Purpose: The purpose with this dissertation is to examine the individual–firm commitment between auditors and exempted firms from the client perspective and how it is influenced by relational influencing factors. The impact of these factors is investigated through a three component model incorporating affective, calculative and normative commitment.   Method: The study encompasses a triangular research method and can be seen as a twofold complementary approach. The choice of methodology seeks to qualitatively investigate how auditors actively work to impact the level of trust, social bonds and satisfaction as well as the level of commitment in their relationship with the exempted firm. The intention is to complement the findings from the qualitative study with quantitatively measured factors from the client’s perspective using a survey strategy.   Conclusion: The findings of this study indicated that micro-firms are predominantly affectively committed to their auditor based on positive feelings of attachment and less due to normative and calculative reasons. Trust and satisfaction proved to be the most significant factors in ensuring long-term and enduring relationships between auditors and micro-firms.   Implications: Affective commitment proved to be the most significant construct in explaining the characteristics of the auditor-micro firm relation in this study. By critically evaluating the relationship, the auditor can assess to which degree trust, social bonds and satisfaction can be implemented to strengthen the commitment of the exempted firm, thus influencing their long-term staying intention.

Purpose: The analytical purpose of this thesis is to link theory on how business processes should be designed to strenghten customer relationships, with empirical data on what these processes presently look like. The empirical purpose is to formulate a CRM strategy for Volvo Penta. This will be done by analyzing how the current processes of the company are designed and what limitations and possibilities the market characteristics offer. Method: A triangulated research method with focus on qualitative interviews is used in the form of in-depth, face-to-face interviews. Thirteen such interviews have been conducted with representatives of different departments within Volvo Penta. Findings: The empirical data has brought several findings on what needs to be done and thought through in order to optimize a CRM-strategy. One such finding is that Volvo Penta does not have thorough directions on how their processes and customers should be approached. Another important finding is that the level of cross-functionality within the processes is too low.

Background: The Swedish fashion industry grows steadily, today it’s populated by many small and medium sized companies. Due to the big clothing chains dominant position small businesses risks to be ousted out of the fashion industry. Smaller companies may find it difficult to reach out to the customer by traditional advertising because their budgets are often smaller. It is therefore important for smaller companies to create loyal customers. If the smaller sized businesses in the fashion industry do not follow the rapid developments in society and focus on building strong brands and relationships, they will have problems with surviving in the long run. Problem definition: Which communicative factors are important in the choice of brand strategy to create a long-term survival for small and medium-sized companies in the fashion industry? Purpose: The purpose of the essay is to analyse and evaluate the brand as a communications tool for building a brand image. Method: The data which is being used in the essay is collected from interviews with companies and survey of each company's existing and potential customers. Theoretical perspective: Relationship Marketing Perspective and Transaction Marketing Perspective Theories: Brand Strategies, Total Communication, Brand Equity, Involvement Theory, Service Value Profit Chain. Empiric: The empirical data is primary data gathered from interviews with a representative for each company and from the questionnaires distributed to the customers of each company. Analysis: The analysis is an interpretation of the empirical material collected from interviews with each company and customers survey. Each company is being analysed along the characteristics that emerges in the theory chapter. Results: The results of the study show that the companies use a mixture communication form consisting of one-and two way communication. The results from survey show that the customer is highly involved and therefore it is important for companies to maintain a relationship perspective. Conclusions/Discussion: In order to achieve a long-term survival, it is important that smaller companies work from a relational consumers approach. In that way companies can create loyal consumers which can later on contribute to good Word-Of-Mouth. In its turn this can generate new consumers.

Relationship marketing is an important part of the new view of communication strategies. The theories around this subject has a general and global perspective on how to manage relations and communication problems. But somehow the local perspective is forgotten. In this thesis we have focused on the local market and which demands it has on the work with relationship management. The purpose of this thesis is to find out how relationship marketing can contribute to create a high valued brand on a local market. In this case the local news and entertainment site Vibb Kalmar.The thesis was carried out by intervening (qualitative method) individuals on three different levels in the field of relationship marketing. One of the most respected professor in the field of relationship marketing. We have also two different consulting-firms and one client each from both of the firms. All located in Kalmar. We have used a theoretical frame of reference based on relationship marketing, service marketing, brand management and market communication. We compared the literature with the collected empirical data to come up with our own conclusions about local relationship marketing. The conclusion shows that some aspects become more important on a local market. Persons behind the brand are very important. The company needs to be active in their network. It´s important to be a part of the community and take their responsibility to be a good citizen. It also gives recommendations on how a local news and entertainment site should work with relationship marketing.

The international environment today has been undergoing unprecedented change and many companies are seeking new ways to stand out from the competition by sustaining their competitive advantage. Internationalization and firms’ consolidation increase competition in the dynamic marketplace .Companies are no longer staying competitive simply through focusing on product quality and pricing as customers are becoming more high-demanding related to customer service offer. This issue directs the companies’ main focus today to address the customer needs in the ever-changing environment.In order to be the winners in the marketplace, timing and superior customer service are becoming the keys to attain competitive advantage for a company. Time-based competition is an important issue that many companies are facing currently as customers are becoming more time-sensitive and time-oriented in terms of better services, reliability and delivery. To keep up with the changes in demand from customers, it is important to satisfy customers’ objectives and needs in order to provide superior customer service, thus, establish good relationship with them. In the ever-changing and dynamic business environment company needs to adapt and exploit the changes in order to meet the new challenges in the marketplace. It is crucial for the company to respond to changing needs of existing customers and seeking to serve new customers externally. The ways to renew the customers’ services and how they are delivered are critical capabilities for many companies to acquire nowadays. This leads to increasing interaction between marketing and logistics where logistics is considered a platform for supporting new strategic moves on the market.This master thesis originates from a need to research the links between customer service improvement and Just-in-time distribution in order to sustain competitive advantage. We propose to extend the Just-In-Time concept to incorporate a customer perspective, which results in changes the warehousing, ordering and delivering routines. Subsequently, this creates timing ability as well as coordination of information and material flows through timely decisions, which are difficult for competitors to emulate. Based on our analysis and conclusion, companies are recommended to shift from the traditional production-oriented to market-oriented focuses through incorporation of customers' perspective into the value chain. To deploy this, companies should start from the customer end and understand customers' needs and establish mutual beneficial relationships with customers. Long-lasting business relationships ultimately determine the success of the company. Furthermore, we conclude that successful learning to change the routines requires time for the transformation of traditional delivery practice to perform direct deliveries activities. They are based on the common understanding of the tasks and rules as well as common codes of internal coordination processes.

During the 1980s and 1990s, commercial sponsorship grew with a rapid pace with an increase in worldwide spending from $2 billion in 1984 to $18.1 billion in 1997. Also, when the sponsorship market grew the interest amongst business researchers grew and finally became an own topic within business. Further, within marketing there was also a change occurring during the same time. It was an evolutionary paradigm shift from the marketing mix and the 4Ps to Relationship Marketing and the focus on long-term relationships. The marketing mix and the 4Ps had been the dominating model since the 1950s however when industries matured, market demand changed, competition increased and customers became more sophisticated and demanded more. Both the rapid growth within sponsorship and move to Relationship Marketing can mainly be explainedby the developments in Information Technology and globalization. However, despite the increasing interest sponsorship and relationship marketing separately,few researchers have tried to combine these two even though several researchers have challenged others. In 2003, Farrelly and Quester studied the relationships between the sponsor and the sponsored. The intentions of the researchers are to extend this research to the relationships between the sponsor and their customers. The purpose of this thesis is to explore how sponsors utilize sponsorship to build and maintain relationships with their customers. The intention is to create a foundation that can be later tested with the sponsors’ customers through a series of propositions. This study is done from the sponsors' perspective and in a B2B context. It is a qualitative research using six of the main sponsors as case studies for HV71, one of the largest ice hockey teams in Sweden. For the data collection the researchers used face-to-face interviews with managers from Husqvarna, Swedbank, Öhrlings PriceWaterhouseCoopers,Nybergs Bil, Ernst&Young and June Emballage. The researchers have identified four different ways how sponsors utilize sponsorship to build and maintain relationships with their customers. The sponsors use sponsorship to create meeting places outside the business office, increase communication, add value totheir offerings and predict customer needs. The goal is to increase trust and value because when they increase, the relationship between the sponsor and customer grows stronger.

SammanfattningSociala medier växer som marknadsföringsverktyg och det är enligt forskare ett utmärkt sätt för företag att skapa dialog och bygga relationer med sina kunder. Flera tidigare studier som behandlar sociala medier och dess effekter har genomförts de senaste åren och det finns fortfarande ett stort intresse inom ämnet. Det vi har valt att undersöka är hur företag idag använder sig av sociala medier i sitt marknadsföringsarbete, vi har även valt att jämföra två olika branscher för att utöka kunskapen inom det redan utforskade området. Vi har därför valt att se på modebranschen och teknik- och industribranschen för att utreda om det finns skillnader mellan dessa när det kommer till arbetet med sociala medier. För att undersöka detta så har vi använt oss av kvalitativa intervjuer med fyra företag inom modebranschen och fyra företag inom teknik- och industribranschen. Vi har använt oss av primärkällor och sekundärkällor, där våra primära källor utgörs av våra kvalitativa intervjuer och våra sekundära källor är hämtade ur tryckta källor och elektroniska källor. Resultatet vi fick har lett oss fram till slutsatsen att modebranschen kan dra större nytta av att använda sig av sociala medier då de fyra företag vi intervjuat säljer en produkt, till skillnad från de fyra företag vi intervjuat inom teknik- och industribranschen som är tjänsteföretag. Modebranschen ser sociala medier som en mer naturlig del av marknadsföringen, medan teknik- och industribranschen är mer traditionell och använder sociala medier mer för att utveckla sin relationsmarknadsföring och även som en kundtjänstkanal. Modebranschen arbetar mycket med bloggar, kampanjer och tävlingar medan teknik- och industribranschen arbetar mycket med rekrytering via sociala medier. Båda branscher ser sociala medier som en ökande trend och förstår vikten av att synas i de forum där deras kunder verkar.

As virtual channels on the internet grow full-blown, two major chain department store corporations in Taiwan entered internet markets one after another in 2007. Since the department store is a typical service industry highly based on interactions, the salesclerk has been a major mediator for serving customers and therefore face-to-face interaction between consumers and salesclerks is especially important. With the coming of brand-new self-service system combined with technology, consumers are able to take advantage of the technology to serve themselves. The relationship between corporations and consumers is hence transformed with a delivery system of ¡§low contact but high technology.¡¨ Researchers of previous studies mainly focus on interpersonal-based service encounter for investigation of relationship marketing and customer loyalty and researches about technology-based self-service and interaction with consumers are rarely seen. This research takes department store customers as subjects of investigation and adopts their viewpoints from questionnaire, aiming to probe into the influence of the department store¡¦s introduction of self-service technology on the effect of relationship marketing for better understanding of the relationship between the effect and customers loyalty. The study will take questionnaire survey of internet, and put the questionnaire on the Telecommunication Laboratories (TL) website to gather data via the customer¡¦s e-mail in cooperation with the Web-based Newspaper for the credit card users of the department store of the department store. The questionnaire will put for one month from February 1 to February 28, 2008 to gather enough data for analysis. A total of 1412 copies of questionnaire are issued, retrieving 396 copies, with 1016 copies of effective questionnaire. Structural Equation Modeling is used in this research. The followings are four points of conclusion: (1) the quality of web-based self service has significantly positive influence on result indicators of relational benefits by means of customer relational benefits; (2) the quality of web-based self service, except for delivery service speed, has significantly positive influence on customer relational benefits; (3) customer relational benefits have significantly positive influence on result indicators of relational benefits; (4) customer relational benefits bring significant effect as a mediator between web-based self service and result indicators of relational benefits. Therefore, we suggest that the department store managers shall create more elements of relationship benefit so that the customers all feel highly of the relationship benefit in the hope to enhance the customer's satisfaction and loyalty on the enterprise.

Since year 2004, the advantage of low material cost in Southeast Asia and Mainland China have enabled them to hold standard fastener market. Taiwan¡¦s manufacturers have thus changed and even lost their competitiveness on standard fastener parts due to the increasing cost. The only way to face this global trend is to keep away from the price competition and adopt an active marketing strategy such as making use of fasteners¡¦ association and convenient internet. These two advantages not only integrate Taiwan¡¦s suppliers but allow them to do a long-term marketing strategy to their customers, provide them with better service and further satisfy customers¡¦ needs. The standard parts have been the main products of big manufacturers since post 80s as the market demand a bigger quantity of the standard parts than the special ones. For that reason, big manufacturers lacked the experience of producing nonstandard parts. They concerned about utilization ratio, so they spent less time in researching and developing special parts. On the contrary, the facility restriction made small manufacturers incapability of making big quantities of standard parts, then forced them to spend more time developing special parts. However, they were not capable of selling their products overseas but to depend on trading companies to push their products all over the world. This in-depth research generalizes company A¡¦s marketing integration strategy, which satisfy its customers and keep its growth rate without being threatened by low-cost countries like Southeast Asia and Mainland China and so on. This strategy includes relationship marketing plus support of suppliers. Based on trust and commitment, Company A gets to connect and build a long-term beneficiary relationship with its customers. In addition, the ability and integration of suppliers play an important role in fulfilling the marketing integration strategy.

The study investigates whether different motivation mechanisms can affect the quality of relationship and member loyalty of virtual communities. The particular domain is online games on which players often join affiliated virtual communities to exchange information. A questionnaire was designed for the online survey that resulted in a total of 685 valid responses. The results from the partial least square analysis show that relationship quality as measured by Customer satisfaction, trust and commitment have a mediating effect between motivation mechanisms and member loyalty. Among the motivation mechanisms, financial bonds have no effect on relationship quality but social and structural bonds have significant effects. The findings can be used by practitioners when they run virtual communities and have implications for future research in related topics.