Abstract Background: Micro-sized family businesses are facing great challenges in nowadays competitive markets. Marketing is one of the most essential fields if a company wants to suc-ceed. Traditional marketing reveal more and more disadvantages, with competition that is constantly rising, technological marketing methods that are breaking down geographical bur-dens and consumer markets that are getting more demanding. One way to step away from the traditional marketing patterns and differentiate is the implementation and usage of relation-ship marketing. As a novel strategic method, the focus shifts from the product to building a loyal customer relationship foundation. Purpose: Consequently the purpose of this thesis is to investigate which factors influence an implementation of relationship marketing in micro-size family businesses. Using a case study, we will investigate how the potential theories can be successfully translated into reality when using relationship marketing in micro family firms. For reaching this goal, we will mainly identify several influences that impact a relationship marketing implementation in micro family businesses. Method: The data used for our case study has been collected through email in-terviews. Using an abductive approach and a qualitative analysis we are investigating and analysing specific factors and their influence on relationship marketing in micro family busi-nesses, in particular Casa Canela. Although one case cannot act as a role model and offer generalisable suggestions on all micro sized family firms, it presents an interesting example of one case and we hope that the outcomes and results can offer a guideline and inspiration to other micro family businesses as well. Conclusion: All in all, this thesis suggests that relationship marketing can benefit micro-sized family businesses. Moreover, factors like the owner-managers, the location, the financial situation and long-term goals influence the implementation of this strategy. With the help of our case firm Casa Canela and the analysed factors, we concluded that relationship marketing can provide a solid foundation for a successful business performance in the long-run.

Title: Micro sized retailers usage of e-CRM: A study about how far micro sized retailers have implemented e-CRM and exploration of what factors can describe the e-CRM adoption   Course code: 4FE03E   Authors:        Fredrik Fagerström               880107                   Linda Sjögren                      880805   Research question: The research explores what factors can explain e-CRM adoption of micro sized retailers through 6 hypotheses, derived from literature review.   Purpose: The purpose of this study is to describe how far micro sized retailers have implemented e-CRM and explore what factors can describe their e-CRM adoption.   Methodology: The result of the study consists of the participation of 137 micro sized retailers on the Swedish market. A quantitative questionnaire has been developed out of theories and qualitative pilot-studies.   Conclusion: This research can conclude that micro sized retailers on the Swedish market have, in average, implemented 5 e-CRM features per company. This equals a 12% usage of the total e-CRM features explored for this research. The one proved factor that can describe how retailers have adopted e-CRM is their profitability rate. Companies with a profitability rate below market average are more likely to have implemented more e-CRM features than companies with higher profit rate than market average. The explanation to this might be that companies with a low profit rate implement e-CRM as a tool to cure their low profit rate, since e-CRM is supposed to bring benefits as lower costs and increased sales with the purpose to increase their profit in the future.   Key words; e-CRM, growth orientation, micro sized companies, retailers