The advertising climate is very dynamic; media and the way companies advertise have evolved countless times since the end of the 19thcentury. Advertising spending in print-based media has been steadily decreasing in Europe during the past years, whereas advertising spending online and on television has been increasing.The emergence of social media as an advertising medium has significantly impacted the advertising climate. Even though it is not yet fully matured, some advertisers believe social media to be the ideal medium, and perhaps the primary medium, to be utilized as an advertising channel in the future. Others believe that the enormous amount of online clutter will be its Achilles heel, hindering its effectiveness in the future. The purpose of this degree project was to study how ad-space buyers perceive different media channels and understand how these perceptions influence the selection of media. Our aim was to fill the research gap of whether the task-media fit hypothesis is applicable in an advertising setting.During our research we have conducted a qualitative study, gathering data through semi-structured interviews from some of the largest media agenciesand ad-space buyersin Northern Europe. We have incorporated a deductive research approach, thus incorporating elements from both the inductive and deductive research approaches. During the course of our study, we have developed our theoretical framework based on communication theories.The purpose of this study is to investigate the role media richness has in advertising. We have striven to gain an understanding of how ad-space buyers perceive different media channels in terms of richness and how these perceptions influence the media selection process.We can conclude that ad-space buyers in fact perceive media types to possess different levels of media richness, and that these perceptions influencethe media selection process based on the communication strategy at hand. However, we can also conclude that regardless of how rich the media is,the ad-space buyer will not select it if the price is too high. Thus,the media selection is therefore not cost-effective.

It is widely known today that marketing plays an important role for the success of a company. The process of marketing is extremely complicated as it is, thus there are markets where this process is complicated even further. In these regulated markets, factors occur during the launching and marketing of a product that interferes with the marketing activities. In these markets advertisers has to obey to laws and rules on how to advertise their products. One of the most regulated markets today is the one of alcoholic beverages. The two largest consumer countries of alcohol today are the United States and the Republic of China. Even though these countries have some similarities as the two largest consumer markets in the world, laws, regulations and attitude towards alcohol vary greatly between them making the process of penetrating the markets even harder. The purpose with this thesis is to get an understanding of how differences in the choice of media channels in the United States and China can be explained by differences in culture and ways of communication as opposed to legal and ethical restraints. This thesis will be carried out as a case study on ABSOLUT VODKA. The authors have used a qualitative approach to the problem at hand together with structured and unstruc-tured interviews with employees at ABSOLUT VODKA that have knowledge about the American and Chinese market Due to limited contact possibilities the empirical findings will also be based on secondary data. The authors have reached the conclusion that ABSOLUT VODKA has to first of all clearly identify its target group to be able to use the media channels efficiently. The authors believe that differences in media channels between China and the United States can to some extent be explained by differences in culture, communication, regulations and ethics. The concepts that are believed to have most impact are believed to be the ethical and moral considerations. Thus the authors are also of the opinion that the factors mention above has a heavier impact on the design of the advertisement than it does on the choice of media channels operating in a regulated market

<p>It is widely known today that marketing plays an important role for the success of a company. The process of marketing is extremely complicated as it is, thus there are markets where this process is complicated even further. In these regulated markets, factors occur during the launching and marketing of a product that interferes with the marketing activities. In these markets advertisers has to obey to laws and rules on how to advertise their products. One of the most regulated markets today is the one of alcoholic beverages. The two largest consumer countries of alcohol today are the United States and the Republic of China. Even though these countries have some similarities as the two largest consumer markets in the world, laws, regulations and attitude towards alcohol vary greatly between them making the process of penetrating the markets even harder.</p><p>The purpose with this thesis is to get an understanding of how differences in the choice of media channels in the United States and China can be explained by differences in culture and ways of communication as opposed to legal and ethical restraints.</p><p>This thesis will be carried out as a case study on ABSOLUT VODKA. The authors have used a qualitative approach to the problem at hand together with structured and unstruc-tured interviews with employees at ABSOLUT VODKA that have knowledge about the American and Chinese market Due to limited contact possibilities the empirical findings will also be based on secondary data.</p><p>The authors have reached the conclusion that ABSOLUT VODKA has to first of all clearly identify its target group to be able to use the media channels efficiently. The authors believe that differences in media channels between China and the United States can to some extent be explained by differences in culture, communication, regulations and ethics. The concepts that are believed to have most impact are believed to be the ethical and moral considerations. Thus the authors are also of the opinion that the factors mention above has a heavier impact on the design of the advertisement than it does on the choice of media channels operating in a regulated market</p>

Personalized communication is when the marketing message is adapted to each individual by using information from a databaseand utilizing it in the various, different media channels available today. That gives the marketer the possibility to create a campaign that cuts through today’s clutter of marketing messages and gets the recipients attention. PODi is a non-profit organization that was started with the aim of contributing knowledge in the field of digital printingtechnologies. They have created a database of case studies showing companies that have successfully implemented personalizedcommunication in their marketing campaigns. The purpose of the project was therefore to analyze PODi case studies with the main objective of finding out if/how successfully the PODi-cases have been and what made them so successful. To collect the data found in the PODi cases the authors did a content analysis with a sample size of 140 PODi cases from the year 2008 to 2010. The study was carried out by analyzing the cases' measurable ways of success: response rate, conversion rate, visited PURL (personalized URL:s) and ROI (Return On Investment). In order to find out if there were any relationships to be found between the measurable result and what type of industry, campaign objective and media vehicle that was used in the campaign, the authors put up different research uestions to explore that. After clustering and merging the collected data the results were found to be quite spread but shows that the averages of response rates, visited PURL and conversion rates were consistently very high. In the study the authors also collected and summarized what the companies themselves claim to be the reasons for success with their marketing campaigns. The resultshows that the creation of a personalized campaign is complex and dependent on many different variables. It is for instance ofgreat importance to have a well thought-out plan with the campaign and to have good data and insights about the customer in order to perform creative personalization. It is also important to make it easy for the recipient to reply, to use several media vehicles for multiple touch points and to have an attractive and clever design.

In regulated markets companies must comply with various rules, standards, and approval protocols to avoid expensive lack-of-compliance costs. Such regulations often limit the ability of companies to advertise and thereby reach out to consumers. This paper uses a qualitative multiple case-study approach to explore, from an industry perspective, how three different companies (a whisky producer, a microbrewery, and an alcohol importer) use digital advertising to raise brand awareness on the Swedish alcohol market. The firms are relatively similar in their approaches, unanimously preferring the use of social media advertising and conducting all activities through the lens of the regulations. However, the degree to which the firms are willing to take risks and find innovative solutions to the unique problems inherent to the regulated market in question differs. Although the study is context-specific, previous research has suggested that features and market practices in one regulated market can influence another. This thesis contributes to the literature on the broader topic of advertising on regulated markets, where research is primarily written from a public health perspective.

Abstract Title: Digital marketing communications in startup companies Author: Jacob Petersson Supervisor: Olga Rauhut Kompaniets Keywords: Startup companies, digital marketing, media channels, brand, stakeholders. Problem formulation: What marketing communication do startup companies use today in digital forums and how important is it for the relationship with the stakeholders? Purpose: The study will investigate digital marketing communications for startup companies in southern Sweden. Furthermore, the study intends to contribute to a model that helps start-ups to achieve successful marketing communication in digital forums. Delimitation: The study was limited to smaller startup companies in southern Sweden. Method: The author has conducted a qualitative study with an abductive research approach. The theory was collected through a literature review of previous research studies and books. The empirics were collected through semi-structured interviews with ten respondents from different startup companies. Conclusion: The study willdigital marketing communications for startup companies in southern Sweden. Furthermore, the study intends to contribute to a model that helps start- ups to achieve successful marketing communication in digital forums.The results point to the importance of using social media and the website asmedia channels in digital marketing communication. By starting early with digital marketingcommunication, startup companies can begin branding. Furthermore, the results indicate thatthe main purpose of digital marketing communication is to reach out to stakeholders andcreate a relationship. A conclusion that can be drawn is that there is a need to strengthencontinuous work with digital marketing communications in startup companies.

Software development is an endless problem-solving activity and programmers regularly use online media channels to ask each other for advice. In particular, socially enabled media channels like the question & answer website Stack Overflow changed how programmers communicate and coordinate, and how they produce and consume content on the Web. Nowadays, a vast body of software development knowledge is documented in form of code examples. But acquiring the knowledge by reading code and logically reason about how they work makes non-trivial examples hard to understand. The aim of this work is to develop visual enhancements that support programmers in the knowledge exchange with code examples. Through a design science research approach using interaction design methods visualizations were developed and evaluated that allow programmers to see the execution and simultaneously inspect the state in order to gain a better understanding of how the underlying system of the code example works. Professional programmers participated in a workshop and found the visualizations to be helpful in the comprehension process.

As the use of the internet increases, so does the use of social media channels. These channels have become a part of everyday life and are changing the way of communication and information exchange. Today, more and more business-to-business (B2B) companies are adopting social media marketing (SMM) to communicate with their customers. Although small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have also started adopting SMM to increase their brand awareness, the existing literature is very limited on this subject. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to identify and describe challenges SMEs face adopting social media marketing in order to increase their brand awareness. In order to achieve the purpose of this thesis a qualitative research method was selected and four semi-structured interviews with marketing directors and coordinators at three SMEs were conducted. The result of this thesis shows that SMEs face some common challenges like financial and human resources, lack of time and expertise in SMM, customer satisfaction, channel selection, global crisis and bad reviews. Further, this thesis found that SMEs also face some individual challenges like cultural issues, measuring brand awareness, language, influential content, communication issues, promotion costs and outsourcing.

Denna studie ämnar att undersöka studenters attityder till utvecklingen av personalisering inom webbaserade tjänster och utforska skillnader och likheter mellan studenternas attityder. Studiens empiriska material är insamlat genom fem kvalitativa intervjuer och en webbenkät med 72 respondenter. Studien behandlar fördelar och nackdelar med personalisering, möjligheter att förhindra personalisering och möjliga konsekvenser av personalisering. Majoriteten av studenterna har en positiv attityd till personalisering av webbaserade tjänster. Resultatet visar att studenterna var mest positivt inställda till personalisering av streamingtjänster och minst positiva till personalisering av nyhetstjänster. Jag fann att användare i stor utsträckning inte anser att nyhetstjänster bör vara personaliserade. Det visade sig finnas en tydlig skillnad mellan studenternas kännedom om olika verktyg som kan användas för att förhindra personalisering. Ju mer teknisk utbildning som studenterna läser, desto bättre kännedom hade studenterna om verktygen. Resultatet visade även att en stor del av studenterna önskade att de kunde stänga av personaliseringsfunktionen på tjänster. Personalisering har blivit en naturlig del av användarnas vardag och att majoriteten av användarna inte har tillräcklig kunskap om fenomenet och därför intar de en passiv attityd och undviker att reflektera närmare över personaliseringen och dess möjliga konsekvenser. / This essay aims to study student’s attitudes towards web personalization and explore where the student’s attitudes differ and converge. The empirical materials of the study where assembled by the usage of five qualitative interviews and a quantitative survey with 72 respondents. The study discusses the pros and cons, the ability to constrain web personalization and possible effects and outcomes of web personalization. The majority of the students have a positive attitude towards web personalization. The students were most positive towards personalization of streaming services and least positive towards personalization of media channels that output news. There was an explicit difference between the students’ knowledge of the possibilities to constrain web personalization through the usage of different extensions and tools. Those students who studied a more technical program showed more knowledge of extensions and tools that can be used to prevent or constrain web personalization. The results also showed that the over all students desire more control over web personalization and demand a function where the personalization of web services could be turned off. The study resulted in the findings that web personalization has become a part of the users every-day life and that the students do not have enough knowledge of web personalization which have led to a passive attitude towards it.

The study focused on the use of social media marketing in the telecommunication business in Zimbabwe, as it has received limited attention in the literature available to date. The study aimed to explore the use of social media marketing in a telecommunications business- Econet Wireless Zimbabwe Limited. The study took on an exploratory research design which was qualitative in nature. A case study approach was applied with Econet Wireless Zimbabwe Limited as focus of being studied. Econet Wireless Zimbabwe Limited was chosen because it is the market leader in the telecommunications industry which has adopted the use of social media marketing in its business. Data collection was done through in-depth interviews with judgement sampling being used to choose the participants for the interviews. The data collected was analysed using thematic analysis. It was found that Econet Wireless Limited is using social media marketing to communicate with its customers, for their brand to be visible. They also use it because it is an inexpensive way to promote their business with a possibility to reach a large number of people in a short space of time. / Business Management / M. Com. (Business Management)