Research on the power of customer involvement, and in particular recommendation is very resourceful. Many studies have mapped the reasons for why customers are willing to recommend, however they often ignore potential differences among brands and how that may affect these reasons. This study is built on a quantitative survey investigating how consumers interact with brands, depending on category affiliation. The categories used were Bhat and Reddy's symbolic and functional, consisting of three brands respectively where each brand represented a different product type.The evolvement of social media has also transformed the platform of recommendation from physical to virtual and changed the way people connect. Thus, taking the investigation further, potential differences between symbolic and functional brands was tested in different social media platforms.

In May 2010 the plans for Malmö?s new Concert Hall, Conference Centre and Hotel were announced publically. The purpose of this thesis was to present strategy for communication in order to gain approval for the new concert and conference center from the inhabitants inMalmö and to incorporate the use of it in their everyday life.Material from the receiver?s as well as the sender?s perspective has been collected from qualitative interviews. Through group interviews we have investigated the general consensus of the inhabitants of Malmö regarding the investment, placing, offered events, expectations as well as how they collected information.

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.

The purpose of this thesis is to describe how an entrepreneur and leader, transmits a vision through communication. Furthermore what kind of feedback the leader finds that he/she acquire. We want to study how entrepreneurship and leadership appears at a private preschool and how the entrepreneur and leader use it to communicate his/her vision.This thesis is based on qualitative method using one in-depth interview with CEO at Helianthus AB, documents and one observation at a parental meeting. The theories of which this study is based on consist of entrepreneurship, transformational and transactional leadership, vision and communication. The theories used in this thesis regard entrepreneurship, transformational and transactional leadership, vision and communication.Our study strengthened the assumption that our respondent is an entrepreneur and leader according to chosen theories.

Purpose/Aim: The aim of this thesis was to study the construction of gender and to compare Media?s portrayal of male and female athletes.Material/Method: 140 articles covering seven famous Swedish male and female athletes were selected from two Swedish newspapers (Aftonbladet and Expressen). The articles has been analysed within the frames of Norman Faircloughs Critical Discourse Analysis.Main results: Male athletes are often described in powerful ways and are framed as being strong and successful. Skills and strengths of women athletes are often devalued in comparison to standards of hegemonic masculinity and self-control. They are often framed as women and girlfriends in advantage of the fact that they are athletes..

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how reading different media forms can lead to different experiences for the reader and how they choose which media form to read. Two questions are posed in the study. Question number one is: How does the media form influence the reading experience of the book and question number two is: What reasons can be seen behind the different choices of media forms?The study is based upon qualitative interviews with six readers using different media forms. Two different theories are used for analyzing the result.

The legitimacy of the European Union is being questioned, and this has put focus on the democratic deficit, as the main reason for the negative outcome of the referendum about implementing the last initiated treaties of the union. In this essay the credibility of the problem solving strategy through the communication policy of the commission is being put under the scope. The objective is to treat the credibility of the solution to the main problems of the EU as an important part of how the democratic, political system works and how it deals with taking care of its? supporting and demanding channels of communication. The importance of a citizen platform to form common interests and a strictly European dialogue using media, common debates and several other possible ways to advocate this solution throughout the whole union is stressed here..

The study examines medias impact on every day racism through Agenda Setting and Framing. Prior studies on the subject are either conducted from an American perspective, or are several years of age. In this study we highlight how todays media depicts our society and how it affects the concept of the world on an individual level. The study is a content analysis of the case study on the news stories ?The hunt for the unregistered immigrants?, which have been analyzed through critical discourse analysis.

AbstractTitle: Who are you? Who am I? ? Charades in the mediated world of today. A study of the construction of identity at Facebook.(Vem är du? Vem är jag? ? Charader i dagens medierade värld. En studie av identitetskonstruktionen på Facebook.)Number of pages: 58 (66 including enclosures.)Author: Mathilda WahlundTutor: Ylva EkströmCourse: Media and communication studies CPeriod: Fall 2007University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University.Purpose/Aim: The aim is to study how people construct their own identities today.

The main purpose of this study was to examine how social work can be performed online, by a case study of Korrespondensgymnasiet that pursues distance education. The intention was to determine the possibilities and limits with the online communication between the school counsellor and the pupils. The study was based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with one school counsellor and five pupils and document analysis of three descriptions of the school counsellor?s profession. The theory that has been used in this study is the communication theory: Shannon and Weaver?s Model of Communication and non-verbal communication.

AbstractTitle: Cheap Monday ? A qualitative study of the consumers? opinions of the brand (Cheap Monday ? En kvalitativ studie av konsumenternas åsikter om märket)Number of pages: 38 (40 including enclosures)Author: Oskar NorlanderTutor: Göran SvenssonCourse: Media and communication studies CPeriod: Autumn 2007University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala UniversityPurpose/Aim: The purpose of this essay is to examine from the customers? perspective how the Swedish jeans-brand Cheap Monday in just three years time could become such a prominent brand on the Swedish market. An additional purpose is to examine whether there is some kind of brand community connected to the brand or not.Material/Method: The main method used in this essay has been qualitative interviews with ten consumers of the brand. The answers from these interviews has then been analysed using two different theories, Keller?s Customer Based Brand Equity and Muniz and O?Guinnn?s Brand Community.Main results: The main results of this essay is that Cheap Monday is a brand that has become successful due to people?s perception of who the users of the brand are.

The purpose of this study was set against the background that social media today are used as an platform for companies to communicate with their customers, as well as communicate their brand. Therefore it was interesting to examine this phenomenenon through a critical point of view and try to put light on the different forms of power that is produced on this arena.The overall aim of this study was to examine how PR-consultants talk about social media as a communication channel. The empirical data consisted of five interviews with PR-consultants on five different PR-agencies. The theoretical framework was based on a social constructional perspective and Foucault?s theory of power.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to create an understanding of how customer engagement, communication / interaction and customer insight are driving forces behind the use of Social CRM from a leadership perspective.Method: The purpose of the study, we believed it was appropriate to use a qualitative approach to conduct the study. The empirical data were collected through semi-structured interviews. The sample consisted of 10 companies located in the Gävle area who are active on social media. The interviews were coded to obtain keywords and patterns. These patterns and keywords are then analyzed to arrive at the study's results.Results and contributions: Our results suggest that all the identified benefits, customer engagement, customer insight and communication are driving forces to make use of social CRM.

This study focused on how local politicians in Kalmar perceive journalists and their intertwined relationship. We based our study on the theoretical understanding of today?s media-centric democratic society. The ?adversary model? offered an understanding of the intricate relations between politicians and journalists.

Since a few years back television has been on a verge of an enormous digital change. Web-TV is now growing at an incredible rate and is said to completely change the way we consume TV. The purpose of this essay is to determine and gain an understanding of how representatives of the broadcast industry looks at the phenomenon of web-TV and especially the different kinds of online video services and how they believe this will affect the television. Methods used are qualitative interviews which we compared with previous studies on the subject and acknowledged communication theories. The respondents were people with good insight and understanding of the media and TV industry.