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Title:

Product abandonment – A comparative study of five ABB-units

Level:

Master thesis in Business administration, spring 2011.

Purpose:

The purpose of this paper is to through a comparative analysis examine how different companies, within the same group, works with product abandonment and what factors influence the process.

Problem:

How important is situational and product specific factors in a product abandonment process in which the organizational factors are constant?

Method:

This study is based on primary as well as secondary data where interviews represent the primary data. Interviews, following the same interview guide, were made with five companies within the same group.

Result:

The results from the empirical studies presented in the text below recurring themes derived from the framework.

Conclusions:

Our conclusions are that the importance of product specific factors is of significant matters in a product abandonment process, even when organizational factors are constant. We base that on that although the companies are within the same group, under the same strategic direction and constructed according to the same organizational structure the product abandonment process is different for the respective companies.

Keywords:

Product abandonment, product deletion, product elimination, weak products, ABB