Antalet bloggar växer och läsarantalet för bloggar likaså, framför allt har en ökning märkts hos unga kvinnor (Findahl, 2011). Att bloggläsandet har ökat medför att läsaren sätter sig själv i en situation där de kan utsättas för påverkan, både i form av bloggtext samt reklam i form av annonser. Frågan är om det nya bloggfenomenet nu kommer att ta över som en ny marknadsföringskanal gentemot de traditionella annonsreklamerna. Kommer de personliga blogginläggen att påverka mer än traditionell reklam? Syftet med denna studie är därför att undersöka om unga kvinnor upplever att deras köpintentioner påverkas av bloggar. Genom att undersöka om ett specifikt blogginlägg har en uppfattad påverkan på unga kvinnor och deras upplevda köpintentioner jämfört med en annons, ämnar vi att öka förståelsen för bloggar och makten bakom datorskärmen. För att uppfylla syftet behandlades följande två hypoteser; 1.    Unga kvinnors bloggvanor uppfattas ha en påverkan på dem och deras upplevda köpintentioner. 2.    Blogginlägget har en större uppfattad påverkan på unga kvinnors upplevda köpintentioner jämfört med annonsen För att undersöka detta tilldelades respondenterna slumpmässigt två olika enkäter vid undersökningstill-fällena. Den ena enkäten mätte den uppfattade påverkan av ett produktinriktat blogginlägg, den andra av en annons. Respondenterna är utvalda med hjälp av ett bekvämlighetsurval och består av 128 unga kvinnor som går sista året på gymnasiet. Undersökningen har bedrivits under skoltid på fyra av de största gymnasieskolorna i Jönköping. Datamaterialet som samlades in från enkätundersökningen matades sedan in i ett program för statistikbehandling, SPSS. Dessa grupper jämfördes sedan statistiskt för att kunna antingen förkasta eller acceptera hypoteserna. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att respondenterna upplever att deras köpintentioner blir påverkade av deras vanor av bloggar. Det visar även att sambandet mellan deras bloggvanor och upplevda köpintentioner är positivt. De vars bloggvanor är mer frekventa har också större intentioner att handla något som de har läst om i ett blogginlägg. De upplever också att deras köpintentioner påverkas mer av ett blogginlägg än av en annons. Skillnaden är dock liten. / Blogs are increasing in popularity, especially among young women, both when it comes to writing blogs and reading them (Findahl, 2011). As a consequence, readers are putting themselves in a situation where they are being exposed to influence. The question arisen from this is whether blogs should be given more attention and if companies should consider them part of their marketing strategies. Will the personal blog posts have a greater effect on consumers compared to traditional advertising? The purpose of this study is therefore to investigate if young women perceive that their purchase intentions are influenced by blogs. By investigating if a specific blog post has a perceived influence on young women and their purchase intentions compared to an advert, we aim to increase the understanding within the subject of blogs and to recognize the power on the other side of the computer screen. In order to fulfill the purpose, following hypothesis were addressed: 1.    Young women’s experiences of blogs are perceived to have an influence on them and their per-ceived purchase intentions. 2.    The blog post has a greater influence on young women and their perceived purchase intentions compared to the advert. The respondents were randomly allocated two different surveys where one measured the respondent’s perceived influence from blog posts and the other measured the respondent’s perceived influence from an advert. The sample was conducted by the use of convenience sampling and consisted of 128 young women who all are attending their last year in high school in the four largest schools in Jönköping. In order to receive statistical results, the collected data from the surveys were entered in a statistics program called SPSS. The groups were then compared in order to establish if the hypotheses would be rejected or accepted. The results from the study show that the respondents experience that their purchase intentions are influ-enced by blogs. Furthermore, there is a positive correlation between their blog experiences and their per-ceived purchase intentions; those who are more frequent in their use of blogs, have more intentions to buy something that they have read about on blogs. They also experienced that their purchase intentions are influenced more by the blog post than the advert. The difference is small though.

Companies providing digital news are today struggling with low purchase intentions among their consumers. Over the years, the Internet has become a vital part of how people consume news, and the growth in online consumption has led to a decline in printed circulation. Newspapers all around the world are earning only the minor share of their total revenue from digital operations. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of perceived ease-of-use, perceived usefulness, trust, reputation, word-of-mouth, and willingness to customize on consumer´s purchase intentions for digital news. This study aims to answer to the following research question:   What kind of effects do perceived ease-of-use, perceived usefulness, trust, reputation, word-of-mouth, and willingness to customize have on consumers purchase intentions for digital news?   In order to answer our research question, we have conducted a quantitative survey that was directed towards the subscribers of Resumé, the leading Scandinavian business magazine in the area of marketing and advertising. Currently, Resumé is struggling with earning money from their digital content and their practical problem provided us with a great opportunity to contribute to the field of research about digital purchase intentions.   Purchase intentions are an indicator of a consumer´s approach towards a purchase and prior studies demonstrates that perceived ease-of-use and perceived usefulness, which constitute the Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989), are cornerstones in order to predict online consumer behavior. In our study, we also consider willingness-to-customize, which has been found to be an important decision-making factor regarding digital purchase intentions. People’s perceptions of the trust and reputation of a company are also proven to be relevant factors when predicting online consumer behavior, which in turn can be influenced by the word-of-mouth from other consumers, friends and family. Based on our literature review, we can conclude that there is a research gap related to the examination of the effects of these specific factors on consumer´s purchase intentions for digital news.   The findings of our regression analyses, based on 234 responses we received through the survey, demonstrate that perceived ease-of-use, perceived usefulness, and word-of-mouth have positive significant effects on consumer´s purchase intentions for digital news. Based on these results, we have developed a revised conceptual model that includes the three factors that were proven to affect digital purchase intentions. Our study makes a theoretical contribution to the research field about digital purchase intentions and online consumer behavior. The study also provides managerial implications concerning how companies can enhance the digital purchase intentions among their consumers. We suggest the practical recommendations directed towards managers in the digital news business in general, and for the managers of Resumé in particularly.

Due to the rise of the internet, the mislabelling of food products has turned into a well-known phenomenon. There is an unsolved paradox concerning how the act of mislabelling may influence brand loyal grocery shoppers’ loyalty and purchase intentions towards their favourite food brands. To investigate the area of mislabelling and brand loyalty, four in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted in a qualitative setting. The participants were handpicked based on a purposive and convenience sampling method, where individuals with experience in the catering industry were requested. The findings suggest that the outcome of mislabelling is highly individual as it may be perceived differently depending on the shoppers’ level of involvement as well as the strength of the initial brand loyalty. The present study contributes new theoretical insights concerning the concepts of branding and brand loyalty, suggesting that trust is an essential element. Also, this study contributes to practical implications that may limit the loss of consumer trust from a firm’s perspective. For future research, this study suggests that a cultural or gender-centric investigation concerning mislabelling and brand loyal grocery shoppers would be appropriate.

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Background: Social media have had a big influence on consumers engagement and the upcoming of social media influencers. Social media influencers are often seen as people who are similar to their audience and could be seen as strong opinion leaders. Social media influencer marketing is becoming more and more beneficial for businesses to implement in their marketing strategy. In order to know how to choose the right SMI for the cause, it could be useful to consider four specific characteristics of social media influencers. The characteristics have previously been examined in quantitative research, focusing on the relationship between the characteristics and purchase intention. Therefore, a certain need to explore how this relationship influence consumers’ purchase intentions has been identified. Purpose: The purpose of the study was to explore how consumers purchase intentions are influenced by social media influencers characteristics. The question that was asked in the study was how does each of the characteristics of social media influencers influence consumers’ purchase intentions. Methodology: This thesis used a qualitative approach and was of exploratory nature. The data was gathered through unstructured in-depth interviews based on a purposive sample considering the age group (millennials born between 1980-1996) as well as the participants frequently consuming social media influencers. The researchers verified theoretical saturation at six interviews. Conclusion: The main findings of this thesis entail how consumers’ purchase intentions are influenced by social media influencers characteristics. What was concluded is that there are eight categories that explain how the respondents thought that social media influencers can achieve with being attractive, being perceived as similar to their consumers, being authentic and being trustworthy in order to influence their purchase intentions.

The aim of this degree project is to gain a deeper understanding of how online reviews affect consumers' purchase intentions when purchasing high-involvement products. Exploring the differences of effect between two separate generations of consumers, Generation Z and Millennials. The age intervals have been 18-41, 18-25 for Generation Z consumers and 26-41 for Millennials. This research is utilizing a deductive approach paired with a quantitative research strategy. The primary data collection method has been through an internet-based self-completed questionnaire, whereas the data later on has been analyzed. The analysis has been conducted through the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) program allowing for the researchers to perform a series of statistical analyses. From the empirical findings and analysis conducted, it was concluded that all of the hypotheses were disproven and rejected, showing no significant difference. Through SPSS a series of independent sample t-tests were conducted to extract two means for the two generations. The statistical output displayed a higher level of impact on Millennials consumers contrary to the hypothesis, predicting Generation Z’s purchase intentions being significantly more impacted. Through SPSS the researcher have been able to compare how each generation compare against each other in terms of all the variables making up purchase intention (Involvement, Argument Quality, Source Credibility, Information Usefulness), but also performed t-tests to see how their answers differentiate in each question as well. This study could provide marketers with very insightful knowledge about how online reviews affect consumers differently, allowing for adaptation and optimizations.

Background: As an effect of the growth of Instagram during the past few years, more brands have started to use this platform to communicate with their consumers, and a generation that has been shown to be particularly interesting for fast fashion brands, is Generation Y. During the past few years, a term called body-positivity has increased in popularity among social media platforms like Instagram, which purpose is to encourage exposure to different body types. There are several studies that have highlighted the issues regarding the use of exclusively thin models among fast fashion companies, and that this increase body dissatisfaction among women, especially in the Western culture where the ideal is unrealistically thin. This has resulted in criticism towards marketers which have led to some brands starting to use more larger models in their advertising. However, some brands still use exclusively thin models because they believe that this is what people wants to see. Evidently, there are different opinions regarding the subject. However, what has yet not been studied thoroughly is female consumers attitudes regarding the use of body diversity in advertising on Instagram and how this influence brand attitudes and further, their purchase intentions. Purpose: As the authors of this study found a research gap regarding consumers attitudes within the subject – the purpose of this study will be to explore female Generation Y consumer’s insights regarding body diversity in Instagram advertising, resulting in judgment, feelings, and attitudes towards the advertisement and the brand, and how these attitudes influence purchase intentions. The aim is also to explore to what extent the case companies include body diversity in their Instagram advertising. Method: The research purpose was fulfilled by doing an exploratory study, using an abductive research approach and qualitative method. The authors of this study did a semiotic analysis of the advertising content, and further on collected the empirical data by doing 12 semi-structured interviews. The data was further analyzed by incorporating a thematic analysis. Conclusion: The findings of this study showed that Nelly was the only case company including some body diversity in their Instagram advertising. NA-KD and Zalando evoked mostly positive feelings among the participants while Nelly evoked mostly negative ones. Further, the majority of the participants had favorable attitudes and positive purchase intentions towards NA-KD and Zalando. None of the participants had exclusively favorable attitudes towards Nelly’s advertisement, although half of the participants had positive purchase intentions towards the brand. Generally, the majority of all attitudes that were formed towards the case companies were not influenced by the body diversity (or no body diversity) that they were exposed to, but their attitudes were influenced by other things. The results also showed that including body diversity in Instagram advertising is important, for female Generation Y consumers. However, other factors might be more important and furthermore have a greater influence on their purchase intentions, like for example ethnic diversity.

This master thesis aims to investigate the possibilities of predicting purchase intentions of customers during their sales processes in the real estate sector. Also, the web activity of customers on a real estate company’s web site is used as the basis for the forecasting. A machine learning framework has been developed, where its compliance with the GDPR is also assessed.  Five supervised machine learning algorithms – logistic regression, k-nearest neighbors, decision tree, random forest, multilayer perceptron – have been utilized for predicting the classes of the customers: buyers and non-buyers. Three data sets were generated, which represented the total number of active customers at different points in time: at the same day as a sales process starts (day 0) and 10 and 20 days after it. The algorithms were applied and evaluated on these data sets to identify when it is suitable to predict the purchase intentions of customers. To increase the generalization capability of the algorithms, hyperparameter optimization along with data resampling by combining undersampling and synthetic minority over-sampling techniques, k-fold cross validation and mutual information, as feature selection, were applied. The results show that the number of visited web pages, sessions, searched projects (concerning accommodations) and searched locations were relevant for all three data sets. The average price (in total and per square meter) of the most frequently visited web page regarding projects were also included in all the data sets. In addition, the total number of registration of interests sent, and the total amount of time spent on the company’s web site were considered in the second (day 10) and third data set (day 20). Further, a multilayer perceptron – applied 10 days after the start of a sales process – was considered as the optimal model for classifying the purchase intentions of customers. Moreover, the developed machine learning framework is argued to be compliant with the GDPR. Further evaluation regarding the compliance needs to be conducted if the methodology of this machine learning framework would be implemented in practice.

This thesis investigates the nuanced factors influencing purchase intention and loyalty within the consumer durables markets of Sri Lanka and Pakistan. The study focus its attention on the trust and price value as main ingredients for purchase intention and loyalty while focusing on other environmental factors affecting consumer decision making efforts. The chosen research approach adopts a deductive method, with hypotheses derived from existing literature, concentrating on trust, loyalty, and price value concerning purchase intentions in Sri Lanka and Pakistan's consumer durables market. Primary data collection employs questionnaires distributed in these populations, utilizing a stratified random sampling technique to ensure diversity. The study supplements this with secondary data collection from reputable publications. The findings yield valuable managerial implications for consumer durable marketers targeting Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Key strategies encompass prioritizing transparent communication for trust-building, implementing fair pricing strategies, strategic investments in digital engagement, addressing environmental sustainability preferences, and adopting a holistic approach to customer loyalty. While emphasizing personalized engagement, community emphasis, and cultural resonance are crucial in Sri Lanka and Pakistan, global markets may demand standardized quality, innovation, and consistent customer experiences. Theoretical contributions extend to understanding consumer loyalty dynamics, exploring price value perception, and fostering cross-cultural insights, offering actionable insights for tailored marketing strategies and product offerings in these diverse markets. Despite its contributions, the study acknowledges limitations, including a restrained exploration of variables, a relatively small sample size, demographic homogeneity among participants, and exclusive reliance on a single data collection method. Recommendations for future studies encompass incorporating qualitative data exploration methods for a more holistic understanding of consumer decision-making, conducting a comprehensive analysis of environmental attitudes, recognizing the dynamic nature of consumer behavior through longitudinal studies, exploring cross-cultural differences, and expanding the geographic scope beyond Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

Through the development of digitalization, the use of the Metaverse and the strategy of utilizing game elements for brands has increased. Therefore, this thesis purpose has been to understand, from the consumers perspective, if consumer engagement is influenced by gamification strategies used by brands in the Metaverse. The study for this thesis was quantitative, where two digital surveys was performed. When collecting the initial survey, too few respondents were obtained which gave the study too vague result to work with. Therefore, the authors of this thesis decided, for a two-week period, to reopen the questionnaire. The final survey amounted in a total of 125 respondents and was therefore the one used for this thesis. Beside the information conducted by the survey, this theses relied on the theoretical framework based on previous research on aspects such as Gamification strategies, the Metaverse, consumer experience and consumer engagement. The results from this thesis showed that there was a significant relationship between how the repondents were aware of game elements and their purpose and if they let it influence their engagement beside their awareness. We did also perform two additional Pearson Chi-square cross-tabulations concerning the areas of encouragement and spending habits, and market perception. The results in those two did however not show any significant relationships.  This thesis contributes to an understanding of how applied gamification strategies within the Metaverse is experienced by consumers and how it influences them.