Title: The decisive opinion - A qualitative study of consumers opinions of eight Swedish fashion companies.Seminar date: 2008-01-14Course: Candidate thesis media and communication, 15 ECTS,Authors: Micela Danielsson, Frida ÅhsAdvisor: Larsåke LarssonFive keywords: Profile, Image, Brand, Fashion and AdvertisingPurpose: The purpose with this study is to evaluate and discuss the connection between profile and the companies? image in the eye of the consumer.Methodology: A qualitative method has been used in the paper, focusgruops interview with respondents from Örebro.Theoretical perspectives: The overall theory of the paper is describing fashion theory. profile, identity and image and advertising.Empirical foundation: Consumers from Örebro have made a contribution to the basis of our empirical study.Conclusions: The results show that fashion and clothes play a big part for the consumers and they ascribe it the part as a way to show their identity, image and express them selves. For none of the companies profile and image did not have a full connection, but a lot of times there were parts of the profile and image that had a connection. The questioned states that they get their opinions from merchandise, stores, store employees and different kinds of advertising.

The thesis examined whether there is a distinct boundary between art and advertising. The collected data showed how art and advertising are linked to each other and also differ from each other, in particular through the latter half of the 1900?s. What was happening in society came to have great impact on what happened in art and advertising. In postwar Germany, capitalism realism evolved from the German pop art where the art was removed from the art gallery and placed on the streets where the people were, in an era that was characterized by a gap between the rich and the poor.

This thesis provides the first test of the effects of ?advertising talk?, i.e. comments, discussions and opinions about advertising. Despite its prevalence quantitative research on advertising talk has been scarce and this study is thus an attempt to fill in some blanks. Hypothesizing that advertising talk will enhance consumer-perceived advertising value as well as purchase intentions and that the effects are more pronounced for talk generated by consumers as compared to marketers, I use a fictional campaign to measure responses in an experimental study.

The fashion industry is a line of business which is characterised by tough competition. Often the consumer target groups exposed to advertisements identify them as attempts by the fashion industry to persuade them. When this happens, the consumer disregards the information due to selective attention. Faced with these conditions, companies need to find new, creative ways to market their product lines. This essay is about Public Relations, in particular Public Relations that appear in editorial spaces.

In advertising, the target has traditionally been aimed towards the product?s advantages.Today the trend is that the advertisers want to create a restless and unsatisfied consumer. Theconsumer on her part is not trying to achieve a goal with her consumption, but experiences theconsumption itself as a goal. Because of this the consumer demands a fast and variedselection.In order to sell their products the companies must create a non-existent need amongst theconsumers. Therefore it is very common in advertising today to use emotions instead ofinformation to attract the customers.

This thesis examines how online fashion retailers utilize blogs and other social media in their marketing process. The study is focused on internet retailer Nelly and how they make use of fashion blogger Kenza in their marketing. Drawing on Kawamura?s fashion-ology theory, the study emphasizes the new role of the fashion bloggers in the fashion system, and illustrates their consumption power vis-a-vis the retailers, the consumers, each other and the whole industry as such.    .

The consumer of today is bombarded by an increasing number of commercial messages, which makes it harder and harder for brands to cut through the clutter. Because of this, new methods are developed and introduced to the market every day. One of the most widely discussed of these methods is guerrilla advertising. Even though the method has received numerous praises there are not any academic proofs supporting these arguments. The authors, of this thesis, have examined if guerrilla advertising is more or less effective compared to traditional advertising and what the reasons for the result are.

Media society is under a constant development and in line with this change, firms must adapt to the market. We have investigated what fashion companies in fact are doing to communicate in the dynamic market. We wanted to find out how to communicate and how they can market themselves in a new and innovative way to create long-term customer relationships. We have used a theoretical frame of reference based on marketing communication, fashion marketing, branding and relationship marketing theories. We have assumed four themes throughout the survey which are: customer contact and relationships, emotion in communication, branding and relational communication.

AbstractBackground: Countries can be seen as brands (nation brands) with brand values that transmitto the country?s products. Country-of-origin (COO), the brands nationality, links the productto an associative network of cultural shared national stereotypes. Through associating thebrand with a country or a region, the credibility of the brand can increase and strengthen thebrand. Therefore COO is used in marketing to position a brand.Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how luxury fashion brands communicatetheir national identity through analyzing their advertising.

AbstractTitle: ?Fashion be in fashion? ? a qualitative study of the phenomen fashion blogs (?Mode är på modet? ? en kvalitativ studie av fenomenet modebloggar)Number of Pages: 46 (54 including enclosures)Author: Maria RydströmTutor: Else NygrenCourse: Media and communication studies DPeriod: Spring semester 2007University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science,Uppsala universityAim: Contribute to the understanding of a yet unexplored domain, fashion blogs. And contribute to a discussion of the roll of fashion blogs in the swedish fashionindustry.Method: Qualitive textual analysis of three fashion blogs and interviews with the authors to the three fashion blogs. Completed with six interviews with experts from the fashionindustry and the blogworld.Main results: The authors behind the fashion blogs are young women living in big cities.They write about fashionnews, runway trends, fashion items and style outfits worn by them selves. Fashion blogs provide a new way to follow trends and spread them to the society.

Lindex has a strong fashion position and is one of northern Europe's leading fashion retailers. Unfortunately their logotype no longer measures up to the fashion level that is required. Surveys and interviews have been conducted with employees at Lindex, disscusing their logotype. I have come to the conclusion that what is needed from Lindex side is strict guidlines for the employees to follow so that all information from Lindex to their customers is made with a great touch of fashion to it and in a coherent way..

This thesis aims to describe how a fashion designer should balance art and commerce in order to succeed in the fashion industry. We aim to define the Swedish term KRÄDD, and sort out how a designer or CEO in the fashion business should relate to the term, as well as the balance between cultural and economic capital. We present theories of the origins and fluctuations of fashion, as well as social studies on cultural capital, and brand building. The study is made in a qualitative manner where the empirics consist of interviews with 13 respondents that have different positions in, and experience from the fashion industry, including designers, journalists, buyers, a CEO and a PR-professional. In our conclusion, we emphasize the need for a balance between cultural and economic capital in order to succeed as a fashion designer.

Despite narrative advertising being an increasingly popular strategy among brands today, little research has examined the different expressions of repetition variation strategy in comparison to its alternative, argumentative advertising. Still unexplained is whether the appreciation and recognition created from successful storytelling-based commercial campaigns is a result of execution or the format itself. This study aims to investigate four repetition variation strategies, three narratives and one argumentative, to determine which one is the most effective and also which one that generates the highest advertising equity. An experiment was conducted through exposing four groups of Swedish High School students to text-based advertising manuscripts customized after format, where each group was exposed to ads on two separate occasions. The result showed evidence of narrative advertising being easier to comprehend, which according to theory should lead to higher advertising effectiveness.

At several occasions, an important question has been brought forward within the world of advertising and media. This is the question of whether or not ?good? advertising should be encouraged by the media. The question has an origin in a belief that such advertising can create values not only for the advertiser, but also for the medium. Although this question has arisen in business media, and although many managers work from the assumption that such relationship exists, there are none or little proof that it actually does.

This thesis deals with young people´s attitudes towards advertising on Facebook, which type they prefer and how it should be presented. The purpose of the essay is to offer advertisers a better knowledge concerning the Facebook users advertising preferences. This knowledge can be used to produce advertising with a higher chance of acceptance among Facebook users. The results have been collected by a quantitative survey and they are presented in statistic form. One of the main results was that young people wanted a more individual adapted type of advertising.