Face-to-face communication is always complemented with non-verbal signals that give us clues as to how a message shall be interpreted, but as communication is moved online the possibilities to express oneself becomes more limited.This paper focuses on the instant messaging client Windows Live Messenger and three of the non-verbal functions that it provides (nudges, winks and emotes). The purpose of the paper and its underlying study is to compare the senders' intentions with the receivers' conceptions when it comes to these functions.The study was done as a questionnaire with two different versions of the questions, one looking at the senders' intentions and the other at the receivers' conceptions.The results were then compared in order to look for tendencies. The results showed that the most common intention among the senders was also the most common conception among the receivers, but that the rest of the attitudes didn't match at all. The functions that are supposed to help the conversation flow often create ambiguity instead and lead to vagueness, misconceptions and annoyance..

Relationship marketing is an important part of the new view of communication strategies. The theories around this subject has a general and global perspective on how to manage relations and communication problems. But somehow the local perspective is forgotten. In this thesis we have focused on the local market and which demands it has on the work with relationship management. The purpose of this thesis is to find out how relationship marketing can contribute to create a high valued brand on a local market.