Användarskapat innehåll, eller UGC från engelskans User Generated Content, har med teknikens utveckling blivit allt mer populärt på webbtidningar. Det ses som en konkurrensfördel men kan även innebära risker för tidningen, inte minst kostnadsmässigt. Det blir därför viktigt att satsa på UGC som läsarna vill ha, men vad detta innebär är inte ett välutforskat ämne. Denna uppsats ämnar svara på vilket användarskapat innehåll läsare av webbtidningar föredrar, samt varför de föredrar just detta. Med utgångspunkt i en litteraturstudie identifierades fem aspekter som kan hjälpa till att beskriva UGC. Med en dagboksstudie urskiljdes nio teman utifrån vilka det var möjligt att styrka fyra av aspekterna samt identifiera ytterligare fem aspekter som föreföll påverka hur läsare uppskattar UGC. / User Generated Content (UGC) has, with the fast-paced technological development, become increasingly popular in online newspapers. It is considered a competitive advantage but might entail risks for the newspapers, not in the least cost-wise. Thus it becomes important to invest in the UGC readers want, but what this encompasses is not a widely explored subject. This essay intends to answer what UGC readers of online newspapers prefer and why they prefer this particular content. On the basis of a literature study five aspects that can help describe UGC were identified. A diary study resulted in the identification of nine themes based on which it was possible to corroborate four of the aspects as well as identify a further five aspects that appeared to affect how readers view UGC.

With the gradual rise of Web-2.0 based platforms, Internet users were given the possibility to interact with each other in virtual communities. Originating from this development was the concept of user-generated content (UGC), which implies that people were able to enrich each other’s user-experiences by sharing creative efforts and communicating openly (O’Reilly, 2007).   As Web 2.0 features continued to grow, marketers became aware of the opportunities this new development online created and how they could use it to their advantage (De Chernatony & Christodoulides, 2004). The development online however also faces companies with challenges, as consumers now are able to create and share opinions and thoughts about brands, which to an extent is uncontrollable by companies (Christodoulides et al., 2012). Just as marketer-controlled communication can create new brand associations in the minds of consumers, for better or worse - so can also externally-generated communication, such as brand-related UGC, do.   Knowing that consumers generally trust what other consumers say about products more than marketing communication (Cheong & Morrison, 2008; Song & Yoo, 2016), and that there does not exist much research on how consumers perceive brand-related UGC, this is a considerably important topic to study. A classic way of studying communication effectiveness is through credibility, which is argued to be a major determinant of whether consumers accept and adopt what is communicated (e.g. Hovland et al., 1953). Thus, the purpose of this thesis is to gain an understanding of how consumers assess credibility of brand-related UGC and furthermore, what their consequent responses are.   A qualitative approach was taken as the purpose is to gain insight rather than proving a point. The interviews were semi-structured and formed around three Instagram posts relating to a specific brand, which were deliberately chosen based on the content of the theoretical framework developed. Through using these example cases, interviewees’ first reactions could be captured and their reasoning around credibility could be followed and discussed.   The results from this study indicate that there exists a certain level of irritation as well as a scepticism towards brand-related UGC. This seem to stem from a suspicion that most content that promotes products and brands is part of sponsored collaborations, into which consumers put noticeably much distrust. Beyond questioning sponsorship, it was also found that the source played a particularly important role when assessing credibility. When a source is familiar, it is easier to determine credibility of brand-related UGC, and credibility furthermore increases with perceived expertise, attractiveness and trustworthiness. The channel through which a message is communicated also matters, as it is more difficult to be ingenuine through a video than an image or a text, which implicated that consumers may find videos more credible than other media formats. The message itself was also deemed to influence the credibility assessment, as the message was questioned both based upon common sense but also on knowledge and previous experience.   As for practical implications, this study indicates that encouraging or generating positive brand-related UGC through paid collaborations, is a balancing act, into which much consideration needs to be put. With the evident irritation that consumers feel when it comes to brand-related UGC, marketers should be careful to push too much positive brand communication onto the consumer, or it will turn negative. To come across as genuine, the “who”, ”what” and ”how” of communication should be carefully considered.

Der Einfluss sogenannter nutzergenerierter Inhalte im Web hat in den letzten Jahren stetig zugenommen. Auf Plattformen wie Blogs, sozialen Netzwerken oder Medienportalen werden durch Anwender kontinuierlich Textnachrichten, Bilder oder Videos publiziert. Auch Inhalte, die aktuelle gesellschaftliche Ereignisse, wie beispielsweise den Euromaidan in Kiew dokumentieren, werden durch diese Plattformen verbreitet. Nutzergenerierte Inhalte bieten folglich das Potential, zusätzliche Hintergrundinformationen über Ereignisse direkt vom Ort des Geschehens zu liefern. Diese Arbeit verfolgt die Vision einer Nachrichtenplattform, die unter Verwendung von Methoden des Information Retrievals und der Informationsextraktion Nachrichtenereignisse erkennt, diese automatisiert mit relevanten nutzergenerierten Inhalten anreichert und dem Leser präsentiert. Zur Suche nutzergenerierter Inhalte kommen in dieser Arbeit maßgeblich geographische Entitäten, also Ortsbezeichnungen zum Einsatz. Für die Extraktion dieser Entitäten aus gegebenen Nachrichtendokumenten stellt die Arbeit verschiedene neue Methoden vor. Die Entitäten werden genutzt, um zielgerichtete Suchanfragen zu erzeugen. Es wird gezeigt, dass sich eine geounterstützte Suche für das Auffinden nutzergenerierter Inhalte besser eignet als eine konventionelle schlüsselwortbasierte Suche.

Since its inception, social media has developed into something that is now a constant part of our everyday lives. From being a digital place where users could keep in touch with friends and family, social media has become a place where consumers and companies have the opportunity to communicate. As a consequence, companies have had to renew and adapt the strategies used to reach their consumers. Some of the strategies that have emerged are UGC, E-WOM and Influencer Marketing. As consumers have been given an opportunity to communicate back, power has shifted to the consumer. Hence, this study has chosen to have a consumer perspective where attitudes in terms of trust, credibility and skepticism as well as purchase intention are treated and examined. Using a survey, responses from 118 respondents were collected and processed. The results of our collected data showed that the strategies examined have a positive impact on the consumer's attitude and purchase intention. With this in mind, it is in the companies' interest to expand the knowledge about these strategies and develop the company in a way that makes it possible to take advantage of the benefits that are in the strategies. The results of this study contribute to an increased understanding of marketing in social media, but the topic is far from fully explored. With the help of our research, we have also developed a combined marketing strategy that takes advantage of the benefits of each strategy. The models in this study cannot explain the consumer attitude and purchase intention in their entirety as the research area needs to be developed where new factors can be added and the strategies fine-tuned. / Sociala medier har sedan dess uppkomst utvecklats till något som nu är en konstant del av vår vardag. Från att vara en digital plats där användare kunde hålla kontakt med vänner och familj har sociala medier blivit en plats där konsumenter och företag har möjlighet att kommunicera. Som en konsekvens av detta har företag fått förnya och anpassa de strategier som används för att nå ut till sina konsumenter. Några av de strategier som växt fram är UGC, E-WOM och Influencer Marketing. I och med att konsumenterna fått en möjlighet att kommunicera tillbaka har makten förskjutits över till konsumenten. Därav har den här studien valt att ha ett konsumentperspektiv där attityd i termer av tillit, trovärdighet och skepticism samt köpintention behandlas och undersöks. Med hjälp av en enkät har svar från 118 respondenter samlats in och bearbetats. Resultatet av vårt insamlade data visade att de undersökta strategierna har en positiv påverkan på konsumentens attityd och köpintention. Med detta i åtanke ligger det i företagens intresse att utöka kunskapen kring dessa strategier och utveckla företaget på ett sätt som gör det möjligt att ta till vara på de fördelar som finns i strategierna. Resultatet i denna studie bidrar till ökad förståelse för marknadsföring i sociala medier men ämnet är långt ifrån färdig utforskat. Med hjälp av vår forskning har vi även tagit fram en kombinerad marknadsföringsstrategi som tar vara på fördelarna i respektive strategi. Modellerna i denna studie kan inte förklara konsumentattityden och köpintention i sin helhet då forskningsområdet behöver utvecklas där nya faktorer kan tillkomma och där strategierna kan finjusteras

For applications that rely on User-Generated Content (UGC), there is a need to find what may motivate the applications user base to consistently contribute with quality content. One category of such applications is Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) traffic applications, which serve a specific goal; providing useful traffic-oriented content. By implementing useful incentives into Intelligent Transportation System traffic applications, the applications can better serve their purposes, and at the same time, improve their user's experience. Incentives are intrinsic or extrinsic, i.e., the motivation comes from internal- or external stimuli, which can motivate users in different ways and produce different incentive outcomes. To find the most useful incentives, and gain a better understanding of how to best stimulate active application participation, the research question addressed by this thesis is: Which incentives are useful for increasing quality content in the field of ITS traffic applications? The main method employed to address the research question was a survey. The survey was carried out to investigate what people thought was motivating in ITS traffic applications. In addition to the survey, an interview with the project manager of a Swedish ITS traffic application was done. Previous research concludes that the gain and the incentive for people or organizations hosting UGC are apparent, but the gain for the creators is not as clearly recognized and varies in which area the content is created. The findings of this study showed, from a user perspective, an interest in helping others and monetary gain, as potential incentives for implementation. The authors concluded that intrinsic inclined incentives should work better in-line with the goal of functionality and user long-term engagement, which the authors believe would be preferable for UGC based ITS traffic applications. These findings will be useful for understanding the optimal way to increase motivation for adequate quality UGC in ITS traffic applications.

This study explores how consumer’s attitudes towards consumer-generated advertising (CGA) have changed over time. The study measures consumer attitude changes of the winning contributions from Doritos Crash the Super bowl between the years 2007-2014 on YouTube. The study conducted in total 995 comments that was analysed with Leximancer Software, a research tool for making content analysis to determining the presence of words or concepts in collections of textual documents. Findings didn’t show a distinct change of consumer’s attitudes towards CGA over time. The study gave extended knowledge about consumers attitudes towards CGA and what factors that contribute to positive attitudes towards CGA. Were three main factors was notice, first, the fact that they managed to do an ad on a very low budget seemed to impress other consumers. Second, consumers had a tendency to defend CGA when the ad was criticized. Third, the fact that a company did not make the ad was impressive for many of the viewers.

Background: The modern day era of the Internet gave birth to the growing phenomenon of Internet memes (IM), a type of online user generated content (UGC) (Gangadharbatla, 2008). Now marketers have begun researching the relationship between UGC and consumer based brand equity (CBBE) (Christodoulides et.al, 2012; Rachna and Khajuria, 2017). The problem discussion presents the issue of the diminishing control of brand equity due to the rise of UGC and lack of research on how to manage its influence (Morrison et al., 2013). Leading to the purpose of this thesis, which is to determine the impact Internet memes have on consumer based brand equity. Literature: The review presents two leading contributors to the field, Aaker’s (1991) framework on the different dimensions of CBBE and Keller’s (1993) definition of the concept. In addition recent studies on UGC and brand equity provided the basis for hypothesis development. Method: This thesis assumed a deductive research approach, developing the hypothesis from current literature in the field. A quantitative study, that utilized an explanatory research approach, because it best suited the experimental design. As for the data collection method, surveys were considered (Saunders et al., 2016), which the authors designed as a self-completion questionnaire and pre-tested (Bryman and Bell, 2015). Convenience sampling was chosen to select participants (Hernon, 2004). Construct and content validity was used along with homogeneity and stability to control reliability and measure the quality of research instruments (Bryman and Bell, 2015). SPSS version 25 was used to conduct all statistical analyses. Results: Four hypotheses were developed, to measure the effect of the independent variable IM on each of the four CBBE dimensions. To summarize, three of the hypothesis (H1, H3 and H4) were rejected as the difference in the means are not significant enough and can be explained by chance. The effect on brand association (H2) was however found to be significant therefore H2 was accepted.

In this thesis, authors’ main goal is to test two hypotheses to compare if the tourists are more likely to make their destination choice based on user generated photographs on social media, as well as, tourists’ sustainable destination choice based on photographs with sustainable green content. The quantitative research method was used to conduct the survey with experimental design. It was aimed to compare the tourist’ trust in different photo types, the consumers’ trust was expected to be measured by three dimensions: first impression, intention, and persuasiveness, recommended by previous studies. However, the findings revealed that the tourists are not more likely to trust user generated content on social media to make their destination choice.

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This dissertation presents three essays that focus on various aspects pertaining to the management of online platforms, defined as "digital services that facilitate interactions between two or more distinct, but interdependent sets of users (whether firms or individuals) who interact through the service via the Internet" (OECD, 2019). The interactions benefit both the users and the platform. Managing online platforms involves developing strategies for one or more of three value adding functions: (a) lowering search costs for the parties connecting through the platform, (b) providing a technology infrastructure that facilitates transactions at scale by sharing both demand and supply side costs; and (c) locating other audiences or consumers for the output that results from the transaction. The platform manager must manage these value adding functions. Thus, one important management task is to recognize potential asymmetries in the economic and/or psychological motivations of the transacting parties connected through the platform. In this dissertation, I empirically examine these issues in greater detail. The first essay, "Incentivizing User-Generated Content—A Double-Edged Sword: Evidence from Field Data and a Controlled Experiment," addresses the conundrum faced by online platform managers interested in crowdsourcing user-generated content (UGC) in prosocial contexts. The dilemma stems from the fact that offering monetary incentives to stimulate UGC contributions also has a damping effect on peer approval, which is an important source of non-monetary recognition valued by UGC contributors in prosocial contexts. The second essay, "Matching and Making in Matchmaking Platforms: A Structural Analysis," examines matchmaking platforms, focusing specifically on the problem of misaligned incentives between the platform and the agents. Based on data from the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) on fighter characteristics, and pay-per-view revenues associated with specific bouts, we identify the potential for conflicts of interest and examine strategies that may be used to mitigate such problems. The third essay, "Matching and Making in Matching Markets: A Managerial Decision Calculus," extends the empirical model and analytical work to a class of commonly encountered one-sided matching market problems. It provides the conceptual outline of a decision calculus that allows managers to explore the revenue and profitability implications of adaptive changes to the tier structures and matching algorithms. / Doctor of Philosophy / The 21st century has witnessed the rise of the platform economy. Consumers routinely interact with online platforms ways in their day to day activities. For instance, they interact with platforms such as Quora, StackOverflow, Uber, and Airbnb to name only a few. Such platforms address a variety of needs starting from providing users with answers to a variety of questions to matching them with a range of service providers (e.g., for travel and dining needs). However, the rapid growth of the platform economy has created a knowledge gap for both consumers and platforms. The three essays in this dissertation attempt to contribute to the literature in this area. The first essay, "Incentivizing User-Generated Content—A Double-Edged Sword: Evidence from Field Data and a Controlled Experiment," examines how crowdsourcing contests influence the quantity and quality of user-generated content (UGC). Analyzing data from the popular question and answer website Quora, we find that offering monetary incentives to stimulate UGC contributions increases contributions but also has a simultaneous damping effect on peer endorsement, which is an important source of non-monetary recognition for UGC contributors in prosocial contexts. The second essay, "Matching and Making in Matchmaking Platforms: A Structural Analysis," examines matchmaking platforms, focusing on the problem of misaligned incentives between the platform and the agents. Based on data from the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) on fighter characteristics, and pay-per-view revenues associated with specific bouts, we identify the potential for conflicts of interest and examine strategies that may be used to mitigate such problems. The third essay, "Matching and Making in Matching Markets: A Managerial Decision Calculus," extends the empirical model and analytical work to a class of commonly encountered one-sided matching market problems. It provides the conceptual outline of a decision calculus that allows managers to explore the revenue and profitability implications of adaptive changes to the tier structures and matching algorithms.