Word-of-mouth marketing (WOM) has been considered as one of the most effective marketing tools, yet the least understood. While its lucrative effects have been well proven in academic studies worldwide, little is yet known of why consumers engage in WOM, and what factors actually drive this sought-after behavior, particularly in an online context. While today's research lacks holistic views on the simultaneous effects of multiple WOM-drivers, this paper takes on a meta-analytic approach by building on the pertinent literature to construct an aggregated model, including several previously acknowledged drivers divided into two categories: (1) Brand related drivers and (2) Personal and situational drivers. The authors then empirically examine what drivers are the most influential on WOM in an online social media context. By doing so, this thesis does not only contribute to marketing managers' better understanding of online communications management, it also sheds light on the theoretical knowledge of the behavioral drivers of WOM.

AbstractThe purpose with this essay has been to gain a greater understanding and clarify how an arena can create value within place marketing and development of a place brand. This will be achieved through a description of which values an arena causes in the surrounding areas and an understanding of how these values can be interpreted through the place brand. We decided to base our study according to the following two questions:1. What are the underlying reasons why there has been such a big trend with arena project?2.

The continual challenge? A case study of sports clubs marketingIn recent decades the mass media have come to play an increasingly important role in society and culture. The purpose of this qualitative study is to research how four nonprofit sports clubs in Umeå handle social changes such as commercialization and mediatization. To answer the study?s purpose three questions were examined.

This thesis will explore how swedish Talang 2010 used their strategic communication in Kalmar and Stockholm and how the effect of this work was shown in the two cities. With a focus on how the sender was working with the external communication in the two cities, the heart of the research was studying Talang 2010?s communication strategy in these two contexts. The research was made with surveys during two audition days in Kalmar and two days in Stockholm. The competitors, the audience and the general public were answering different surveys but with the same base to study the effect.

?One-to-one marketing? är en marknadsföringsidé där relationen mellan kund och leverantör står i fokus. Den kunskap om en specifik kund som leverantören får via relationen kan användas för att utforma erbjudanden anpassade för just den kunden. Erbjudandena är ämnade att påverka relationen positivt och göra kunden lojal till leverantören. Nya tekniska hjälpmedel har medfört att information om kundens preferenser kan lagras och bearbetas för att därefter användas till att utforma dessaerbjudanden.

Even though provocative marketing is a widely used tool among companies to distin-guish themselves from the crowd and catch the attention of consumers, there are several variables that remain relatively unexplored. This paper aims to investigate what impact the brand has on how provocative advertising is perceived and how it affects attitudes and behavior. An experiment was conducted where several well-established measures of ad effectiveness such as brand attitude, buying intentions and word-of-mouth intentions were used to analyze the effects of brand knowledge. The results show that a provocative advert lowers attitude and buying inten-tions for the established brand while it remains unchanged for the unestablished brand. This implicates bigger freedom for unestablished brands to elaborate with provocative elements in their marketing.

Bokakademin i Östergötland AB möter framtiden ? En studie av studenters köpbeteende vad gäller kurslitteratur och ett förslag på marknadsföringsstrategi för Bokakademin (Bokakademin i Östergötland AB meets the future ? A study of students? purchasing behaviour regarding textbooks and a proposal for a marketing strategy for Bokakademin)Authors: Fabian Hamnqvist and Emma SvenssonBachelor?s thesis in business administration Linköping University, Department of Management and Engineering, 2013 Supervisor: Mehran NoghabaiAbstractThis paper examines the competition arising from online textbook retailers met by physical college bookstores. The paper examines the implications of college students' purchasing behaviour when buying textbooks, how a specific corporate clientele is composed and the purchasing habits of these customers to the specific company in question. The company used as a practical example is a bookstore located on a university campus of Linköping University in Sweden. Data have been collected using a paper and pen survey of 200 students from Linköping University as well as conducting interviews with eight students and the Managing Director of the company in question.

Syfte: Vårt syfte med uppsatsen är att med hjälp av enkäter och de kriterier som finns i teorin undersöka hur långt de medverkande företagen har kommit i deras framgång gällande Customer Relationship Management. Metod: Vi har gjort en kvantitativ enkätundersökning där vi har tillfrågat 30 företag i Ronneby. Vi har sedan analyserat detta utifrån diagram som vi har fått fram i Excel. Slutsatser: De flesta företagen i Ronneby är bara i början av CRM och de kan med enkla medel komma mycket längre.

The aim with this independent degree project of master thesis is to find what the user opinions of the intranet in a county council is. The paper seeks how the question about how the culture in the organisation was affected by the use of the intranet. An important part is to explore the expectations and acceptance of the intranet and get a picture of which functions and services support day-to-day work with good quality. One goal is to find out how the intranet users feel that the communication, information and usability can be developed.The focus group interview is a qualitative method that has been applied for gathering data from the respondents, who participate in the investigation from the county council. The used method is unstructured focus groups containing the three dominating categories of staff in the county council.

Uppsatsens syfte är att beskriva arbetsprocessen i ett event och visa på skillnader mellan de olika aktörernas synsätt. Den grundar sig på studier av två eventbyråer; en stor, marknadsledande och en liten, nystartad. I uppsatsens analys diskuteras framförallt skillnaderna mellan de som planerar eventet och de som genomför det. Här kan det ibland uppstå vissa spänningar. Utifrån två metaforer angrips problematiken de skilda synsätten och författarna diskuterar varför spänningarna kan uppstå, samt hur organisationen kan göra för att försöka undvika dem..

The most dominating type of company in Sweden is the small-sized business and it usually lacks its own marketing department. The purpose of this paper was to analyze several small Swedish businesses which are specialized in different sectors of the Mechanic/Technology industry but they are similar in terms of having niched products and they are leading companies in the world. The objective was to do research about how small businesses work with marketing despite its lack of resources and capital.This survey has shown that customer contacts, customer relationships and especially for those investigated companies, it was very important to focus on globalization and product development in order to build a Point of Difference..

The aim of this thesis was to explore and analyze the sponsored debates on Newsmill, so called seminars. How does the sponsor use Newsmills seminars for marketing purposes? Who is allowed to write in Newsmills seminars?To answer these questions we used both a quantitative survey and a qualitative survey.To examine how the sponsors use Newsmills seminars for marketing purposes we conducted a qualitative analysis which included three of the eleven seminars - a total of 26 articles. We examined how the sponsors conveyed the picture of themselves and if the written content in Newsmills seminars contained any hidden marketing. We could see that the sponsor has a great deal of influence on the seminars and also used them to market their brand with hybrid messages.

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the conditions that prevail when companies put their marketing in social media with the purpose of creating a perception of the risks and opportunities it brings to businesses and ultimately how it may affect the corporate image and identity.Theories: The basis of the problem area are presented through a theoretical framework with the purpose of highlighting the notions of social media, communi- cation, marketing communication, groundswell, corporate identity and image.Methodology: To investigate the research questions this study adopted a qualitative approach in which the authors study the properties of a phenomenon in order to seek a deeper understanding of the problems we have presented. There is an exploratory approach to knowledge and the authors have chosen to conduct qualitative research interviews based upon three themes: driving forces, challenges and impacts.Conclusion: The study revealed that traditional models of communication are no longer applicable in social media. Companies are up for a challenge and must clarify their sole purpose when establishing communication in the social landscape. The general motivation for marketing in social media is making profit, however, building relationships is not a natural motive for most companies. The risks companies expe- rience is the exposure caused by social media and the study also reveals that this fear is firmly attached to their lack of knowledge of these new channels of communicat- ion and their primary areas of use which indicates that skilled employees plays a vi- tal role with their use of social media in their communication process.

This thesis gives the reader an understanding for newsletters within e-commerce, and how to work with them as a channel for marketing. Furthermore it explains the technical and graphical demands, and how to ensure that the newsletter reaches the intended receivers.A successful newsletter can entice people to shop, but can also help to strengthen a brand and the relationship between the customer and the company. During the writing of the thesis, it has emerged that the most important part of a newsletter (which also determine whether or not the receiver reads the letter) are the subject heading, sender, layout, headlines,images and the deregistration link.A part from working with the different parts of the letter, the sender should also be aware of the technical and graphical demands. Since the E-mail clients are looking out forimages, fonts that are not embedded in the computer, and for questionable words there?s a big risk for ending up in a spam filter when not considering the demands.

As today, companies are facing an increasing competition; markets are expanding while customers are getting more informed and fastidious toward companies and their products. For this reason it is crucial for enterprises to create loyal customers, or at best hyper loyal customers. With today's prerequisite this creation is difficult and it is therefore of highly interest to examine possible and alternative ways for enterprises to attain this type of hyper loyal customer. In this thesis we have examine hyper loyal football supporters with the aim to identify mechanisms that create and characterize this type of loyalty. By means of a survey and a focus group we were able to identify six loyalty mechanisms; the ability to influence, vicarious achievement, self-esteem, group affiliation, family and social relations.