Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att utreda om revisionskunder upplever att revisionen skapar ett värde och vad som utgör detta eventuella värde. Vi vill också utreda om det finns skillnader mellan ett företags upplevda värde beroende på ägarförhållanden, revisionsbolag och kontakt med revisorn. Metod: Vi har gjort en kvantitativ undersökning genom att skicka ut en webbenkät till 540 aktiebolag. Den kvantitativa undersökningen kompletterades med semistrukturerade intervjuer med ekonomichefen på två företag i Kristianstad för att få djupare förståelse för aktiebolagens uppfattning av revision som värdeskapande. Empiri: Webbenkäten besvarades av 139 företag. Flertalet av respondenterna anser att revisionen ger ett ekonomiskt värde, många har uppgett att de anser att revisionen fungerar som en kvalitetsstämpel och att reviderad finansiell information är mer kvalitativ än ej reviderad finansiell information. Resultaten pekar även på att relationen med revisorn är betydande för företagens uppfattning om revisionens värde. Vidare påverkas upplevt värde av valet av revisionsbolag samt om företagen anser att de anlitat det bästa revisionsbolaget. Slutsatser: Vi har funnit att revisionen har ett värde för merparten av aktiebolagen då de anser att fördelen med revisionen överstiger kostnaden.  Revisionens värde består av kvalitetssäkrad information, företagen är nöjda med det revisionsbolag som anlitats samt har en god relation till revisorn. Företagen upplever högre värde om de anlitar en big 4 samt om de är nöjda med sin revisor och sitt revisionsbolag. / Purpose: The purpose with this thesis is to study if audit customers perceive value adding and what they believe is causing audit value. We also investigate if there are any differences in perceived audit value depending on owner-structure, audit firm and contact with the auditor.  Methodology: We preformed a quantitative research by sending a web survey to 540 limited and public companies. Furthermore we did a qualitative study through semi-structured interviews with the financial managers of two companies in Kristianstad.    Empirical foundations:    The web survey was answered by 139 companies. Most respondents reckon audit gives an economical value, many indicate the audit to be a quality assurance and that audited financial information have higher quality than not audited information. The results indicate that the relation with the auditor is important for the companies’ opinion about audit value. Further, their view on whether they have the best audit firm or not are depending for how they perceive audit value, so does the choice of audit firm. Conclusions: Our findings shows that the audit is valuable for most companies, this because the benefits from the audit exceeds the costs. The value consists from quality secured information, satisfaction with the audit company and the good relation with the auditor. The companies experience higher audit value if they have a big 4 and if they are satisfied with their auditor and audit firm. / VG

Bygg- och fastighetssektorn står för närmare 40 procent av Sveriges energianvändning och miljöpåverkan. Därför har större fokus på energieffektiva och miljöcertifierade byggnader ökat det senaste decenniet inom branschen. För att fortsätta utvecklingen framåt kom EU med direktiv för medlemsländerna, där mål sattes för åren 2020 och 2050 gällande energianvändningen.Syftet med arbetet är att ta reda på vilken påverkan olika faktorer har när kunderna gör sina val av bostäder i framtiden. Faktorer som arbetet främst fokuserar på är energi, miljö och utformning.Arbetet bygger till stor del på intervjuer från mäklare samt olika aktörer från byggbran-schen. Mäklarnas syn på vilka faktorer som eftersöks på marknaden ansågs som ett bra tillvägagångsätt eftersom det är de som jobbar med kunderna. Intervjuer gjordes även med aktörer för att jämföra om deras syn överensstämde med mäklarnas.Efterfrågan på energieffektiva och miljöcertifierade bostäder har idag ingen stor inver-kan för kundens val av bostad. Dock tyder det på att medvetenheten och efterfrågan från kunderna kommer öka i framtiden.En viktig del i framtidens bostäder blir även utformningen, att projekt anpassas efter målgrupp och att undersökningar för vilka ytor som skapar värde för kunderna görs. En flexiblare planlösning där kunderna med enkla medel kan påverka utformningen av sina bostäder är en betydande faktor som kommer vara avgörande för framtidens bostäder.

The increasing globalisation of the market is followed by increased competition between organisations. Therefore it becomes more important to create products with high customer value. To be able to create customer value, deep understanding of the customers’ needs must be obtained by employees, shared between them and transformed into products. Further consequences of globalisation are increasing differences between customers’ needs, which results in demand for customisable and flexible products.The purpose of this study was to analyse how organisations can create more customer value through increased knowledge integration. The focus was on how knowledge that already resides within a globally dispersed organisation can be integrated during the product development process.This study showed that customer value is created throughout the product development process by integrating the knowledge held by R&D and internal stakeholders. Different types of value are created at different phases in the product development process. One important finding is that different parts of the augmented value are created throughout the entire product development process. Since employees obtain different knowledge depending on which customer they interact with, it is important to utilise knowledge from a large number of employees with different roles and in different countries. Hence, the significance of knowledge integration must be disseminated and understood across the organisation. After completing the product development process additional customer value is created by the internal stakeholders’ who sell and implement the product, but it is during the product development process that the basis for their value creation is established.Knowledge needs to be integrated in a formalised, repeatable way, so that the R&D department can ensure that the right product is developed at the right time. Integration means that the tacit knowledge that resides within one employee is codified into an explicit form that can be exploited by more employees. Therefore, four steps must be performed and repeated iteratively to create and spread knowledge throughout the organisation. The first step includes communication by exchanging tacit knowledge. The second step entails documenting the knowledge, and the third step involves combining the knowledge residing in the organisations into one common knowledge system. The final step includes distributing the knowledge so that it recievess wide attention within the organisation. Several factors that have a negative impact on these four steps, and knowledge integration, need to be countered somehow. However, it was found that there are several mechanisms that facilitate knowledge integration, and most often the presence of several mechanisms at the same time had a better effect.

The goal of this research was to explore what the value drivers are in SAP Enterprise Mobility. On the basis of existing literature a model was created that predicts customer value in this particular industry. Furthermore, with this research it was tried to find out whether there is a connection between large firms and investment plans in enterprise mobility, as well as for what purpose companies want to invest in enterprise mobility. Because it is most interesting what brings value to decision makers regarding investing in SAP Enterprise Mobility, the target population consisted of IT decision makers. They were asked to complete a questionnaire which measures their attitude towards product quality, service quality, relationship quality, the fairness of the product price, the fairness of the service price, and the customer value in SAP Enterprise Mobility as a whole. During an intensive month of data collection 32 IT decision makers cooperated to execute this research.  The data suggests that quality of SAP products, such as the mobile applications and the mobile platform, is a value driver, as well as a fair price for consultancy services. Interestingly, despite the theoretical background the data does not indicate that the price of SAP products, the quality of the service that the consultancy provider delivers, and the quality of the relationship with the consultancy provider are significant value drivers. The data does confirm that large companies (with more than 1000 ERP users) have a stronger tendency to invest in enterprise mobility in 2014 than smaller companies. Moreover, there is a lot of variety in the purposes for investing in SAP Enterprise Mobility. This implies that SAP Enterprise Mobility is a very versatile concept and is used for many different and individual purposes.

This thesis is aimed at finding out how integration of IT systems creates value for companies and is conducted as a qualitative case study, where six companies are interviewed about their integration solutions. The interviewees were five CIOs and one Managing Director. Four of the companies interviewed have genuine Application Integration solutions, where a middleware platform is the hub of the integration system, while the remaining two used solutions based around a system of point-to-point integrations. The value of an integration solution will be considered a combination of the benefits an integration solution provides, openness aspects, and the price models used to pay for the system. Value is defined as what the company gains, in monetary terms, in exchange for what it pays for an offering (Anderson, Kumar, & Narus, 2007). This definition further defines the attractiveness of an offering as the value minus the price. When discussing the value of an IT system, it is important to consider the difference between the potential value, which is the maximum the system can deliver with an ideal environment and usage, and the realised value, which is some fraction of the potential value that a company actually gains, of the system (Davern & Kauffman, 2000; Smith & Nagle, 2005). Affecting the realisation of potential value are certain factors, called conversion contingencies, which are things like preparation of implementation projects or efforts at using all aspects of a system. Benefits are analysed according to a framework that divides IT systems benefits into five categories: operational, managerial, strategic, IT infrastructure, and organisational benefits (Shang & Seddon, 2000). These categories are focused around, respectively, productivity gains, enhanced planning capabilities, new strategic capabilities, better IT administration, and process improvements. We conclude that most companies gain several large benefits in the operational and managerial types, while the other three types have fewer reported benefits. We conclude that there seems to be quite a lot of unrealised potential value in the integration solutions, if the view of the potential of integration from the technological side is used. We also conclude that companies in certain environments and with more complex organisational structures seem to have a larger value potential than others, meaning they have more to potentially gain from an integration solution. For openness, five aspects of open source software are studied: lock-in, cost, security, flexibility/modifiability, and community. These aspects are mainly derived from literature on open source. The first conclusion we make regarding openness is that most of the CIOs seems not to be fully aware of what the term truly entails. Companies’ opinions regarding open source can be seen on a range between two extremes: those who want to modify or develop software and those who only want to use standard systems. The former category has more to gain from the aspects of cost and modifiability than the latter, but both categories can gain from the lock-in, security, and community aspects. The combination of factors that creates the price of an offering can be described as a price model. To study the value of price models of integration solutions, the SBIFT model (Iveroth, et al., 2013) is used, where the price model is divided into five dimensions, scope, base, influence, formula and temporal rights. None of the interviewed companies were satisfied with the alternatives for price models currently on the market. It was concluded that the dissatisfaction mostly stemmed from the facts that the companies had little opportunity to affect the price model, meaning they could not adapt it to better fit their internal conditions, the complexity of the license agreements, and that it was hard to get vendors to cite a price for a system. Price models that would be more attractive are e.g. models with a larger variable part, like transaction-based ones, or models that affect the time scale of the contract, even though no single model seemed more attractive to all companies.

The concept of customer perceived value occupies a prominent position within the strategic agenda of organisations, as firms seek to maximise the value perceived by their customers as arising from their consumption, and to equal or exceed that perceived in relation to competitor propositions. Customer value management is similarly central to the marketing discipline. However, the nature of customer value remains ambiguous and its measurement is typically flawed, due to the poor conceptual foundation upon which previous research endeavours are built. This investigation seeks to address the current poverty of insight regarding the nature and measurement of customer value. The development of a revised conceptual framework synthesises the strengths of previous value conceptualisations while addressing many of their limitations. A multi-dimensional depiction of value arising from customer experience is presented, in which value is conceptualised as arising at both first-order dimension and overall, second-order levels of abstraction. The subsequent operationalisation of this conceptual framework within a two-phase investigation combines qualitative and quantitative methodologies in a study of customer value arising from subscription TV (STV) consumption. Sixty semi-structured interviews with 103 existing STV customers give rise to a multi-dimensional model of value, in which dimensions are categorised as restorative, actualising and hedonic in type, and as arising via individual, reflected or shared modes of perception. The quantitative investigation entails two periods of data collection via questionnaires developed from the qualitative findings, and the gathering of 861 responses, also from existing STV customers. A series of scales with which to measure value dimensions is developed and an index enabling overall perceived value measurement is produced. Contributions to theory of customer value arise in the form of enhanced insights regarding its nature. At the first-order dimension level, the derived dimensions are of specific relevance to the STV industry. However, the empirically derived framework of dimension types and modes of perception has potential applicability in multiple contexts. At the more abstract, second-order level, the findings highlight that value perceptions comprise only a subset of potential dimensions. Evidence is thus presented of the need to consider value at both dimension and overall levels of perception. Contributions to knowledge regarding customer value measurement also arise, as the study produces reliable and valid scales and an index. This latter tool is novel in its formative measurement of value as a second order construct, comprising numerous first-order dimensions of value, rather than quality as incorporated in previously derived measures. This investigation also results in a contribution to theory regarding customer experience through the identification of a series of holistic, discrete, direct and indirect value-generating interactions. Contributions to practice within the STV industry arise as the findings present a solution to the immediate need for enhanced value insight. Contributions to alternative industries are methodological, as this study presents a detailed process through which robust value insight can be derived. Specific methodological recommendations arise in respect of the need for empirically grounded research, an experiential focus and a twostage quantitative methodology.

When companies go international some factors present in the host country act like forces that might drive the company to standardize or adapt its strategies. The choices between to standardize or to adapt to local needs are of a great importance, since it can have significant impact in the company’s performance in the foreign market. In this paper these forces are characterized in country specific and industry specific factors. The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of external factors in the customers’ value creation in a new foreign market, under standardization and adaptation strategies. In order to fulfill the purpose of the paper, a qualitative research was conducted using a single case study of a Swedish SME, focusing on a single product, namely machine guarding, in connection with one foreign market, Brazil. The study shows that the factors that were most influenced in the customers’ value creation were social/cultural aspects and competition, which tend to lead the company to adapt in order to fulfill local needs and to react to the competitiveness. It was also presented that economic factors and market size did not represent any influences in the standardization or adaptation strategies of the company studied. However, other external factors, as technological, political/legal and industry structure, have shown impact to some degree, whether in adaptation or standardization strategies.

This qualitative, case-based study examined how managers conceptualise customer value and translate customer learning into customer value creating processes. The study considered a sample of high and low performing firms operating in non-dynamic and dynamic market environments to investigate market and firm-level effects. It was found regardless of whether a firm operates in a non-dynamic or dynamic market environment, managers approach customer value as a time dependent and tridimensionally construct. In order to operationalise customer value, managers need to constantly consider: 1. The attributes or benefits that are embedded in or customers can associate with the firm’s products and services, 2. The consequences achieved by customers when using or being provided with the firm’s products and services, and 3. The goals and purposes which are achieved by customers after they use or received the firm’s products and services. In other words, in order to create optimal levels of customer value, managers must be able to map the configuration of activities that need to be undertaken at the firm to the configuration of commercial and assurance-based benefits customers want to have delivered to them through the firm’s products and services at different points in time. They must then be able to map these activities and benefits to the combination of resources that can realise them. This includes the combination of dynamic capabilities which the firm uses to develop products and services that can help customers cope with change and have their idiosyncratic problems addressed. However, it was found that firms that operate in dynamic market environments tend to invest in and develop more structured and ordered approaches to customer learning than the firms that operate in non-dynamic market environments. They also rely more on bottom-up/top down decision-making processes to develop the firm’s customer value delivery strategy than firms that operate in non-dynamic market environments. Firms that operate in non-dynamic market environments tend to use top-down decisionmaking processes and are more likely to lever off their strategic planning processes to develop their customer value delivery strategy than firms that operate in dynamic market environments. Consistent with these findings and the RBV literature, it was found that the high performing firms were better at creating value for their target customers across three customer value dimensions. Their managers were also better at identifying when it was in everyone’s best interests to differentiate between customer groups, and integrate and link critical customer learning and decision-making processes. This includes processes that promote strategic and operational forms of customer learning, and continual customer value learning and performance tracking. In summary, the study demonstrated that heterogeneous firm performance can be explained by the way managers at different firms are able to conceptualise customer value, how they develop their customer value delivery strategies, and their differing abilities to integrate key customer value learning and decision-making processes. Moreover, it demonstrated that a firm is more likely to sustain a competitive advantage and be persistently high performing if it develops a core customer value learning and customer value delivery competency. / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, Business School, 2009

This qualitative, case-based study examined how managers conceptualise customer value and translate customer learning into customer value creating processes. The study considered a sample of high and low performing firms operating in non-dynamic and dynamic market environments to investigate market and firm-level effects. It was found regardless of whether a firm operates in a non-dynamic or dynamic market environment, managers approach customer value as a time dependent and tridimensionally construct. In order to operationalise customer value, managers need to constantly consider: 1. The attributes or benefits that are embedded in or customers can associate with the firm’s products and services, 2. The consequences achieved by customers when using or being provided with the firm’s products and services, and 3. The goals and purposes which are achieved by customers after they use or received the firm’s products and services. In other words, in order to create optimal levels of customer value, managers must be able to map the configuration of activities that need to be undertaken at the firm to the configuration of commercial and assurance-based benefits customers want to have delivered to them through the firm’s products and services at different points in time. They must then be able to map these activities and benefits to the combination of resources that can realise them. This includes the combination of dynamic capabilities which the firm uses to develop products and services that can help customers cope with change and have their idiosyncratic problems addressed. However, it was found that firms that operate in dynamic market environments tend to invest in and develop more structured and ordered approaches to customer learning than the firms that operate in non-dynamic market environments. They also rely more on bottom-up/top down decision-making processes to develop the firm’s customer value delivery strategy than firms that operate in non-dynamic market environments. Firms that operate in non-dynamic market environments tend to use top-down decisionmaking processes and are more likely to lever off their strategic planning processes to develop their customer value delivery strategy than firms that operate in dynamic market environments. Consistent with these findings and the RBV literature, it was found that the high performing firms were better at creating value for their target customers across three customer value dimensions. Their managers were also better at identifying when it was in everyone’s best interests to differentiate between customer groups, and integrate and link critical customer learning and decision-making processes. This includes processes that promote strategic and operational forms of customer learning, and continual customer value learning and performance tracking. In summary, the study demonstrated that heterogeneous firm performance can be explained by the way managers at different firms are able to conceptualise customer value, how they develop their customer value delivery strategies, and their differing abilities to integrate key customer value learning and decision-making processes. Moreover, it demonstrated that a firm is more likely to sustain a competitive advantage and be persistently high performing if it develops a core customer value learning and customer value delivery competency. / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, Business School, 2009

Background: Even though the fashion industry has grown to become one of the most digitized and consumed industries in the world, it seems to be an issue for physical fashion companies to break through within ecommerce. This is due to the lack of ability for physical companies to adapt to the digital development and the changing customer behavior prevailing on the internet. E-commerce has gone from selling goods and comparing prices online, to provide valuecreating experiences for customers. As a result, the competition has drastically increased, which makes the customer able to easily move and choose between a variety of e-commerce platforms. As an increased understanding of customer experience in e-commerce can provide profit-sharing competitive advantages, it is important for physical fashion companies to take customer preferences into account. Purpose: The aim of this study is to generate an understanding of valuecreating activities in e-commerce and what customers value on ecommerce platforms. Methodology: This thesis is based on a qualitative research strategy with an abductive research approach. The empirical material has been collected by means of semi-structured interviews and observations with seven respondents in the ages between 19 and 40 years. Conclusion: Based on the results of the study, it is necessary for fashion companies to maintain an utilitarian and hedonic approach to generate value-creating activities. The conclusions indicate that the utilitarian activities should be designed in a standardized manner, while the hedonic activities rather should keep an unique and distinctive approach.