Uppsats för avläggande av filosofie kandidatexamen iKulturvård, Konservatorprogrammet15 hpInstitutionen för kulturvårdGöteborgs universitet2012:20.

The purpose of this research is to examine how a ogranization can create Word-of-Mouth and how they can use this type of marketing to make their brand stronger..

Huvudsyftet med denna uppsats är att ge en helhetsbild av fenomenet virtuell word-of-mouth. För att åstadkomma detta har vi delat in huvudsyftet i två delsyften där det första undersöker vad virtuell word-of-mouth innebär. Det andra delsyftet analyserar de områden som har betydelse för fenomenet och dess spridning, nämligen budskapet, individer och grupper samt Internetmiljöer.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of consumer generated advertising as a marketing tool to encourage online word of mouth. Subsequently, the researchers aim to examine if there are certain design factors in consumer generated advertising that influence the effectiveness of consumer generated advertising in encouraging online word of mouth. The study conducts a multiple case study of several consumer generated advertising campaigns. It consists of in-depth studies of these cases in combination with quantitative analyses of the encouraged word of mouth. The different cases are examined on several design factors that could possible increase the volume of encouraged word of mouth..

The purpose of this study is to further develop the understanding of Nextopia, the belief that the next product will always be better, and the effects it has on Word of mouth, both oral (WOM) and electronic (eWOM), and investigate possible causes of this effect. This has been made through an experimental study of responses to two mineral water ads, with a manipulated time frame. First, this thesis supports the fact that there is a general Nextopia-effect on customers being exposed to a future product, which makes them evaluating the product higher in terms of feelings, attitude and intention. Further this study shows that there is also a Nextopia-effect on WOM and eWOM, by customers being more likely to recommend a future product rather than a current one. This propensity to recommend the product also has a relationship with responsibility, which correlates much stronger with WOM than eWOM.

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) has been claimed to be the single most reliable indicator of firm growth and has gained wide adoption among companies in a broad range of industries. This is despite a lack of rigorous scientific testing. The purpose of this study is to examine the predictive strength of the question "How likely are you to recommend [.] to your friends and colleagues " that the metric is based on: how well does it actually predict future consumer behavior Furthermore, the report aims to create a greater understanding of the factors that explain a person's word of mouth (WOM) intention and which behaviours cause that intention to change. A longitudinal study was conducted of 304 consumers' WOM intention regarding two non-carbonated drinks and their subsequent WOM and purchase behavior. The analyses show that the behaviors are captured by the metric to some extent.

This research aims at identifying the opinion leaders in order to study their behaviour, characteristics, their role within the word of mouth process, and what importance they have upon another consumers purchase decision. Also, to investigate the content of the message being spread. The results from the study show that opinion leaders are strong in spreading word of mouth. Messages were adapted by opinion leaders to suite their target audience. The results further contribute to the discussion about Watts? ?influentials?..

Allt fler kunder söker sig i dag till så kallade tredjepartskanaler på internet för att boka hotell. En tredjepartskanal är en hemsida som samlar ett flertal hotell som kunden kan jämföra och välja mellan. I anslutning till dessa internetbaserade tredjepartskanaler finns vanligtvis kommentarsfält där kunder som tidigare bott på hotellen kan dela med sig av sin upplevelse genom kommentarer, det vill säga word-of-mouth. Dessa kommentarer har enligt forskning stor inverkan på kommande kunders köpbeslut, vilket motiverar en studie som undersöker hotells kunskap och arbete med word-of-mouth. Detta undersöks genom en kvalitativ fallstudie av svenska hotell.

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.

The purpose with this study is to enlighten and discuss the information and communication which is spreading through social media, about the tourist operators and also to examine the operators view on social media. Social media can be described as a tool to use word of mouth on the Internet. To make this possible, five actors involved in tourism were picked on Gotland and interviewed for a content analysis. The results showed that the use of social media as an information channel before the consumer buys a trip, has increased. The study also shows that the selected actors have a lot of work to do, before they understand how to use the social media in their best interest for further developing their companies.

I detta arbete studeras hur word of mouth fungerar i praktiken. Word of mouth är passerande, verbal och informell information. I huvudsak handlar det om rekommendationer men även generell information från en person till en annan. Word of mouth är ett mänskligt fenomen som har funnits sedan urminnes tider då människor är kommunicerande varelser. På senare år har dock fenomenet word of mouth blivit mer uppmärksammat, av både marknadsförare, forskare och företag.

Traditionell marknadsföring och reklam i tidningar och på TV minskar, medan tilltron till word of mouth som informationskälla har ökat. Forskare har gjort en differentiering mellan så kallad organisk och konstruerad word of mouth där skillnaden ligger i att den förstnämnda uppstår naturligt ur en positiv upplevelse, medan den senare varianten sker som ett resultat av ett ekonomiskt utbyte med en tredje part. Det största företaget i Sverige som använder sig av konstruerad word of mouth som marknadsföringsstrategi är det webbaserade företaget Buzzador. Få studier har gjorts gällande word of mouth ur den utövande individens perspektiv. Syftet med denna studie är således att kvalitativt intervjua privatpersoner som är medlemmar på Buzzador för att undersöka deras upplevelser av tjänsten och uppkomsten av eventuella dilemman rörande deltagandet i konstruerad word of mouth.

The increased media clutter requires of brand managers to be innovative and creative in their choices of marketing communications in order for brands to be salient in the minds of consumers. Recent studies emphasize incongruent marketing as a means of "standing out" from this competitive clutter and reaching existing and new potential customers. The aim of this thesis is to examine the effects of brand incongruent sponsorships (sponsorships which are incongruent with established brand associations) on consumer response to well-established brands from the perspective of high and low levels of loyalty. A quantitative survey was conducted and the results show that incongruent sponsorships improve brand attitude, brand interest and brand credibility, while not affecting ad attitude, purchase intention and word-of-mouth intention for customers of low loyalty. For highly loyal customers the findings were that brand attitude, brand interest, brand credibility, purchase intention and word-of-mouth intention remained unchanged while ad attitude decreased.

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.

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.