Purpose and aim of loyalty programs are to commit and bind customers and increase shopping amounts and times and create loyalty. Loyalty programs aim to achieve this by producing benefits to its members. Using multiple measures such as advertisement, producing benefits and offering discounts and introducing systems to encourage commitment achieve influencing attitudes and commitment towards loyalty programs. Aim of this thesis was to find out from consumers perspective what do customers think of loyalty programs. What types of attitudes do consumer programs show and does loyalty programs work in consumer’s minds. Does loyalty programs affect to consumers commitment and do they drive to concentrating in to specific companies. Consumers belong to multiple loyalty programs and from many of the programs there has been studies made on how they work from the companies’ perspective. Purpose of this thesis was to find out the consumers view on being a loyal customer and from loyalty programs. The research method of this thesis was quantitative. During summer 2008 through internet survey over 800 responses were collected. Survey was published on the consumer agency web pages and a link to the survey was published also in the Helsingin sanomat newspaper during August. Most of the respondents were from south Finland and from Uudenmaan district. Majority of respondents were women and most common age among respondent were between 26 to 35. Respondents belonged to multiple loyalty programs and in general the respondents liked loyalty programs. Centralising and commitment was slightly seen but in general also commonly lower price level companies were preferred. According to respondents the companies behind loyalty programs benefit more from the programs then the consumers. Never the less majority of the respondent felt that loyalty programs gave positive experiences and vast majority felt that they received benefits on monthly bases from the loyalty programs. Respondents felt in many cases that there are already too many loyalty programs offered toward consumers and those are not commonly compared with other loyalty programs. Based on this most often consumers are part of the most common programs existing but there is no apparent reason behind this other then their commonness. Joining to loyalty programs was met with carefulness and majority of respondents does not actively recommend loyalty programs to others.

Residential wood combustion (RWC) is an important contributor to air quality in numerous regions worldwide. This study is the first extensive evaluation of the influence of RWC on ambient air quality in several Nordic cities. We have analysed the emissions and concentrations of PM2.5 in cities within four Nordic countries: in the metropolitan areas of Copenhagen, Oslo, and Helsinki and in the city of Umeå. We have evaluated the emissions for the relevant urban source categories and modelled atmospheric dispersion on regional and urban scales. The emission inventories for RWC were based on local surveys, the amount of wood combusted, combustion technologies and other relevant factors. The accuracy of the predicted concentrations was evaluated based on urban concentration measurements. The predicted annual average concentrations ranged spatially from 4 to 7 µg m−3 (2011), from 6 to 10 µg m−3 (2013), from 4 to more than 13 µg m−3 (2013) and from 9 to more than 13 µg m−3 (2014), in Umeå, Helsinki, Oslo and Copenhagen, respectively. The higher concentrations in Copenhagen were mainly caused by the relatively high regionally and continentally transported background contributions. The annual average fractions of PM2.5 concentrations attributed to RWC within the considered urban regions ranged spatially from 0 % to 15 %, from 0 % to 20 %, from 8 % to 22 % and from 0 % to 60 % in Helsinki, Copenhagen, Umeå and Oslo, respectively. In particular, the contributions of RWC in central Oslo were larger than 40 % as annual averages. In Oslo, wood combustion was used mainly for the heating of larger blocks of flats. In contrast, in Helsinki, RWC was solely used in smaller detached houses. In Copenhagen and Helsinki, the highest fractions occurred outside the city centre in the suburban areas. In Umeå, the highest fractions occurred both in the city centre and its surroundings.