<p>Som människa i dagens samhälle blir man, varje dag, exponerad av ett mycket stort antal marknadsföringsbudskap i form av annonser och reklam, ett antal som är omöjligt för en enskild individ att ta in. Företag har därför svårt att nå ut till sina segment utan att spendera stora resurser på sin marknadsföring. Word-of-mouth (WOM) kan beskrivas som det in-formella rykte vilket förmedlas mellan konsumenter och som innehar en större trovärdighet och genomslagskraft än den traditionella marknadsföringen. Om företag skulle kunna på-verka och kontrollera WOM så skulle detta kunna leda till en viss konkurrensfördel. Kun-der inom servicesektorn, som till exempel hotellindustrin, är speciellt påverkade av denna informella information i deras val av hotell och tjänster. Därför har hotellindustrin fungerat som utgångspunkt för denna studie av fenomenet WOM och hur det kan kontrolleras av företagen. Hotellen som ingår i studien är geografisk belägna inom Jönköpingsområdet.</p><p>Syftet med studien och uppsatsen är att försöka undersöka om och hur WOM är påverkat av de utvalda hotellen i studien och observera de olika metoder som kan har en inverkan på WOM.</p><p>Metoden för insamlandet av primär data är av kvalitativ natur. Där någon från de utvalda hotellens administrativa personal har blivit intervjuad för att svara på frågor som berör denna studie över fenomenet WOM. Sekundär data har samlats in från relevanta artiklar och böcker för att bidra till en så trovärdig analys som möjligt. Teorin behandlar WOM, service och relationsmarknadsföring.</p><p>Författarna avslutar med slutsatsen att det finns en medvetenhet hos respondenterna om WOM och dess betydelse för företaget. Det verkar finnas en större medvetenhet av att ak-tivt försöka minimera negativ WOM än att aktivt försöka influera den positiva WOM. Det fanns indikationer på att hotellen på något sätt använder metoder som man tror generera positiv WOM. Problemet verkar vara svårigheten att utvärdera vad som egentligen är skill-naden mellan relationsmarknadsföring och WOM marknadsföring i några av de metoder som hotellen tror kan genera positive WOM. Hotellets storlek/finansiella resurser verkar också ha en viss betydelse för om hotellen säger sig använda eller vara beroende av WOM. Så även om det fanns vissa åtgärder som kan generera positiv WOM så finns det en passiv attityd hos respondenterna mot att man verkligen kan kontrollera det. Men genom att skaf-fa sig större insikt om hur WOM och de nuvarande marknadsmetoder som används hör samman, tror författarna att hotellen kan bli mer effektiva i sin marknadsföring.</p> / <p>Since a normal person of today is exposed to a vast number of marketing messages from conventional marketing methods like advertising campaigns and commercials, the con-sumer will have to make a choice from all these offers conveyed through promotional ef-forts. Word-of-mouth (WOM) is the informal communication about a service or product between consumers. This can be said to serve as a credibility filter for the consumer be-cause of its perceived independence and trustworthiness. Gaining control of WOM from the company’s point of view could create a competitive advantage over competitors in the market place. Service industries, such as the hotel industry, are highly affected by WOM and therefore hotels were chosen in the Jönköping region in order to study the company awareness and ability to control the WOM phenomenon.</p><p>The purpose of the thesis is to investigate if WOM is a factor which is controlled by the hotel firms and to detect and describe how this is done and what kind of the marketing methods that are being used.</p><p>The method chosen by the authors of the thesis in order to gather primary data was of a qualitative nature were interviews were conducted together with appropriate hotel manag-ers of hotels in the Jönköping region in order to study their view on the WOM phenome-non. Secondary data was collected from relevant theoretical articles and books in order to carry out the analysis of the primary data. The theoretical framework consists of theory concerning WOM, service and relationship marketing.</p><p>The authors of the thesis conclude that there is awareness among the respondents about the power of WOM and its importance for the business. However, there seem to be a greater consciousness of using actions for minimizing negative WOM than consciously in-fluence the spread of positive WOM. Some actions taken by the hotels are indeed believed to generate positive WOM but there appears to be a thin line between creating relationship and actually influencing the spread of positive WOM, this perhaps due to the problem of the WOM evaluation of the actions taken. Size/financial mean also seem to be important factors on the hotels dependence on WOM the action taken to try to generate positive WOM. Even though some methods were detected that were thought to harness WOM, there is still a rather passive attitude among the respondents towards actually being able to influence WOM to its full extent. By gaining more insights of WOM and the marketing methods currently used, the authors of the thesis believe that hotels studied would become more efficient in their marketing efforts.</p>

Thesis (S.T.M.)--Concordia Seminary, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 138-144). Includes additional title p. and some bibliographical references in Chinese.

Word-of-mouth (WOM) är ett begrepp som länge varit känt inom företagsvärlden och syftar till fenomenet där kunder delar med sig muntligt av sina erfarenheter gällande produkter eller tjänster som de köpt eller på annat vis tagit del av. Detta begrepp har uppmärksammats inom forskning på grund av den inverkan den har hos potentiella kunder och på ryktet av den produkt, tjänst eller märke som kunderna pratar om. Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), som liknas till WOM men är distribuerat över internet, har uppkommit i och med utvecklingen av Web 2.0 och förekommer i diverse olika skepnader, så som recensionswebbplatser, bloggar och inte minst sociala medier. Att skriva WOM på internet ger många nya möjligheter för användarna, bland annat större spridning av det budskap som framförs. Det finns olika studier som fokuserar på eWOM i förhållande till marknadsföring men få som utforskar eWOM i sociala medier från ett designperspektiv. Denna studie syftar därför till att analysera vilka möjligheter till eWOM som erbjuds i sociala medier. Detta har gjorts via en internetbaserad etnografisk studie där inlägg från Instagram observerats och analyserats utefter ett affordance perspektiv. Uppsatsen visar hur eWOM affordance kan ta sig uttryck och kontextualiseras. eWOM affordance ger förståelse för vilka verktyg som sociala medier erbjuder användaren. Denna förståelse kan nyttjas av såväl gränssnittsdesigners och interaktionsdesigners vid utveckling av webbplatser samt att det ger större förståelse för begreppet eWOM inom marknadsföring. / Word-of-Mouth (WOM) is a phenomenon which describes how individuals orally tell each other about their experiences of products and services and has long been known in the corporate world because of its vast impact on sales. The phenomenon has also been subject to different studies because of the effect it has of the potential customer’s buying incentive and the impact it has on the reputation of the product or service that the WOM is about. The development of Web 2.0 has afforded individuals to spread their opinions of products and services even further with electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). eWOM has a lot in common with WOM but is instead expressed through text over the internet and can be found in websites such as review websites, blogs and social media. This opens up new opportunities for the users such as greater dissemination of their opinions. There are several studies that explore eWOM in conjunction with marketing but not as many that study eWOM from a design perspective. This study therefor aims to analyze what social media affords regarding expressing eWOM. This has been done through an internet-based ethnographic study where posts form the social networking site Instagram have been observed and analyzed from an affordance perspective. The results of the study show how eWOM affordance can manifest itself and how it can be contextualized in social media. eWOM affordance creates an understanding about what tools social media afford the user. This understanding can be used by interface designers and interaction designers during development of websites as well as give better understanding of eWOM for marketers.

Research in Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) traditionally focuses on product derivation. Prior work has explored the automated derivation of products by module composition. However, it has so far neglected propagating changes (edits) in a product back to the product line definition. A domain-specific product should be possible to update its features locally, and later these changes should be propagated back to the product line definition automatically. Otherwise, the entire product line has to be revised manually in order to make the changes permanent. Although this is the current state, it is a very error-prone process. To address these issues, we present a tool called Paan to create product lines of MS Word documents with back-propagation support. It is a diff-based tool that ignores unchanged fragments and reveals fragments that are changed, added or deleted. Paan takes a document with variation points (VPs) as input, and shreds it into building blocks called tiles. Only those tiles that are new or have changed must be updated in the tile repository. In this way, changes in composed documents can be back-propagated to their original feature module definitions. A document is synthesized by retrieving the appropriate tiles and composing them. / text

This is an in-depth study of word knowledge where the researcher attempts to investigate the need to systematically teach vocabulary in the language classroom. It is motivated by findings within second language (L2) vocabulary testing research that state that the current communicative language learning environment is insufficient for L2 learners to acquire adequate vocabulary knowledge and L2 learners need help with vocabulary learning (Laufer, 2005). This semester-long study explores the need to provide explicit vocabulary instruction from within a meaningful environment. It also investigates the relevance of focus on forms and focus on form practices in helping second language (L2) learners increase the size and depth of word knowledge. The study involved 129 undergraduates from a writing program, and used a pretest and posttest design to measure gains in L2 learners vocabulary knowledge. .The results indicate that the vocabulary gains for both implicit (control) and explicit (treatment) instructional context were not very different though the subjects in the implicit instructional group learned slightly more words compared to the explicit instructional group. However, this has more to do with individual instructor effectiveness and learner proficiency. In terms of word use, L2 learners subjected to explicit focus on forms and focus on form tasks increased their word use while the first language (L1) learners and L2 learners from the control groups did not increase their academic words. Therefore, it is possible to suggest that L2 learners can be taught to increase the depth of their vocabulary knowledge through explicit instructional practices. In terms of L1 and L2 learners, the initial findings revealed that the L2 learners did not benefit from explicit instruction. However, additional analysis revealed that subjects with sufficient vocabulary knowledge at the 2000 word level can increase their word size much more rapidly than the proficient L2 learners in the control group. An additional test on L1 and L2 learners' word collocation skills indicated that while explicit instruction did not help increase L2 learners vocabulary size, it was able to help L2 learners increase their word collocation skills and also make word associations that are closer to L1 learners' associations.

Aim: The Internet has provided a medium for word of mouth and its electronic extension, also known as viral marketing. In the hospitality and tourism industry, use of the internet has caused drastic changes. Consumers are now more used to gathering information about their destinations through online word of mouth The aim of this thesis is to achieve an understanding of the concept of viral marketing and its suitability, as well as its primary link the concept of word of mouth and its relevance to customer relations, in the hospitality and tourism industry of Sweden. Method: A qualitative research approach was used for compiling the primary data of this thesis. Semi-structured face to face interviews as well as structured email interviews were used to gather the empirical findings from two case companies. Secondary data for the theoretical study of this paper was gathered from scientific journals, books and the Internet. Result &amp; Conclusions: The hospitality and tourism industry rely more on word of mouth advertising because of the intangible nature of their services. Therefore, they aim to exceed customer satisfaction so as to generate positive word of mouth. The concept of viral marketing is minimally utilized at the moment, but its use is more likely to be maximized in the future. Suggestions for future research: The results of this thesis were based on a small sample size of the representatives of the hospitality and tourism industry. It would be advisable in the future to conduct a quantitative or a combined qualitative and quantitative study with a bigger sample size that would also include the opinions of the customers.   Contribution of the thesis: This research delivers realistic consequences from the diverse extension of internet users in the Swedish hospitality and tourism industry and finally indicates the promising benefits from the distribution of internet technology in combination with the involvement of individuals.

Denna uppsats behandlar varumärkesassociationer samt dess påverkan på varumärkeskapital. Uppsatsen är genomförd som en fallstudie och undersöker hur det svenska telekommunikationsföretaget Tre tolkar konsumenters associationer till varumärket Tre. Detta jämförs sedan med de varumärkesassociationer som föreligger kring Tres varumärke på marknaden. Varumärkesassociationer formas primärt hos konsumenter och är således inte enbart en process som företag styr. Detta innebär dock inte att associationerna är opåverkbara från företagets sida. En central faktor som påverkar skapandet av varumärkesassociationer har i denna uppsats påvisats vara konsumenters kontakt med företaget, där framförallt den första kontakten tenderar att forma associationerna. Konsumenter behöver inte ha en personlig relation till varumärket för att forma sina associationer då word-of-mouth har visat sig ha en stor påverkan på skapandet och spridandet av varumärkesassociationer. Företags varumärkeskapital gynnas av många samt positivt betingade varumärkesassociationer. För det i uppsatsen studerade företaget tenderar dock en majoritet av de kartlagda associationerna att vara negativa, vilket i sin tur har tenderat att skada det totala varumärkeskapitalet. En annan intressant aspekt av detta är att många bärare av dessa negativa associationer inte själva har en personlig erfarenhet av företaget. Detta understryker kraften av word-of-mouth samtidigt som det betonar vikten av att som företag ha en välarbetad kundstrategi då den har en direkt påverkan på företagets varumärkeskapital. I många framträdande teorier beskrivs det att förmedling av varumärkesassociationer gynnas av att framhäva emotionella faktorer, då dessa sägs ha en djupare påverkan på människors värderingar än vad funktionella faktorer har. Vad uppsatsens empiri dock har kunnat påvisa är att detta är svårt i en teknikorienterad bransch då konsumenter värderar funktionella faktorer högre än emotionella. De funktionella faktorerna tenderar även att ha en stor betydelse för varumärkesassociationer. Uppsatsen presenterar avslutningsvis en nyskapad figur vilken sammanfattar strategiskt betydelsefulla områden som Tre fördelaktigt kan använda sig av för att skapa ett starkt varumärkeskapital. / In this paper brand associations are examined, along with its impact on brand equity. The thesis is completed as a case study and examines what the Swedish telecommunication company Tre believes are the markets associations of their brand.  This is later compared with the consumers actual associations with the brand Tre. Brand associations are primarily formed by consumers and are thus not only a process of corporate governance. This does not mean that the associations are impossible to influence by the company. The result of this study has shown that a key factor influencing the creation of brand associations is consumers’ contact with the company, where especially the first contact tends to form associations. Consumers do not need to have a personal relationship with the brand to form their associations as word-of-mouth has been shown to have a major impact on the creation and distribution of brand associations. Brand equity grows stronger by many and positively charged brand associations. However, for the company Tre, the majority of the identified associations are seen as negative, which in turn tend to harm the overall brand equity. Another interesting aspect of this is that many carriers of these negative associations do not have a personal experience with the company. This underlines the power of word-of-mouth, while emphasizing the importance to have a well-made customer strategy as it has a direct impact on the company's brand equity. Mediation of brand associations is in many prominent theories described favored by highlighting emotional factors as they are said to have a deeper impact on human values ​​than functional factors. This has, by this study´s empirical thesis, shown to be difficult in a technology-oriented industry where consumers value the functional factors higher than the emotional factors. The functional factors also tend to have a important influence on brand associations. The conclusion of this paper presents a new figure that summarizes strategically important areas for the company Tre to create stronger brand equity.

Lexicalists assume that words with derivational morphology and compound words are not formed by syntactic transformation (Selkirk, 1982). The Lexicalist Hypothesis implies that the principles of universal grammar are not operative to word formation. / This thesis argues that a word is composed of lexical constituents and post-lexical constituents, and that the post-lexical constituents can incorporate into a verb, to form the complex predicate. This formational process is subject to syntactic constraints and principles. Therefore, I claim that the principles of universal grammar are also operative to word formation. This hypothesis will throw a new light upon the area of language acquisition of complex predicates.

The Greeks and Romans were acquainted with dark skinned people from Africa from an early stage. It has been generally accepted that such people were referred to as aithiopias; by the Greeks, and modem commentators have accepted the term to be a synonym of the English term 'Negro' . Such an assumption ignores the wide variety of connotations associated with the terms aithiops and aithiopia. Furthermore, the trend in scholarship in the field of race relations in antiquity has been to study the interaction between Greeks and foreigners based on implicit, and often invalid, theory. The aim of this study is to examine the uses of the terms aithiops and aithiopia in the context of Greek ideology. Previous studies in the field have employed naive semiological approaches to the issue of racism in Greece and Rome, whereby references to Negroes have simply been weighed up in order to determine the extent of negative attitude toward Negroes in antiquity. In this regard, the following study departs radically from the approaches of its predecessors in that, although it is not intended as a narrow linguistic study of the terms aithiops and aithiopia, the focus of the examination concerns the semantics of these terms and the connotations thereof. Through an analysis of these terms in their ideological context, not only do we gain an insight into the processes which underlie Greek perceptions of group boundaries, but we may gain a deeper understanding of our own perceptions of race and racism. The study is confined to pre-Hellenistic literature (although later works are often used to illuminate Classical and Archaic passages) since it was the perceptions of the authors from this period which shaped the ideas of subsequent authors. In addition, during the Hellenistic period, the focus of Greek literary activity shifted from Athens to Alexandria, allowing Hellenistic authors far more contact with Negroes than was enjoyed by their predecessors. For the purpose of this study, Lycophron's Alexandria has been assumed to be the last pre-Hellenistic work, although this point may be debatable. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1997.

Internet har utvecklats snabbt de senaste åren och med utvecklingen har sociala medier blivit en stor del av Internet. Sociala medier innebär all form av kommunikation som sker på Internet så som exempelvis Tripadvisor, Facebook, Twitter, Booking.com eller Instagram. Konsumenter som väljer att kommentera upplevelser och produkter på sociala medier ökar. Enligt forskning så litar framtida konsumenter mer på andra konsumenters kommentarer än vad de litar på företagets marknadsföring över deras produkt/tjänst. Kommentarer som skrivs på olika sociala medier lämnas ofta obesvarade av tjänsteföretagen. De kommentarer som lämnas på sociala medier har en stor effekt på framtida konsumenters köpbeslut. Den form av kommunikation som gästerna förmedlar på sociala medier kallas electronic Word-of-mouth eller eWOM. Vilket ledde oss in på att genomföra en studie som undersöker hur tjänsteföretag tar sig an och hur de skulle kunna arbeta med kommunikation genom WOM, eWOM och sociala medier. Vi undersökte detta genom att göra en jämförande studie mellan olika hotell i Umeå. En modell med fyra olika steg skapades för att ta fram en eventuell kommunikationsprocess till tjänsteföretagen. Modellen lägger grund för den undersökning som vi genomför vid insamlandet av data.  Undersökningen gjordes som en kvalitativ forskning med ett avsiktligt urval där vi intervjuade en respondent för respektive företag. Undersökningen visade att det finns en skillnad mellan hur och till vilken grad tjänsteföretagen i Umeå använder sig av eWOM och sociala medier i sin kommunikation med konsumenterna Många tjänsteföretag skulle kunna förbättra det operativa arbetet med WOM, eWOM och sociala medier.