Research has concluded that meaningless differentiation with trivial attributes sometimes can be a successful strategy. However, the effect varies with respect to certain aspects such as the price of the product and the decision context. How the characteristics of the consumer influence the effect of trivial attributes has until now been unknown. This thesis investigates how the consumer?s level of knowledge and personal involvement influence the effects of trivial attributes on product preferences and product attitudes.

Background: Knowledge of customer needs is a key factor in companies? struggle to develop successful products. Several studies illustrate that the main reason for failure in product development is lack of customer understanding. Lately considerable changes have occurred. Large-scale mass production is continuously being replaced by customer orientation, especially in the high technological market.

The goal of this essay was to study if the way gaming review sites presented their review evaluation has any influences the level of Product involvement in the users it attracts. The assumption we did during the essay was that there was a connection between user?s level of Product involvement and the quality of the community. To test this assumption we started out by performing observations on the comment sections in three gaming news sites which varied in their method for evaluating games. The result of these observations showed a significantly higher community quality in one of the websites.

Small!size!enterprises!within!the!outdoor!industry!seldom!use!a!structured!process!or!method!when!involving!users!in!product!development.!One!reason!for!this!is!that!many!structured!development!processes!are!designed!for!large!companies!with!very!different!resources.!When!involving!users!in!product!development!processes,!the!most!common!user! is! an! elite! athlete.! She! or! he! often! has! different! requirements! than! the! regular!consumer!and!in!the!customers?!point!of!view;!this!leads!to!nonCmaximized!developed!products.!!The! result! of! this! thesis! is! a! user! involvement! process! for! small! outdoor! companies!based! on! the! Sister! Kenny! Research! Center! Innovation! Handbook,! a! product!development!process,!which!itself!is!based!on!a!phaseCgate!model.!The!process!focuses!on!the!user!category!enthusiastic!amateurs,!since!this!is!what!companies!in!the!industry!require.!The!process!also! focuses!on!how!and!where! small!outdoor! companies! should!involve!users!and!give!recommendations!on!how!many!users!that!should!be!involved!in!a! product! development! process,! different! from! what! the! theory! recommend.! The!process! also! builds! on! that! ideas! should! come! from! the! users! first,! and! then! being!further!developed!by!the!company's!product!developers.!The!degree!of!communication!between!users!and!the!company!is!shown!and!the!report!clarifies!the!user!involvement!intensity!in!product!development!processes.!!The!involvement!process!that!has!been!developed!has!also!been!summarized!in!a!guide!that! can!be!used!by! a! company!on! a!daily!basis.!This! contains! information!on,! among!other!things,!how!users!are!selected!and!how!to!plan!a!workshop.!!! !.

Smartphone applications, or apps, are an increasingly important part of omnichannel retailing. While the adoption and usage of apps for communicating with consumers has grown exponentially over the past few years, there is little academic research in this area. The primary purpose of this thesis is to describe how the involvement in a product category affects consumers' intention to use a retailer-branded smartphone application during their shopping trip. Drawing upon recent IS-literature with models TAM and UTAUT, our results indicate that product category involvement constitutes an important factor on the intention to use a retailer-branded smartphone application. By viewing involvement as a multidimensional construct, our study shows that the degree of hedonic and expressive value a product cateogry provides consumers with has important effects on intention, and these relationships are not moderated by consumers' age.

The research aims at revealing consumers? loyalty to a high involvement product category, connected to a loyalty membership club. Hence, the study aims at explaining similarities and differences between two markets, differently developed in terms of loyalty clubs. The study used IKEA, its loyalty club IKEA FAMILY and women as the company?s main target group, in a case format to study loyalty membership clubs.

Existing studies concerning private labels are unclear as to whether private label manufacturers carry out product development themselves. Furthermore, there is a lack of studies comparing product development processes in private label companies and national brand manufacturers. This study highlights a set of critical product development factors and assesses their prevalence in four different companies in the Swedish retail business. The study is based on a number of qualitative interviews with key personnel responsible for various table fats. Findings indicate two levels of involvement in the product development process on the private label side.

This study investigates whether creative online product exposure within the clothing industry has a positive effect on the behaviour and attitude of today's consumers. Product exposure is the most important stimulus in the online marketing universe, yet few studies exist on this topic. Thus, this study pioneers in this specific research field. Through empirical analysis this study reveals that product exposure has a significant and direct effect on the perceived corporate ability and consumer involvement. Moreover creative product exposure indirectly increases the perceived product quality, intention to buy and the overall attitude towards the brand.

New innovation and technology have influenced the development of product development processes and the four largest banks in Sweden have more or less been forced to adapt their products and services along new customer requirements. It may therefore be considered appropriate to involve customers in this process. This by collecting customer information and allow customers to influence the process to a greater extent. The payment solutions of Sweden?s largest banks' continue to evolve and to pay with electronic money has come to change banks' product development processes of payment solutions.

To be seen is essential. Presently, the marketing of different well-known brands within the same product category is done with little variation. To marketing professionals, this creates an opportunity to market products in an unexpected way. The use of incongruent market communication and by creating a discrepancy between a well-known brand?s advertisement and brand scheme, which is already established in customers? minds, is one way to be different.

Using stimuli with identical information in both PR and advertising, this study seeks to explain how content class together with the level of involvement affects the communication effects of marketing messages. There is currently no established way of measuring the value of PR, and contemporary PR metrics do not take into account what effects PR actually generates. PR is often said to have an advantage over advertising due to the effects of third party endorsement, but previous empirical assessments show inconsistent results regarding what effects each content class generates. The result of this study is that PR is stronger at building recall, interest and credibility, and that it has less perceived selling intent than advertising. Results differ somewhat between different levels of involvement, but the conclusion is that this might not be attributable to the level of involvement per se but rather to the type of products being used in stimuli - a conclusion that seems valid for previous research as well.

This Master Thesis has been carried out in cooperation with Silva Sweden AB. A companywhich manufactures products like compasses, pedometers, headlamps, hiking poles and otherequipment for the out door life and navigation. The purpose of the project has been toassemble methods and models which support user involvement in Silva?s design process.Thus, to increase the number of products with purchasing power, enhance product quality aswell as increase foundation for new product ideas.The focus through out the project has been to assemble a pallet with methods for userinvolvement and from this select a few methods that will fit the company. The purpose of thepallet is to be accessible for the company during their work of change with the design processthat has been going on and will be in the future.

Consumer involvement in the product development process, co-creation, is being practiced by numerous companies. Previous research has investigated how consumer participation in co-creation affects consumer attitude. However, little is known about how co-creation affects the attitudes of the observervers of co-creation. The effect of observed co-creation on consumer attitude should be important when deciding whether to apply co-creation or not, as the observing consumers make up a larger part of the consumer collective than the participating consumers do. The paper at hand aims to investigate how observed co-creation affects consumer attitude and purchase intentions.

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.

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and evaluate essentialprerequisites for companies and corporations aiming at marketingglobal brands in a restricted market.Method:The investigation strategy used for this essay was to perform a casestudy on the Islamic Republic of Iran. Both primary data ? such as asurvey, interviews and participating observation ? and secondarydata ? found in books, scientific articles and the internet ? have beenused to achieve the results. The gathering of empirical data wasperformed inside the Islamic Republic of Iran during two weeks inNovember 2007 in three different cities: Tehran, Ispahân and Bâbol.This was carried out by considering several theories: globalbranding strategies, brand equity, involvement theory andcommunication models.Results: The outcome of this essay show several factors that should be takenin consideration in relation to marketing global brands in Iran. Manycompanies have chosen adaptation as their promotion? and productstrategy because of countless rules and restrictions hindering globalmarketing.