Background: Event marketing is a way for businesses to entertain consumers and promote the brand or product through the use of events. Within event marketing, entertainment, excitement and enterprise are important concepts to include in order to create a successful event. Purpose: The purpose is to explore event marketing in a social media context. The research question is “How is event marketing on social media experienced?” Methodology: This research undertook a qualitative research approach of explorative nature. Un-structured in-depth interviews was conducted with seven participants, sampled with quota sampling. The participants were selected with the criteria of being between the ages 16-34 and using social media and having previously experienced event marketing on social media. After these seven interviews had been conducted, saturation was reached. Conclusion: The main findings of this research are that entertainment, authenticity, innovation and quality are important categories of event marketing in a social media context. Thus, all four categories have an impact on the experience of an individual seeing a marketing event on social media. The category entertainment was shown to be influenced by authenticity, innovation and quality, which in turn has an effect on the experience of the viewer of the event.

With the rise of social media and the emergence of smartphones, new possibilities have arisen for companies to create and maintain customer relations. Today, customers expect companies to be represented on social media platforms. Customers today will discuss companies and products on social media, regardless of whether the companies are represented on the platforms or not. Therefore, it is important for companies to be present on these platforms in order to be a part of the discussion. On Instagram, a company can share content that would perhaps be unfitting for any other medium. This thesis researches how the top five Interbrand companies on Instagram have worked with marketing and PR, and how their posted content affects the users’ level of interaction.    Two methods of analysis have been used in the writing of this thesis. In the first one, content analysis, the content and level of interaction of 200 Instagram posts were examined. Furthermore, a survey was conducted, with the aim of investigating Instagram users’ motivations for using the platform and of following a company profile on Instagram.   The material has been researched with an overall marketing and public relations perspective. Other theories that have been used concern customer relationship management, self-representation and self-disclosure, back stage and front stage and word-of-mouth theories.   The results show strong indicators that different kinds of posts evoke different levels of user interaction. The companies mainly use Instagram to market their products and to share information about events and new releases. These kinds of posts mainly receive a low level of interaction, with as little as one percent of the companies’ followers liking, and two in 10 000 commenting on the pictures. However, when the companies utilized Instagram’s co-creative features, for example by encouraging the users to use company specific hashtags, the level of interaction increased by as much as five times. Other interesting results concern back stage sharing and how interaction affects trust in a company’s message.

The purpose of this thesis was to gain an understanding of how the use of social media can build customer relationships and how interactions in these communication channels can be managed and optimized. A qualitative and deductive method was chosen for a deeper, more detailed and descriptive explanation of the considered topic. Three case studies have been implemented since this method was optimal to the purpose. Creating customer relationships through social media demands an understanding from a company perspective regarding how to treat customers well, encourage interactions and offer valued information. There are challenges working with social media and it is essential to consider the risks because the word-of-web can spread quickly.

This thesis addresses the influence that social media sites have on the behavior of online customers (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, etc.). The thesis combines information from three different approaches that study how social media sites are used by online stores to help increase their sales: 1) Google Analytics; 2) Crazy Egg; and 3) an online Survey. Firstly, Google Analytics was used to collect data from three online sources. The data was used to determine the path that customers took to arrive at the online stores. Using data only from those customers who completed a transaction. The researcher found that revenue generated from search engines was approximately four times higher than from typed URLs, online ads, as well as Twitter and Facebook. The researcher also found that revenue generated from Twitter traffic was increasing. Secondly, Crazy Egg was used to collect information on event actions (e.g., button presses) that generated more webpage specific details. In particular, we were interested in knowing how often customers clicked on an online store’s social media buttons (e.g., on Facebook and Twitter). The Crazy Egg data indicated that customers only used the online store’s social media buttons (i.e., Facebook and Twitter) about 1% of the time. Finally, an online survey was conducted in order to capture the opinions and attitudes of customers who used social media, including their tendencies to follow stores online, and the frequency of their visits to the store’s social media sites. We found that all participants used at least one social media site. Approximately 69% of the participants followed stores online using social media (Facebook and Twitter being the most common) and they used these sites to look for offers, find product information, and read reviews from other customers and the online stores’ owners. The survey also showed that 47% of participants reported that they had used social media buttons while visiting an online store, which was much higher than the results generated by Crazy Egg.

Considering social media’s widespread marketing possibilities this study aims at investigating consumer engagement across YouTube, Facebook and Twitter and how luxury fashion brands can produce such activities on their corporate social media pages. Through applying a mixed method combining both social media data collection together with conducting a content analysis, both quantitative and qualitative measurements were attained. This to provide a deeper understanding when analyzing actual consumer engagement efforts and what role brands’ content strategies play in encouraging these activities. The results confirmed some expectations of the heterogeneous nature of social media as the level of consumer engagement showed to vary notably between both platforms and brands. More so, the results in the current study were not able to confirm any great effects of firm engagement having a direct effect on consumer engagement, instead response and interaction seems to be strictly related to content and product factors. In turn, these factors in relation to aspects such as the psychological state of mind, social, emotional and behavioral aspects showed to be encouraging added consumer engagement.

abstract: As an outlet of communication between internet users, digital social media has created opinionated engagement between people that have similar and often contrasting views, just like those in face-to-face communication (Mckenna & Bargh, 2014). The problem is that these digital conversations occur in a synthetic environment, causing users to develop alternative psychological patterns of engagement (Lauren & Hsieh, 2014), that could potentially push them to inadvertently or unknowingly create and participate in negative social interaction with others. The purpose of this study was to determine and assess the needs of a writing heuristic for social media participants to use in engagement with others to increase coherency, civility, and engagement response in content. Research explored existing literature on engagement behavior in digital social media and computer-mediated communication (CMC) and was then used in qualitative sentiment analysis of business-to-consumer social media environments, aiming to recognize the needs in developing a social media writing heuristic. This research found that such heuristic should prompt and advise users to remove ambiguity within engagement practices, encouraging the implementation of salient social markers and nonverbal cues in text. Social media users should also be prompted to create familiarity with others through the posing of messages in an emotional frame that is aligned with their audience’s emotional attitudes, increasing persuasive argumentation and discussion. As well, users should be prompted to thoroughly understand the issues in discussion and follow dynamics to create productive engagement, while avoiding engagement with negative commentary. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Communication 2016

The purpose of this research was to understand the creation of a brand composed of four individual elite athletes and how stakeholders involved used social media to co-create the brand. The study examined the unique context of the FAB_IV; four individuals divers branded as a team. Semi-structured interviews were performed with participants from Diving Canada, its athletes, member of the COC and sponsors. The sample was built through a purposeful and snowball sampling method that added to stakeholders identified from the literature. Archival data of organizational documents, FAB_IV microsite, social media accounts, news outlet content and online content were also gathered in order to complement the data from the interviews. The deductive and inductive data analysis highlighted four main themes: brand strategies and implementation - sponsorship and sponsorship activation - media and fan interest - stakeholder’s relationship. Specifically regarding social media, the research showed that in order to use social media as a brand co-creation tool, organizations and athletes need to have a strategy in place, use them with consistency and be creative in what they publish. Additionally, fostering relationships with followers was identified as a key contributor of building a brand on social media. Researchers and future researches should focus on organizations who, along with their stakeholders, are using social media as the main tool to co-create their brand. Moreover, having the fan or follower perspective, when doing a research pertaining to brand and value co-creation on social media, would also be a possible avenue for future researches.

Thesis (M. A. (Media Studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2022 / Social networking became a common international trend which has spreads and reached almost every corner of the world. The use of social media platform has developed and exploded into an online platform where individuals can generate content, share it, bookmark it and network at an enormous rate. Amongst the users of social media, students and youth are the main users of social media sites. The research explored Facebook as a tool for improving marketing services at University of Limpopo. Institution of higher learning utilise Facebook for various reasons such getting more followers, maintain existing relationship between the university and its audience and also to communicate with the university audience. Social media can have a great impact on the university and its audience depending on the usage as a two-way communication platform. The main objectives of the study are to identify the manner in which institutions of higher learning use Facebook for marking purposes; examine the performance of Facebook for marketing; and establish the challenges and opportunities of using Facebook as a marking tool. The study employed Nick Couldry’s practice theory and Marketing communication mix theory which are highlighting the relationship between the media, people and organisations. The study also analysed other literature that supports the aim and objectives of the study. A qualitative method was used in the study and results obtained through the use of online observation and semi-structured interview. Content and thematic analysis was applied to analyse the data collected. The population used as a sample were marketing and communication department employees at the University of Limpopo who are working with the university social media pages. With online observation of the University of Limpopo’s Facebook page the findings show that the university’s social media portray specifically Facebook as a one-way communication which they convey messages on the platform without taking into consideration the comments, criticism and queries of the students or audience at large. The empirical findings of the study indicate that Facebook is the most used social media platform at the University of Limpopo. Moreover, participants have highlighted that the purpose of all social media platforms are used to market the institution and as platforms to convey messages to their followers, staff members and university community. v The findings expose the various opportunities and challenges in using social media. However, it is proved that the opportunities outweigh the threats. Some institutions of higher learning use more than one social media platform. However, Facebook was proven to be the most widely used social media followed by YouTube, Twitter and Instagram.

The rise of social media has significant implications for the advertising industry, particularly for the relationships between marketers, consumers and advertising agencies. In fact, the entire advertising landscape has been developing in response to the emergence of digital technologies and advertising media, and the roles of these key stakeholders of the advertising industry and how they perform in the social media era are still not clear. Most previous research on this topic has focused on Western countries and adopted a macro perspective. In contrast, this study contributes to knowledge by focusing on an Asian context, and by exploring how social media are shaping the working lives of individual creatives who play a key role in the development of creative ideas and their expression across an increasingly diverse range of media. This study aimed to explore how and to what extent the work roles and identities of Hong Kong-based advertising creatives are changing in response to the rise of social media. As the study focused on creatives’ experiences, a qualitative, interpretive approach was taken. This involved 32 interviews with advertising creatives in agencies differing in size, digital focus and ownership, supplemented with participant observations in both a multinational full-service advertising agency (Agency-M) and an independent Hong-Kong digital agency (Agency R). The study has provided insights into creatives’ perspectives on their roles, identities, skill-sets and beliefs in relation to the rise of social media, and on the ways in which their relationships with clients and agency colleagues were changing as social media became more important. In particular, the study identified three key experiences of Hong Kong advertising creatives in relation to the rise of social media. First, they were found to have divergent role identities linked to their identification with traditional and digital communication agencies. Second, the rise of social media led them to experience new tensions in their relationships with clients. Finally, across both traditional and digital agencies in Hong Kong, the role of advertising creatives is beginning to transcend the digital/traditional distinction. This new hybrid role was found to involve creative switching between three identities over the course of the advertising development process: creative strategist, creative facilitator, and creative producer. Each of these role identities required more from them than the merging of ‘digital’ and ‘traditional’ creative skills; in particular, the creatives increasingly found themselves having to work closely with a broader range of stakeholders within and beyond their own agencies, requiring them to develop their interpersonal and negotiating skills. This research contributes to understanding the role and role identity in creative industries. It explores the many ways that social media are shaping advertising creatives’ working practices and identities, and it highlights the importance of cultural context to advertising practice. The triadic structure of contemporary Hong Kong advertising creatives’ roles identified here has implications for theorising advertising creativity, agency practice, and social media as a catalyst for individual and organisational identity and practices in the creative industries. The findings also have implications for advertising agency structure and practices, within and beyond the creative department.

published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy