Det här är en studie som undersöker hur svenska små- medelstora svenska IT-företag påverkas av eWOM (electronic-word-of-mouth) på ett antal utvalda webbplattformar. Avgränsningen av företag till endast svenska små- medelstora IT-företag gjordes för att kunna inrikta sig på en specifik typ av företag. Att genomföra studien med representanter från helt olika företag skulle göra att resultatet antagligen blev väldigt brett. Avgränsningen av webbplattformar gjordes till de webbplattformar som tidigare forskning hade identifierat att eWOM sprids på. eWOM är alla åsikter eller recensioner som skrivs och sprids av konsumenter om företag, produkter eller tjänster på internet. Det finns flera anledningar till att eWOM sprids. Bland annat en konsuments uppfattning, om den är nöjd, missnöjd eller ens relation till ett företag, produkt eller tjänst. För att genomföra studien har en litteraturstudie genomförts för att ta reda på bakgrundsinformation kring ämnet. Även en kvalitativ intervjustudie har genomförts med fem olika respondenter från företag som stämde in på studiens inriktning. Intervjustudien gav inblick i företags kunskap, arbete och påverkan av eWOM. Datan från intervjuerna kodades sedan för att få bättre struktur, samt kunna generaliseringar i datan. Utifrån kodningen har resultat tagits fram i relation till studiens frågeställning. Viktiga resultat som uppkom i studien var att eWOM är viktigt för företag idag och kommer troligtvis vara det även i framtiden. Respondenterna upplevde bara att eWOM hade påverkat deras företag positivt. Det finns risker med eWOM då IT-branschen kan ändras fort, det gäller att vara beredd för förändringar. Betydelsen av resultaten i från studien kan vara att motivera företag att börja arbeta med eWOM eller utöka det arbete som redan genomförs. Studiens resultat visar att det inte behövs allt för stora resurser för att få resultat. Genomförande var av betydelse då en brist på forskningsområdet har identifierats. / This is a study that examines how Swedish small- and medium sized IT companies are affected by eWOM (electronic-word-of-mouth) on a number of selected web platforms. The delimitation of companies to only Swedish small- and medium sized companies made it possible to focus on a specific type of companies. Doing the study with representatives from completely different companies would make the result very amplitude. The demarcation of web platforms were made to the web platforms that previous research had identified were eWOM spreads. eWOM is any opinions or reviews written and shared by consumers about companies, products or services on the internet. There are several reasons why eWOM is spreading. Earlier research has come to the conclusion that a consumer's opinion, whether it is satisfied, dissatisfied or the relation to a company, product or service may be a reasons. To carry out the study, a literature study has been carried out to find background information on the subject. A qualitative interview study has also been conducted with five different respondents from companies that matched the study's focus. The interview study gave insight into the companies' knowledge, work and influence of eWOM. The collected data from the interviews were then coded to get a better structure, and to be able to generalize in the data. Based on the coding, results have been produced in relation to the study's question. Important results that emerged in the study were that eWOM is important for companies today and will probably be so in the future. The respondents only felt that eWOM had a positive impact on their company. There are risks with the eWOM and that the IT industry is changing rapidly, companies has to be prepared for changes. The significance of the results from the study may be to motivate companies to start working with eWOM or to expand the work that is already being carried out. The study's results show that not too much resources are needed to get results. The study was important because it has identified a deficiency in the subject.

Customers are influenced in the physical world by their surroundings; important factors such as packaging, human interaction and atmosphere (environment) play important roles in any purchase decision customers make. Today's customers are moving towards faster, and more efficient ways of purchasing products/services. One of the most influential features in online purchase decisions is the Virtual Store Atmosphere (VSA). VSA is a marketing tool that not only influences purchase decisions, but it also measures the level of satisfaction in tourism and other industries. A high level of customer satisfaction increases the chance that they will recommend the product/service to other customers. However, despite different studies concerning information technology development and the impact of Electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM) on online Customer Purchase Decisions (CPD), eWOM has been little explored in the sphere of web design. It is vital that this research gap should be addressed, based on the online customer nature and the number of online bookings made in the tourism sector. Based on the above, this study aims to critically investigate and examine the impact of the online shopping environment on eWOM and customer purchase decisions, with respect to online bookings in the hotel industry, and develops a framework. The study aims to assess whether or not this impact is due to customers' web satisfaction and willingness to book a hotel online. Additionally, it looks at the influence of the online tourism environment on eWOM and Saudi Arabian customers' purchase decisions with respect to trust and the perceived risks in the area of hotel bookings made online. This research mainly adopts a quantitative method to achieve the objectives. Therefore, a conceptual framework has been developed based on existing literature concerning eWOM, web design and the hotel industry. The proposed framework has been validated using a measurement scale from previous validated studies. The research embraced and applied two main theories in the study, which are the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Stimulus-Organism-Response model (S-O-R). The research used an online survey of 1,002 respondents, which was distributed between two groups (Saudi national undergraduate students and Saudi national academic employees). Interviews, focus groups, and a pilot study were conducted to validate the survey too. Data analysis applied Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to validate the relationships between constructs and to test the research hypotheses. The findings from this study show that the majority of the environmental factors selected (web design) affect ES and motivate users to book a hotel online; these are: Perceived Ease of Use, Perceived Usefulness, Website Content, Intrusive Marketing Tools 'Pop-up Ads and Banner Ads', Search Engine and Enjoyability, but not System Quality. In addition, the results suggest that one of the organism factors, i.e. eWOM, does not influence CPD. As a result, this study contributes to the customer behaviour and web design/quality literature within the travel/tourism context in Saudi Arabia. It contributes to the existing knowledge and supports practitioners of third-party hotel websites in shaping their web development priorities and enables them to focus on the most influential and critical factors.

<p>Fler och fler företag börjar utnyttja Internet för att sprida marknadsföringsmeddelanden till poteniella kunder. Viralmarknadsföring bygger på att ett intressant meddelande skapas, ofta i form av videoklipp, som sedan skickas ut till några få personer som sedan sprider det vidare. Vi har undersökt hur vanlig denna vidarebefordring är och hur känslorsponsen från dessa meddelanden samvarierar med intentionen att sprida vidare. Även tendensskillnader mellan könen undersöktes. I vår studie använde vi oss av fem verkliga kampanjer, bestånde av filmlkipp, som haft stor framgång på Internet. Undersökningen genomfördes bland 60 ekonomistudenter i Uppsala. Resultatet visade att det inte var så vanligt att personer sprider vidare meddelanden som de tar emot. Studien visade även att de filmer med störst känslorspons inte nödvändigtvis hade störst tendens till vidarebefordring. Den enskilda känsla som hade starkast samvariation med intentionen att vidarebefordra var känslan av glädje och resultatet visade även att män vidarebefordrar viralmarknadsföringskampanjer i större utsträckning än kvinnor.</p>

Fler och fler företag börjar utnyttja Internet för att sprida marknadsföringsmeddelanden till poteniella kunder. Viralmarknadsföring bygger på att ett intressant meddelande skapas, ofta i form av videoklipp, som sedan skickas ut till några få personer som sedan sprider det vidare. Vi har undersökt hur vanlig denna vidarebefordring är och hur känslorsponsen från dessa meddelanden samvarierar med intentionen att sprida vidare. Även tendensskillnader mellan könen undersöktes. I vår studie använde vi oss av fem verkliga kampanjer, bestånde av filmlkipp, som haft stor framgång på Internet. Undersökningen genomfördes bland 60 ekonomistudenter i Uppsala. Resultatet visade att det inte var så vanligt att personer sprider vidare meddelanden som de tar emot. Studien visade även att de filmer med störst känslorspons inte nödvändigtvis hade störst tendens till vidarebefordring. Den enskilda känsla som hade starkast samvariation med intentionen att vidarebefordra var känslan av glädje och resultatet visade även att män vidarebefordrar viralmarknadsföringskampanjer i större utsträckning än kvinnor.

This thesis is on the basis of searching EWOM actively and attempt to treat the motivation of using discussion board, and how these motivations explain the influence of discussion board. Reviewing literatures, the thesis generalize the motivations of searching WOM actively and use product involvement to be situational variable in order to explore that the motivation and the consequence of using different discussion board. The thesis adopted bulletin board systems to be the research field, and distributed questionnaires. The research found that though consumers had different motivations of using discussion boards while facing products with diverse level of involvement, in fact, they normally take ¡§information searching¡¨ and ¡§recognition seeking¡¨ as the main motivations. Further, the explanatory power of these motivation factors on the consumers¡¦ behaviors changed by the discussion boards will differ with the product involvement.

Abstract The purpose of this study has been to provide a deeper understanding of how companies in the travel industry works with social media and electronic Word-of-mouth (eWOM) by analyzing and investigating social media and eWOM and how it effects customers’ expectations on the companies service quality. In connection with the purpose we have chosen the following research questions: 1. In which way can companies in the travel industry interact with their customers participation on the Internet through social media. 2. How can companies in the travel industry through their presence on the Internet work to influence customers’ expectations using eWOM.     Based on our research questions we decided to use a qualitative research methodology in order to create a deeper understanding for the phenomenon. Moreover, we chose to work on our study using an inductive approach but with some featuring elements of deduction. To obtain a broad and rich overview of our studied research questions we interviewed a varied selection of representatives in the travel industry. In total we interviewed eight representatives with a wide range of different positions.   Our analysis was divided into three distinct categories that we identified using our main theory, the travel decision-making process. Below each of the categories we could specify when companies and customers interacted with each other using social media and when customers used eWOM as a means of ensuring the service quality of the company. This provided us with the information to determine the importance for companies in the travel industry to make use of customers’ eWOM and that it could actually be of higher importance than the companies’ own product information. Finally, we discovered that to a great extent customers’ expectations are based on eWOM, which in turn makes it of crucial importance for companies in the travel industry to use for their advantage.

Background: The advice and opinions given by consumers online have been proven to have a positive influence on consumers purchase intentions. It has previously been established by researchers that consumer-created information is more trustworthy compared to information provided by a seller. As a result, consumers’ eWOM has taken over the stage on the internet. Social media has in comparison to traditional media brought communication to a new level in terms of engaging consumers online. For instance, bloggers nowadays are assumed to be viewed as peers that can generates social ties between a blogger and a blog reader due to a blogger’s credibility. Thus, the power of peer communication is of relevance when considering persuasion in real life as well as online. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how eWOM can be a powerful tool through social ties between the source and the receiver when it comes to generating consumers’ purchase intentions. The authors intend to contribute with an understanding of how different sociodemographic factors of homophily and source credibility can potentially have a direct or indirect influence on the persuasion process online. To understand the process of how consumers are persuaded through eWOM the authors examine the relationship between Swedish blog readers and Swedish bloggers and the process of how the readers are absorbing and using the bloggers’ message. Methodology &amp; Method: This study was conducted using a qualitative methodology approach. The primary data was collected through interviews and observations. Ten interviews were implemented on the selected sample consisting of women living in Sweden, who are in the ages of 16-25 and read famous Swedish lifestyle blogs. Furthermore, the favourite blogs of the interviewees were observed by the researchers in order to complement the interviews. Conclusion: From this research the authors have found that homophily creates social ties between the blog reader and the blogger, and therefore this underpins that the likelihood of persuasion is higher if several factors of homophily exists. However, the factors of homophily are not sufficient on its own to establish a relationship between eWOM and purchase intentions. Rather, source credibility is considered to be the major factor that determines the extent of purchase intentions.

The “connection generation” craves interaction with and connection to vast social networks through the sharing of information, photos, opinions, entertainment and news. This sharing comes in the form of electronic word-of-mouth or eWOM, and provides marketing and communication managers with an unparalleled opportunity to reach a large number of consumers quickly. With the ever increasing growth of the internet and the rise of social media and social network sites, viral marketing has cemented itself in the marketing and corporate agenda. However, while there has been a shift in marketing budgets towards online and social media, little is known about how to successfully leverage viral marketing. Consequently, understanding why some videos go viral and others do not is becoming an increasingly popular focus of academic research. This study aimed to answer the following research question: What are the factors that drive the virality of online content?   In an attempt to answer this exploratory research question, four papers were used to look at its constituent parts. In the first paper, the role of emotion in the sharing of online content was investigated. Rime’s social sharing of emotion theory was used to explain why emotion could drive the spread of content online. We suggested that people’s propensity to share viral content was a function of the intensity, sociality and complexity of the emotion elicited by the viral content.   The following two papers further investigated the role of emotion in viral marketing by looking at the relationship between content and emotion. Paper 2 used interviews in a qualitative research design to propose a decision-tree of the interplay between content and emotion in viral marketing. This paper showed that the relevance of the content has an influence on viewers’ emotional response. Paper 3 took a closer look at the relationship between content and emotion by using a two-stage design: First, content analysis was done on the comments of selected YouTube videos. Second, an experiment was used to test the emotions that these videos elicited in respondents, the valence of those emotions, the intensity with which they were felt, as well as various content-related factors (e.g. the creativity and humor used in the videos). This paper looked specifically at the use of political communication in viral marketing and showed that creativity, valence and the intensity of the emotions elicited by the content are key drivers of viral success.   The final and fourth paper culminates in a model for the sharing of content online. This paper built on the findings from the previous papers, but also made use of interviews, and the analysis of a longitudinal dataset to propose a comprehensive model for the spread of content online. The longitudinal dataset was compiled using the top 10 posts from Reddit.com, a viral aggregator website, over the period of 25 days. The comprehensive model shows that there are external, intrapersonal and interpersonal drivers of viral content. The external drivers of viral content are the viral videos themselves (content) and its popularity. The content construct refers to various aspects related to the content itself, for example how informative, creative, humorous etc. the content is. Its popularity, on the other hand, was driven by both WOM and mainstream media reports. The intrapersonal drivers of viral content refer to the emotions that the content elicited in viewers. Viewers’ emotional response to the content was influenced by its relevance, but also by the valence and intensity of the emotion that they felt. Even though some content elicited intense emotions in viewers, some viewers did not share the content and interpersonal drivers of viral content was introduced to the model. These drivers recognise the social aspect of social media, and that content gets shared with large social networks. The model contends that people share viral content with their social networks as a form of online gift giving, out of altruism, or simply to build their own reputation. Finally, we contend that, in this content à emotion à social sharing chain, people share viral content both online and offline, as many respondents simply told their friends about the content (thus prompting them to go and watch the content themselves) or showed them the content themselves. This online and offline sharing of content increased the popularity of the content and a self-reinforcing chain was created, increasing the exponential growth typically associated with viral content.   As consumers are exposed to an increasing amount of marketing messages, and marketing budgets shrink, marketing managers could greatly benefit from better understanding how to more effectively make social media part of their marketing strategy. Viral marketing allows for a low-cost way of communicating marketing messages with great potential for impacting the market. This study ultimately shows what marketing managers can do to increase their chances of viral success, and ends off with a list of managerial recommendations to leverage the external, intrapersonal and interpersonal factors present in viral campaigns. / <p>QC 20140911</p>

Titel: Experten eller konsumenten – Vem påverkar oss mest? Nivå: C-uppsats inom företagetsekonomi Författare: Mattias Strömberg Bennermo &amp; Johan Öhlund Svensson Handledare: Akmal Hyder Datum: 2015-06-05 Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att jämföra expert- och konsumentrecensioner för att se vad som påverkar konsumenten mest inför ett köpbeslut av search goods. För att jämföra dessa har vi valt ut tre variabler för att kunna identifiera likheter och skillnader. Dessa är tillgänglighet, användbarhet och pålitlighet. Metod: För denna studie har vi använt oss av en kvantitativ metod och en surveydesign. Vi har genomfört en enkätundersökning där vi har ställt frågor med bakgrund i vår teori som i sin tur har byggt på vår forskningsfråga och syfte. Materialet har sedan insamlats och därefter analyserats med programmet SPSS. Resultat &amp; slutsats: Studien har visat att konsumentrecensioner uppfattas som mer tillgängliga, mer användbara och mer pålitliga än expertrecensioner. Det gör att vi tydligt kan slå fast att det finns tydliga skillnader i hur konsumentrecensioner och expertrecensioner uppfattas bland våra respondenter. Förslag till fortsatt forskning: Ett resultat ifrån vår studie som ligger till grund för vårt främsta förslag till vidare forskning är vad den stora skillnaden i uppfattad användbarhet mellan expert- och konsumentrecensioner kan bero på. Vilka är anledningarna till att experters recensioner inte anses vara användbara inför ett köp? Uppsatsens bidrag: Vi hoppas att den här studien har gett ett beständigt bidrag till forskningen gällande i hur hög grad konsumenter tillhörandes generation Y litar på och använder sig av konsumentrecensioner och expertrecensioner när det gäller search goods. Nyckelord: Konsumentrecensioner, expertrecensioner, internetanvändning, eWOM, internet, Generation Y. / Title: The expert or the consumer – Whom influence us the most? Level: Final assignment for Bachelor Degree in Business Administration Author: Mattias Strömberg Bennermo &amp; Johan Ölund Svensson Supervisor: Akmal Hyder Date: 2015-06-05 Aim: Our aim with this paper is to compare expert and consumer reviews so to see what affects the consumers in their buying decision when it comes to search goods. To be able to do that we have chosen three variables in order to identify similarities and differences. These are availability, reliability and usefulness. Method: For this study we have made a quantitative research with a survey design. We have made a survey in which we have asked questions based on our theory, applied in relation to our aim and research questions. The material has then been collected and later on analyzed with SPSS. Result &amp; Conclusions: Our study shows that consumer reviews are believed to be more reliable, more accessible and more useful than expert reviews. That make us conclude that there are significant differences between how consumer reviews and expert reviews are perceived among the respondents. Suggestions for future research: Our results creates several suggestions for further research. We have found that there is a big difference in the perceived usefulness  between consumer reviews and expert reviews. However we do not know why this big difference occurs, which is something we suggest that future research may investigate. Contribution of the thesis: We hope that this study will give a durable contribution to science regarding to which extent generation Y trust and use consumer reviews and expert reviews when it comes to search goods. Key words: Consumer reviews, online reviews, expert reviews, internet use, eWOM, internet, Generation Y

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