Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

The 26th of February 2009 the Swedish government gave a referral to the council of law
regarding the removal of a law concerning mandatory membership at a student union and
student nation while studying at a university or college in Sweden. This has led to a
discussion amongst the student nations in Uppsala as to how this proposed change will affect
the nations’ future operations. Some, including the chairwoman for Kuratorskonventet,
Therez Olsson, and the 1Q for Norrland’s student nation, Jon Stridh, have expressed their
worries that this could lead to a decrease in members. This in turn would have big
consequences for the nations as the members fee represents a great source of income and the
members themselves are the work force that enable the activities at the nations.

Customer focus is a successful strategy that many companies use today to generate loyalty
amongst their customers. The aim of this paper has therefore been to study if student nations
are characterized by such conditions that enable them to use customer focus as a means to
secure operations in the future. The study has been carried out as a case study at Norrland’s
nation in Uppsala and is divided into two parts. The first part is a review of the theories
concerning customer focus that explains how it can, through customer satisfaction, result in
loyal customers that inflict positive effects on the organization they are loyal to. The
conditions that must prevail for this to happen are summarized. The lack of change barriers
and the possibility to find a sense of belonging together within the organization are two of
these conditions. This theoretical review has then been used as a base for the second part of
the study which is a qualitative interview study. Three focus group interviews focused on the
members’ usage of the nation as well as how they see their relationship with the it and how
satisfied they are with it. The results of these interviews have shown that the members’
relationship with the nations is indeed to a great extent characterized by the conditions that
must prevail for an organization to be able to benefit from customer focus. The conclusion is
therefore that Norrland’s nation, according to the theoretical framework used, has the
conditions to use customer focus as a means to secure future operations. Some measures are
though required for this to be possible in practice of which an improved dissemination of
information and an increased involvement from members are two of them.