats har genomförts med en kvalitativ metodansats, detta på grund av att vi ville få en djupare förklaring och förståelse till det fenomen som vi studerade. Vi valde att utföra sju intervjuer med personer på sju olika bankkontor. För att samla information till empirin använde vi oss i denna studie av semi-strukturerade intervjuer, där frågorna som vi ställde till respondenterna var ganska öppna. Detta valde vi eftersom att vi ville att respondenterna skulle få mer rum för att fritt kunna framföra det som de ville ha sagt, att vi då inte skulle styra dem särskilt mycket i deras svar. Men samtidigt ville vi ha stöd och hjälp av riktlinjerna i en intervjuguide, detta för att vara säkra på att få med det som vi ville ta upp i denna studie.   Resultat & slutsats: Bankkontoren som vi besökte har undersökt vad kunderna vill ha genom olika kundundersökningar. Via dessa undersökningar har de sedan kunnat se ett mönster från kunderna, bland annat att efterfrågan på kontanter minskar och efterfrågan på personlig rådgivning ökar. Vilket gör att bankerna har anpassat sig efter kundernas behov genom att ta bort kontanthanteringen över disk och frigjort tid till de privata rådgivningarna. Relationsmarknadsföringen är viktigt för att kunna bygga en långsiktig relation mellan kunden och banken, kärnan inom relationsmarknadsföringen är själva relationen. För att bevara och skapa förtroendet hos kunder är det viktigt att medarbetarna på bankkontoren lyssnar på sina kunder. Detta för att de sedan på ett bra sätt ska kunna hitta den bästa lösningen för var och en av kunderna utifrån deras behov. Bankerna som vi besökte hade tagit bort kontanthanteringen över disk och ingen av dessa banker har tappat många kunder på grund av det. Att det har gått så pass bra kan bero på att bankerna i ett tidigt stadium berättade för sina kunder att förändringen skulle ske och gav kunderna andra lösningar än kontanter.   Förslag till fortsatt forskning: I den fortsatta forskningen skulle det kunna göras en liknande studie som denna, men att den utgår från kundernas perspektiv istället. En annan intressant fortsatt forskning skulle vara att det inte bara studerade från kundernas perspektiv, utan från både kund- och bankperspektiv. Att dessa sedan kan jämföras för att undersöka om de anser att detta har påverkat relationen på olika sätt. Uppsatsens bidrag: Det bidrag som vi vill ge med denna studie är att ge en förklaring till hur en förändring i en verksamhet kan påverka dess relation med kunderna. Denna studie kan vara till nytta för olika bankkontor, där de då kan se hur andra har jobbat vid en sådan förändring och hur kunderna har reagerat.   Nyckelord: Kontantlöst samhälle, förtroende hos bank, bankernas relation till kunderna, kontanthantering, kontantlösa banker i Sverige, kundernas förtroende, förväntan, relationsmarknadsföring och kundrelationer. / Title: ”How does cashless banks affect the relationship with the customers?” Level: Final assignment for Bachelor Degree in Business Administration Author: Sofia Ågren and Nanette Brorén Supervisor: Per-Arne Wikström Date: June 2013   Aim: The purpose is to illustrate how the change in banks' cash management in Sweden affects the relationship with their customers with respect to customers’ views of the new banking channels.   Method: This paper has been carried out with a qualitative method, this because we wanted to get a deeper explanation and understanding of the phenomenon that we decides to study. We chose to perform seven interviews with persons in seven different bank offices. To collect the empirical data we used semi-structured interviews. We chose to use that kind of interview because we wanted the respondents to have more room to freely express what they wanted to say, that we would not control them as much in their response. But at the same time we wanted to have the support and help of the guidelines in an interview guide, this to be sure to get what we wanted to address in our study.   Result and Conclusions: The bank offices that we visited have checked what customers want through surveys. By these they have seen a pattern from the customers, the demand for cash has decreased and the demand for personal financial advice has increased. This means that the banks have adapted to customer needs by removing manual cash handling and freed up time to private consulting. Relationship marketing is important for building a long term relationship between the customer and the bank, the core of relationship marketing is the actual relationship. It is important that the employees at the bank offices are listening to their customers in order to maintain and create trust among them. This in order to be able to find the best solution for each customer based on their needs. The banks that we visited have removed the manual cash management and none of these banks have lost many customers. This could be due to that the banks in an early stage told their customers that the change would occur and that they gave the customers different solutions to cash. The banks made sure that the customers were informed well in advance before the change took place.   Suggestions for future research: A future research would be to undertake a similar study like this, but looking from the customer's perspective instead. Another interesting future research would be to not only study it from the customer's perspective, but from both the customers and banks perspective. This could be interesting because you then can compare these two groups to see if they feel that the change in cash handling has affected customers in different ways.   Contribution of the thesis: The paper contributes to provide an explanation of how a change in a business may affect its relationship with the customers. This study may be useful for different banks, where they then can see how others have worked with such a change and how customers have reacted.   Key words: Cashless society, confidence in the banking, banking relationship with customers, cash management, cashless bank in Sweden, customer confidence, expectation, relationship marketing and customer relationship.

Master Thesis in Marketing,SchoolofBusinessandEconomicsat Linnaeus University, spring 2012 Authors: Sophie Lindgren and Amanda Tuvhag Title: Corporate Social Responsibility – A successful business strategy or just a trend? Purpose: First of all, this thesis wants to describe managers’ expectations regarding customers’ perception about their retail stores CSR initiatives and furthermore their implemented CSR initiatives. Secondly, to describe customer awareness and engagement towards retail stores CSR initiatives. Finally, to compare the results from retail store and customers, in purpose to identify possible gaps between these two. Research questions:RQ1: What expectations regarding customers’ perception of retail stores CSR initiatives do manager of such stores have and how do they perform CSR activities? RQ2:    How aware are customer regarding retail stores CSR initiative and what level of engagement do customer have concerning retail stores CSR activities? Method:    The empirical material is based on both a quantitative and a qualitative investigation. The quantitative investigation is the main study and contains of a customer survey whereby the collected sample consist of 150 respondents. A pilot study have been conducted in order to improve the intension of the survey. Further, the qualitative investigation contains five in-depth semi-strucutred interviews with local store managers of the selected retail stores. Conclusion: Customer thinks retail stores CSR initiatives are important, but they seldom support them. Retail store expect customers to value CSR products/action low in relation to other factors, but retail store are engaging themselves in several CSR actions. Keywords:    Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), marketing strategy, business ethics, sustainability, reputation, food industry, retailers, gap-model, perception, customer, retail store industry, expectation, environmentally certified, ecological products, fair trade.

Η μελέτη είναι μια προσπάθεια ανίχνευσης της καταναλωτικής συμπεριφοράς των πελατών των Ελληνικών φαρμακείων και του βαθμού ικανοποίησης τους από τις αγορές, τις υπηρεσίες και την ατμόσφαιρα του φαρμακείου με τη χρήση ερωτηματολογίου και τη μέθοδο της βολικής δειγματοληψίας σε δείγμα εκατό ατόμων. Σημαντική παράμετρος αποτέλεσε η εμπιστοσύνη των πελατών στο φαρμακοποιό. Για την εξαγωγή συμπερασμάτων αναζητήθηκαν στατιστικά σημαντικές συσχετίσεις ανάμεσα στα δημογραφικά στοιχεία, τα καταναλωτικά πρότυπα και τις μεταβλητές ατμόσφαιρα φαρμακείου, εμπιστοσύνη στο φαρμακοποιό και ικανοποίηση από τις φαρμακευτικές υπηρεσίες. / This study is a survey of customers shopping behavior in Greek pharmacies, and their satisfaction from purchases, pharmaceutical services and store atmosphere using a questionnaire among a hundred customers sample. An important factor was trust upon the pharmacist. Conclusions made out of statistically significant correlations among demographics, consumers shopping styles and variables such as satisfaction from pharmaceutical services, trust upon the pharmacist and pharmacies atmosphere.

The aim of the thesis is to sum up the current situation of the company VOLF office supplies Co., Ltd., working on the school and office supplies market, from the perspective of marketing activities. The marketing mix has been used to evaluate marketing activities. In the final part of the thesis the obtained results are summarized and on their bases are developed concrete proposals that would improve the current situation. Among the used methods, contibuting to achievement of this aim, belong: analysis of marketing activities, evaluation of marketing mix, analysis of current customers, analysis of competitors and suppliers and the structured interviews.

This study searches for the management attributes of excellent companies in Zimbabwe in order to reveal the management practices that have made these companies successful. Seven most successful companies from among those quoted on the Zimbabwean Stock Exchange (ZSE) were selected in terms of their financial criteria and the macroeconomic criteria in their industrial categories. The research for attributes of excellence has been qualitative - consisting mainly of interviews of chief executives, departmental managers, skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled employees of the companies. The interviewees were also asked to complete two quantitative instruments: a semantic differential and an observation chart. Altogether 408 people were interviewed and given a semantic differential and an observation chart to complete. Of these, 398 responded to the semantic differential while 308 responded to the observation chart. Qualitative data for the study were content analysed and the data obtained through the quantitative instruments were analysed through the use of the Statistical Analysis Systems (SAS) at the Unisa Computer Services Centre. There was agreement in the results obtained through the use of the three different approaches of the research. The management attributes which were elicited by the study are that the Zimbabwean excellent companies : (a) have a participative style of management; (b) always engage in constant communication with all levels oftheir employees; (c) reward good work; (d) train their employees; (e) promote from within; (f) are concerned with the quality of their products and services; (g) care for customers; and (h) are involved in social responsibility. These management attributes can be applied by and could thus benefit any type of organisation, trading or non-trading, and private or public. The application of the attributes may not be limited to the enterprises in Zimbabwe - the host country in which the study was conducted - but it may also be effected in companies in other countries with a similar socioeconomic situation to Zimbabwe's. / Business Leadership / D.B.L.

In this work specifically to deal with companies MEZADO Jan Pesek and its new services offered by the individual is assisted transportation of handicapped persons.The aim of this work is to analyze the design and service for its effectiveness.I decided to conduct a survey.The questionnaire was created database. The customers suggest extending the car fleet. The key to solving this problem is to extend the portfolio of customers.Instrument to acquisition new customers is a gain promotion.I suggest introduction of new form of propagation with leaflets and already created presentation. The leaflets and presentations will be distributed free of charge in the districts that need the increase in promotion.

The general aim of my diploma thesis was to create a business concept of facilities of hunting tourism in the Pilsner region. Klatovské rybářství, a.s. was selected as a cooperative company, which deals with agricultural activities, especially fish and poultry breeding. The company operates some services of hunting tourism, but it is not the main field. The thesis will serve as a manual for "non-experts" who are interested in expanding their range of travel services. The resulting business concept will consequently be presented to the management of the company in order to demonstrate how the company can further develop. While writing this thesis I got several perspectives on the issue of hunting tourism in the area. The first view was provided by the existing clients of the company who filled in questionnaires which were designed to determine their interest in these services. In addition, three representatives were selected from age groups who were asked for ideas about how the device should look. Another view was obtained through an interview with the director of the company and the employee responsible for the current planning and management of hunting activities. Next view on the issue of hunting tourism, which should be independent, was provided by an employee of Infocentre Bor. Here it was revealed that hunting tourism is not popular with everyone and that it is a rather controversial topic. However, we can say that if done correctly and with concern for the countryside, it can bring many benefits to the given region. These include attracting visitors of other segments of the society, the development of the region, expansion of tourism services and expansion of cooperation between entrepreneurs. Last view was represented by my own experience that I gained during working participation in hunting tourism events. At the beginning of my diploma thesis I determined three working hypotheses. All available resources helped me to evaluate the present circumstances and I can confirm all three hypotheses. The general aim was to create a business concept of facilities of hunting tourism in the Pilsner region. I was able to realize the general aim thanks to the cooperation with the company and by means of utilizing all available information. Now the diploma thesis will be handed over to the management for consideration and possible implementation

This thesis is focused on evaluation of the service quality in selected retail outlets or shops. The main goal of this thesis was to evaluate the level of customer service while engaged in the transaction of selling pre-selected goods in selected retail outlets. Based on the results of this evaluation, a sub-goal of this thesis was to either validate or to disprove the given hypotheses. As an introduction I define basic terms of service quality, customer satisfaction with a service, marketing Research and mystery shopping. . After depicting the basic theoretical principles of mystery shopping, I moved on to the practical (hands-on) portion of my thesis where I evaluate retail outlets for pre-selected company. Evaluation is carried out by using mystery shopping. After conclusion of mystery shopping, the data was analyzed and synthesized, which allowed me to evaluate the results and draw appropriate conclusions, proposal and recommendation to the pre-selected company.