Since the introduction of the internet, to go on a shopping spree doesn’t require more than a computer or a smartphone. Channels of communication for companies to reach out to consumers has expanded, and personalized marketing is a fact. For physical retailers, product placement and merchandising in the department store is one way to compete against e-commerce and personalized marketing. The purpose of this study was to examine how department stores works with product placement and other means to reduce consumers buying decisions with regard to modern e-commerce and personalized marketing. With qualitative, semi-structured interviews. These where analyzed using theories built with behavioral patterns of the individual and of theories about product placement. The results showed that product placement´s main role is to keep customers in the store longer and attract customers to more purchasing decisions. E-commerce is considered according to the department stores to not pose any threat. To create added value for customers in department stores are just as important as product placement, which is the largest difference between e-commerce and department stores.

Master of Science / Department of Grain Science and Industry / Subramanyam Bhadriraju / The development, relative retention, and oviposition of the red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum (Herbst) (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae), on six different types of starches, wheat flour, and wheat flour plus yeast were investigated in the laboratory. The particle size of starch and flours were different; the mean size of 90% of particles for starches ranged from 15 μm for high amylose corn starch to 58 μm for potato, whereas that of the flour was ≤ 133 μm. Larval length, head capsule width, and weight gain of T. castaneum larvae were measured every 3 d on starches, flour, and flour plus 5% (by wt) yeast diet for 30 d at 28oC, 65% r.h., and 14:10 (L:D) photoperiod. Larvae reared on flour and flour plus yeast developed normally and showed better survival compared to those reared on starches. Larvae on the starches failed to develop beyond second, and rarely, third instars. Adults of T. castaneum did not show any preference to flour over starches in dual-choice tests in circular arenas. On average, T. castaneum laid less than 3 eggs/female over a 15-d period on starches compared to 97 and 109 eggs/female on flour and flour plus yeast diet, respectively. These studies suggest that starches are poor substrates for larval survival and development. Starches were as attractive as flour to adults; however, starches do not appear to be a suitable medium for egg-laying. Both aggregation pheromone and volatiles did not trigger oviposition behavior. Experiments by moving adults between wheat starch and wheat flour and vice versa showed that feeding on wheat flour was necessary for egg-laying, indicating the absence of essential nutrients in wheat starch. On wheat flour, feeding for 0.5 d was necessary to lay eggs. Females that were starved failed to lay eggs, reinforcing that the nutrional status of females and not males was essential for egg-laying. A minimum of 4% of wheat gluten (wheat protein) elicited egg-laying on starches, although 4-5 times fewer eggs were laid in starch gluten compared with wheat flour alone. Supplementing wheat starch with 1% cholesterol, in addition, to gluten, did not result in an increase in egg-laying by T. castaneum females. These findings suggest that starches may have potential in managing development and reproduction of T. castaneum—a pest that is common and severe in food-processing facilities. Furthermore, starches can be used as a suitable substrate for studying the nutritional ecology of T. castaneum.

This master thesis was conducted at Volvo Construction Equipment at the cabs department in Eskilstuna, Sweden. The work comprises 30 credits and was carried out by Dennis Björnberg from Mälardalen University during the fall 2015. Volvo Construction Equipment is one of the largest manufacturers of construction equipment and among their products are wheel loaders. The assignment involves an investigation and evaluation of today’s windshield and wiper system for large wheel loader which is in need of improvements as today’s solution has reliability issues. As a result the cab department wants new concepts and solution for next generation of wheel loader that considers the current solution issues. This project aims to develop new concepts which answer the research questions developed to guide the project. The executed development process consists of three phases; problem formulation, concept development and finally product development. The first phase, problem formulation involves literature studies, project definition and demand specifications to formulate and guide the project in the right direction. The second phase develops primary concepts and comparisons with competitors and other solutions in a benchmarking leading to a development of the final concept in phase three. The development process resulted in a wide concept solution consisting of a new shaped windshield, a wiper system adjusted to the new windshield and with new frameless wiper blades, a conceptual pneumatic air system to investigate if an air barrier can keep the windshield clean and a recommendation regarding hydrophobic coatings for windshield´s. The development process resulted in a concept proposing a new shaped windshield system where the side sections is curved for a smooth transition between the sections and a modified wiper system with a wider wiping angle and more square The conclusion drawn from the project it that it is possible to improve today’s solution to develop new conceptual solutions but almost all the performance originates from the windshield´s shape and curvature. The recommendations include among others to further investigate the windshield´s shape and it effects in the wiper system, develop prototypes to further investigates the efficiency of a pneumatic system in dry environments as a replacement for wiping without fluids and to watch the development of new hydrophobic materials and coatings with better durability and lifetime.

Published Article / Sustainable development is the key issue for enabling the survival of human culture. Product development is sometimes seen as conflicting with the aims of sustainable development. This comes from a twofold impact: the production of new goods exploits scarce resources, and their use creates additional resource consumption and potential disparity. However, innovation and product development are important means to fulfil the needs of present and future generations and to achieve sustainable development. In this context, we must also consider the development of service products - classical services and product - related ones creating surplus value from physical products. The contribution of product development to sustainability will depend on the way sustainability issues are integrated into the development process. An important focus is on the early phases of product development and especially on the process of requirements analysis since this integrates all sustainability role players as potential stakeholders.

The aim of this research was to determine if strategic marketing options will grow the sales of finer grade vermiculite.

Healthcare is a topic that matters since it aims to ensure better well-being for people. An important and essential part of health care is medical devices since it has the potential to increase the quality of life for people with a health problem. Among the suppliers of innovation, the medical device industry is a dynamic field providing thousands of products to the market every year with the aim to enhance people's lives. However, there are many actors that influences the medical device development such as regulations that ensures that medical devices follow a specific procedure during development, at the same time buyers and end-users need to be integrated throughout the medical device design, this results in challenges during medical device development. This thesis focuses on new product development (NPD) and investigates how projects are managed in a medical device context. Furthermore, the thesis elaborates projects of different novelty and the influence from the characteristic of complexity. This is done with a single-case study of a case company that develop and market medical devices. The empirical findings shows that the main challenges are in the area of clinical studies and product development, furthermore, managing NPD projects in a medical device context deals with specialized knowledge that is dispersed among a group of actors which can influence the development of the medical device no matter the novelty. It was found that the difference between the studied projects was minor in terms of complexity. Though, it was noticed that the project of radical novelty had more interaction with the end-user, which can relate to uncertainty in the function of the product, as a consequence from being completely new product. As a result from the findings, the implication is that the projects can not be treated and managed similarly as a result from uncertainty, thus, it depends on the integration of actors, consequently, influencing time of development and resources. This thesis contributes to the community of companies operating in a medical device context where there is minor focus on complexity in projects, it was found that it might be beneficial to make distinctions in complexity characteristics when identifying challenges and addressing NPD projects in a medical device context.

Background: To align with the new trend of using social media in the marketing mix, product placement has been adapted to social media platforms as one strategy to create attention. Especially on Instagram, product placements have gained popularity among companies. While scholars have focused on measuring the effectiveness of the strategy, suggesting that credibility is one component necessary for success, a gap in the research is illuminated when focusing on what makes a product placement on Instagram credible. Previous studies regarding credibility and its relation to traditional media have concluded that there are some factors essential in consumers’ credibility evaluation process. Since social media differs from traditional media, there was a need to investigate the applicability of credibility to the social media platform Instagram. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis was to examine key factors of product placement on Instagram that influence credibility. Method: To meet the purpose of this thesis a study with a mixed method research design was conducted. The qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews with the intention to discover how consumers evaluate credibility. The scales and items developed from the findings of the qualitative study were tested using a questionnaire to identify which factors that have the most influence on consumers’ credibility assessment. Conclusions: The overall findings indicate that consumers evaluate credibility based upon source, message and receiver characteristics. The empirical evidence suggests that the Expertise of influencer, Professionalism of picture, Trustworthiness of influencer, Connection to influencer and Causes of irritation are the factors that have the most influence on consumers’ credibility assessment of product placement on Instagram. The findings further implies that it is not only the factor itself that influence, credibility can additionally be transferred from one factor to another.

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

The existing United Nations System of National Accounting (IJNSNA) provides useful indicators of economic performance in terms of traditional macroeconomic variables such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), investment, savings and depreciation of capital. However, they fail to account for the depletion and degradation of environmental capital and hence give a misleading picture of sustainable development. The need for a broader assessment of growth and welfare in terms of modified accounts has therefore become a pressing concern. The main objective of this research is to modify the current Egyptian System of National Accounting (SNA) to include environmental factors, in order to provide a basis for calculating Egyptian sustainable income. Firstly, an environmental accounting approach and model is developed for Egypt to value the depletion and degradation of natural resources caused by economic activities. Secondly, valued environmental costs are incorporated into the Egyptian System of National Accounts to build up the Egyptian Environmental Macro and Sectoral Accounting, which will be helpful in decision-making, planning and policy analysis. The main findings of this research are as follows. Firstly, the environmentally adjusted macro accounting indicators portray a totally different picture of the growth and development of the Egyptian economy compared to the one resulting from conventional SNA. In addition, they indicate that Egypt has experienced an unsustainable path in at least half of the ten-year study period. Secondly, sectoral concerns, which involve measurement of sectoral productivity and performance, indicate that both the performance and the productivity of tradable sectors decrease when their depletion and degradation costs are incorporated. On the other hand, the opposite result is found for the service sectors, which may indicate a potential leading role for the service sectors in the Egyptian economy. Finally, the results indicate that Egypt's natural wealth, which lies in its people, land, the Nile river, oil and gas, and the surrounding seas, has been depleted by many economic "development' programmes that have been carried out to date.

This dissertation contains two essays on the aggressive behavior of corporations in product market competition. In the first essay, I investigate how market structure can impact a firm's risk of facing predation by rivals, and hence, its financial policy decisions. Using a simple model, I demonstrate that a firm faces a greater predation threat when it meets the same competitor in many markets, as this competitor is able to internalize more of the benefit, degrading the firm's ability to compete in the future through aggressive actions today. I then test the predictions of the model using 2003-2011 panel data on store location across retail store chains in the US. I find that firms tend to expand more aggressively in markets shared with a competitor experiencing a substantial increase in leverage, or a decline in a credit rating, when they face that competitor in more of the other markets. The expansion relationship was found to be stronger in data from the 2008-2009 financial crisis, a period when difficulty in rolling over or obtaining new debt made it especially hard for weak firms to absorb losses. I also show that a firm facing the same competitors in many markets choose lower levels of leverage and that it decreases that leverage when a merger in the industry increases the amount of competitive overlap it has with other firms. These results suggest that firms are aware of the predation risk due to a competitive overlap and select financial policies to minimize this risk. In the second essay, I study the impact of internally generated funds on product market competition. More specifically, I investigate the idea that firms compete aggressively when their competitors face cash flow shortfalls. Testing this idea is challenging because competitor's cash flow changes are potentially endogenous with respect to firm's behavior. I address this problem in three ways. First, I investigate firm's reaction in a given market when its competitors face cash flow shortfalls outside of that market; this analysis is conducted using store location data on retail store chains. Second, I focus on the 2008-2009 financial crisis period in which retail store chains were hit by a negative demand shock which was hardly expected ex ante. Finally, I use a shock to local economic conditions which varies across markets and the different distributions of store locations across firms as instruments for the changes in competitors' cash flows. I find that a firm expands more in a given market in which it competes with rivals which face a more negative cash flow shortfall in the other markets. This relation is stronger when the competitors were highly leveraged before the crisis. Finally, I illustrate evidence that a firm responds more aggressively to competitor's cash flow shortfalls if it competes with that competitor in many of the same markets; this result is consistent with the prediction of the model in Chapter 1. These essays contribute to the literature by adding new evidence on the predatory behavior of corporations in product market competition. / text