Social media marketing has gained tremendous attention in recent years and has become a powerful tool for companies, entrepreneurs and marketers to approach their target customers and cultivate longtime customer relationship with increased engagement. Despite the increasing investment on social media marketing and the increasingly important roles users play today, few of previous studies, however, were focused on the user behavior or the key factors that influence user engagement with brands on social media. We chose the technology acceptance model (TAM) and uses and gratifications theory (UGT) as our theoretical foundation to investigate user behaviors on social media and the factors that influence user engagement with brands. We tested our model in two different social media platforms; Facebook and Instagram. The conclusions were based on inputs from a survey with 126 respondents with diverse background and age groups. We tested the hypotheses utilizing statistic correlation analyses. Among the five researched variables, H1 (perceived usefulness) and H5 (motivation for information) are proved to be statically significant. Despite a number of limitations, our research sheds a light on the study of user behavior on social media platforms. Understanding user behavior is useful for entrepreneurs and marketers in shaping more efficient ways to target the right audience on the right platform(s) to achieve their marketing objectives by effectively exploiting the potential of social media.

Fördelarna som kommer genom marknadsföring på sociala medier är många men företag behöver bli mer innovativa för att stå ut i mängden. Genom kommunikationen i digital marknadsföring så har integreringen mellan företag och kunder förbättrats. Numera söker konsumenter efter någon form av underhållning i marknadsföringen för att först reagera och sedan dela med sig av innehållet till andra. Innehållsmarknadsföring, som är en del av varumärkeskommunikationen, handlar främst om att tillgodose konsumenternas behov som skapar engagemang och värde genom att kommunicera ut företagets innehåll utan att ha fokus på att sälja produkter. Syftet med innehållsmarknadsföring är att vidare använda sig av innehåll som lockar konsumenten i stället för att det tvingas på konsumenten. Generationen millennials förväntar sig att företag ska kommunicera med sina kunder på sociala medier. Majoriteten av millenials identifierar även modetrender genom mötesplatser online, vilket är mer än andra generationer. Detta för att generationen är involverad i informationsutbyte och inköp online mer än någon annan generation samt mest tekniska. Huvudfokuset i denna uppsats är att undersöka millennials resonemang kring klädföretags innehållsmarknadsföring på Instagram. Uppsatsen kommer fram till attribut som är viktiga för företag att värdera i sitt formande av innehållsmarknadsföring. Denna studie har tillämpat en kvalitativ metod i form av fokusgrupper där det empiriska materialet samlats in. Studien har utgått från respondenter inom generationen millennials. Resultatet visar att företag måste stå ut i mängden genom att vara relaterbara med konsumenten. Detta resultat tyder på att innehållsmarknadsföring är ett viktigt verktyg för företag att integrera med potentiella konsumenter. / The benefits that come from marketing on social media are many, but companies need to become more innovative to stand out from the crowd. Through communication in digital marketing, the integration between companies and customers has improved. Nowadays, consumers are looking for some kind of entertainment in marketing to first react and then share the content with others. Content marketing, which is a part of brand communication, is mainly about meeting consumers' needs that create commitment and value by communicating the company's content without focusing on selling products. The purpose of content marketing is to further use content that attracts the consumer instead of forcing it on the consumer. The generation of millennials expects companies to communicate with their customers on social media. The majority of millennials also identify fashion trends through the online brand community, which is more than any other generation. This is because the generation is involved in information exchange and online shopping more than any other generation and is more technical. The main focus of this essay is to examine millennials 'reasoning about clothing companies' content marketing on Instagram. The essay comes to attributes that are important for companies to value in their shaping of content marketing. This study has applied a qualitative method in the form of focus groups where the empirical material has been collected. The study was based on respondents within the millennial generation. The results show that companies must stand out in the crowd by being relatable to the consumer. This result suggests that content marketing is an important tool for companies to integrate with potential consumers. The chosen language in this study is swedish.

在這個新媒體服務竄起的時代，許多中小型商家卻難以充分利用新媒體在顧客生命週期(customer life cycle)管理的過程中提升顧客參與行為。而在所有新媒體當中，搜尋引擎又被認為是獲取和發展新顧客最有效的方式之一。因此本研究在搜尋引擎的基礎上提出了一個藉由合作營銷活動最大化顧客參與的新架構。 我們利用在顧客參與平台上建構反向鏈結以及長尾關鍵字服務來實現我們的架構。通過針對中小型商家和顧客的控制實驗，我們驗證了該架構的可用性和效果。我們發現兩種服務對於增進網路能見度以及搜尋精準度都有明顯的提升。而高網路能見度及高搜尋精準度可以幫助中小型商家提升顧客參與行為，不論是在顧客參與平台或是其官方網站。因此本研究認為中小型商家可以利用顧客參與平台上的服務來建立合作營銷活動，以促進顧客參與行為。在這個過程中，不僅有利於顧客對於品牌態度的建立也有助於其轉變為中小型商家忠實顧客的可能性。 / Facing the fast-changing trend of service economy upon new media, most small and medium enterprises (SMEs) don’t have the capability to utilize new media to stimulate customer engagement behavior (CEB) through customer life cycle (acquisition, development, and retention). In all the new media, search engine is the most helpful way on acquiring and developing new customers, thus we propose a new framework based on search engine to maximizing the CEB through brand alliance-based campaign (which is a popular marketing strategy for SMEs to acquire new customers). According to our framework, the study implements two search engine services including inlink building service and long tail keyword service on engagement site. With conducting controlled experiments toward SMEs and customers, we testify our system by SMEs and the effects of services toward the customers. We find that inlink building service and long tail keyword service increase both on high search targetability and web visibility for customers. With high web visibility and search targeatbiliy, CEB can be stimulated on engagement site and also target sites of SMEs. Thus we conclude that SMEs can use brand alliance-based campaign with our services as a trigger to stimulate CEB. With increment on engagement behavior, customer’s brand attitudes then increase and in the end become loyal customers to the SMEs.

在這個充滿繁多新媒體時代，使用者面臨到眾多資料和快速變動的環境，使用者在媒體的使用行為和選擇上更加依賴各種推薦平台的建議。除此之外，隨著社群媒體的興起，許多的推薦平台整合了社群的人們關係來提供更準確的建議和選擇。雖然推薦系統在影響使用者的使用行為有顯著的效果，然而企業和品牌卻鮮少去關注或了解如何增加顧客參與行為在整合社群媒體的推薦平台上。顧客參與行為並不只有傳統的交易行為，而是包含了所有直接和間接影響企業品牌的行為，像是使用者回饋、口碑傳播等。而且，現今尚未有清楚明確的定義哪些關鍵因素，會影響顧客參與行為在社群化推薦推薦系統，來藉此獲得顧客關注，形成正向生態系統。 本研究中，我們根據達人在社群化推薦平台中具有重要的影響力的觀點，以促進重塑達人知識來改變原有達人的行為和態度，藉此影響所有一般使用者在社群化推薦平台的顧客參與行為。我們提出新的架構和系統來幫助中小型商家在推薦平台上影響更多的推薦達人，獲得更多的顧客參與。我們建立商家參與後台來幫助中小型商家可以洞悉達人的行為，我們也建立了重新塑造資訊的系統，提供達人所需要的訊息文章，藉此來改變達人的知識和行為。此研究發現，達人的行為會受到娛樂型、知識型和激勵型的文章訊息影響行為，一般使用者也會受到達人行為影響。此外我們藉由品牌合作角度來幫助得到更多的顧客參與行為，我們發現中小型商家可以在社群化推薦平台獲得顧客參與且建立一個正向機制循環。 / With the highly dynamic trend of service economy, the firms are increasingly to co-create value with brand alliance to advance their competition advantage. On the other hand, with the massive information on the new media, the referrals provided by recommender systems in combination with social media have significantly impact on customer behavior. In light of these trends, the markers and firms should aim to increase the customer engagement behavior (CEB) which goes beyond the traditional transactions including purchase and non-purchase behavior on social recommenders. In this research, we focus on the role of mavens who are powerful influencers on the social recommender. We propose a new conceptual framework for facilitating to impact the maven’s knowledge and behavior and increase the CEB on the social recommender for Small/Middle Enterprise (SME). We establish the SME support engagement site for increasing the CEB on social recommender and framing knowledge context to influence maven for achieving the insight of the maven’s behavior. As the result of research, we discover that maven engagement behavior would be influenced by the entertainment, information and incentive types in context from the brand alliance perspective and the non-maven are willing to be affected by maven behavior. Moreover, with this discovery, the SME can increase the customer engagement behavior on the social recommender