Problem-definition: How companies work with social media to strengthen their brand equity and what other purposes might lay behind this usage.Purpose: How Volkswagen Sweden use social media in order to strengthen their brand equity.Method: Qualitative case- study of Volkswagen Sweden where a number of respondents will be interviewed with the help of a semi structured interview guide.Theories: A number of theories in the field of brand equity and communication theory will be used in this paper, some of these theories are, Post-model, Social technographics ladder, brand equity and word of mouth.Empiric: A semi-structured interview guide will be shaped from theory and answered through interviews with people who have knowledge within the field.Conclusions: Extracted from the results the research members has identified a number of important factors that business should consider when they work with social media or planning to. They have also answered how business can strengthen their brand equity with social media..

Företag inom modebranschen står i dag inför en ökande konkurrenssituation. På grund av globaliseringen och interaktionen mellan kunder över internet, är konsumenterna idag mer medvetna än tidigare. Den största faktorn bakom den nya medvetenheten är den generation av unga människor som växt upp i en digitaliserad värld, benämnd som Generation Y. Företag får kämpa för att få konsumenternas uppmärksamhet och situationen beskrivs som ett marknadsföringskrig. Många marknadsförare misslyckas med att nå fram till konsumenterna med traditionella marknadsföringsverktyg som; reklam, PR, direktmarknadsföring och personlig försäljning.

AbstractTitel:How do established companies communicate with their existing customers? Level:C-level in the Business Administration Author:Jessica Axelsson and Trang Nguyen Thi Thu Supervisor:Per-Arne Wikström Date:2012-05 Aim:Our aim with this essay is to describe how an established company communicates with its existing customers. We want to explore which communication strategy the company applies to reach their customers. We also want to see what kind of communication the company applies to get to market more effectively and remain on the market longer. Method:The study is a qualitative case study where we have conducted a personal interview with the company president.

Kommunikation mellan konsumenter om produkter, word-of-mouth (WOM), kan påverka konsumenters köpbeslut. Därför är det viktigt att förstå varför konsumenter sprider information om produkter. Tidigare forskning har till stor del undersökt drivkrafter bakom WOM som ett generellt koncept, men på grund av att vi allt mer kommunicerar via elektroniska kanaler kan motiven bakom att sprida WOM ha förändrats. Forskning om detta kan bidra med ny kunskap inom området, varför denna undersökning syftar till att studera vilka drivkrafter som finns bakom electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). En självadministrerad enkät besvarades elektroniskt av 150 respondenter för att undersöka sju olika drivkrafter.

The accounting scandals that have attracted attention in recent years have led to internal control becoming a more central part of business activity. Doubts about what firms actually do have increased, all caused by the attention of accounting scandals. To counter this, frameworks and laws evolved and gained a significant role in the organization and its surroundings. The aim of the present study is to find out how four companies in the Kristianstad region are working to ensure its internal control and how they work to minimize risk and reduce uncertainty. We have used a qualitative method and interviewed a person in a senior position in each company.

During the past decades the competition for skilful employees has increased and companies and organizations compete to attract the right people. The Swedish municipalities and country councils need to recruit 420 000 new employees before 2020, but have a limited budget to promote themselves as attractive employers. To find a solution, many of the municipalities have started to work with fundamental values to become more attractive employers and to inspire employees to use word-of-mouth to recommend them. There are no empirical studies of how successful this strategy is, and the purpose of this thesis is to show if there are significant correlations between the fundamental values, the employer's attractiveness and word-of-mouth. The results of the study are based on a survey with 1996 answers from employees in three different municipalities in Stockholm, Sweden.

Aim: The aim of our study is to analyze and evaluate from a marketing perspective how estate agents can use facebook to strengthen their brand. Method: We have used an inductive study form where we?ve used a quality and a quantity data gathering method. The data has been gathered from an interview with Botkyrkabyggens marketing coordinator and from an internet survey based on a convience selection and a snow ball selection.Theory: SWOT, Brand Equity, Word of Mouth, Customer Relationship ManagementConclusion: Facebook can create and measure "word of mouth" effects, and also create better information management and flow of information compared to traditional marketing for an estate agent. The risks of facebook is the difficulty in educating the staff about the site and the fact that facebook dominates the policies and rules which suddenly can change.

Utifrån en fri tolkning av Porters generiska strategier har vi genom tre delresultat svarat på om kunden uppfattar COS som stuck in the middle. Mycket tyder på att dagens konsument blir allt mer kvalitetsmedveten och långsiktig i sina köpvanor. Vi ser COS som ett exempel på hur lågprisföretagen väljer att möta denna konsumtionstrend och hur satsningen väljer att kommuniceras. Genom att word-of-mouth fått en viktig roll i COS marknadsföring blir den avgörande för COS image. Genom en tolkning av företagets word-of-mouth och således dess image finner vi att risken är stor att kunden placerar COS som stuck in the middle..

Title: Creating high awareness ? A study in how a company can create awareness with cost efficient marketing methods. (Skapande av hög medvetenhet ? En studie i hur ett företag kan skapa medvetenhet med kostnadseffektiva marknadsförings metoder).Authors: Alexander Edlund and Fredrik HanssonAim: Our aim is to reveal the pros and cons of cost efficient marketing and decide which cost efficient method works best in creating awareness. We also want to determine if the methods can be integrated in a successful way to achieve greater awareness.Method/Material: We have made a qualitative approach by conducting three in depth interviews with the company Bluetooth SIG?s marketing director Anders Edlund.

Dagens samhälle är präglat av ett enormt reklamutbud och reklamstrategier. I denna djungel av marknadsföring har företag ibland valt en annan strategi, en relativt outnyttjad strategi, som baseras på rykten om produkten, tjänsten eller företaget och är det som används som marknadsföring. Denna strategi kallas för word of mouth. Ena syftet har varit att undersöka hur word of mouth definieras av olika författare. Genom att göra en jämförelse av teorier av begreppet word of mouth har ett försök gjorts att skapa en definition av begreppet, som tillämpas på vårt andra syfte med undersökningen.

The cellular market is today suffering from great customer dissatisfaction. Simultaneously, the services offered by the different cellular providers are very homogenous, causing strict competition where various price strategies have been the main mean of battle. From a business perspective, implementing pricing strategies, to keep up with increased network investments, is a short term solution.In a market characterized by lacking customer satisfaction and harsh competition, research has shown the importance of highlighting customer relations in marketing. This type of marketing, which one could refer to as relationship marketing, is considered an efficient, economic, and strategic method of showing the importance of customer loyalty. To get insight in the relationship between the customers and the cellular providers, as well as to show the importance of relationship marketing, this study has used qualitative interviews to find what develops strong customer loyalty.The results showed that increased customer loyalty is achieved when an emotional bond is created.

In recent years, more and more people have started to live double lives. Blogs, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have created conditions so that we increasingly live virtual lives on the Internet. The gathering of people in this way entails both risks and opportunities for businesses. This study aims to explain how the phenomenon of social media has affected trade and service companies in a marketing and communication perspective. The idea for the essay came to us after we had observed how different behaviors in companies? concerning social media could vary a lot, and how we felt that this affected our personal view of the brands.

abstract buzz marketing, the phenomena Have you ever thought about why the small French pastries called macarons suddenly became so extremely popular? Soon they were seen everywhere in the media, on every celebrity party and shortly after of course on every Swedish person?s cake dish. Could it be that a trendy it-girl happened to mention these lovely creations in her blog?What (or who) is it really that decides and controls what is popular and what is going to sell? If one individual can influence a whole group of followers it is definitely something marketers should take advantage of. One cannot any longer rely on traditional advertising, one needs to be more creative and rethink the possibilities to get through the media noise.

We investigate the effects of various types of word-of-mouth (WOM) messages on consumer bahavior. The message is varied along two dimensions where one is valence and the other is whether or not it contains an explicit call for certain behavior or attitude change. We use an experiment in the form of a web-based survey. Five different scenarios were designed to represent neutral, positive, and negative WOM. The latter two came in two different versions - one with a recommendation and one without.

As commonly known, Social Media is a rapidly growing area. Since consumers to a great extent are present in Social Media, this new internet environment is increasing in relevance for consumer marketing. For controversial brands that are regulated in conventional marketing channels Social Media is an extra ordinary marketing opportunity, since social media is a legal grey area. More and more controversial brands are taking advantage of this opportunity, but the effects of these marketing activities are fairly unknown. Therefore there is an interest in examining the controversial brands marketing progression in Social Media.