A design department in the company Sandvik AB in Kista, Stockholm, has built a web-based platform for knowledge sharing that allows the employees to share knowledge, regardless of their role and position in the hierarchical structure of the organization. The web-based platform gathers disseminated information and provides a way of finding needed information in an easy way and thus enables increasing productivity and efficiency of the employees. The purpose of the research was to find out what the potential users find encouraging and motivating in order to use a web-based platform for knowledge sharing and a functionality for performance measurement. Compared to what technically is possible today, there is lack of transparency in the company. The knowledge that exists within the company is dispersed and difficult to access for the employees in the organization. By gathering the knowledge and information and enabling the employees to share knowledge, they could potentially increase their performance of work assignments. The problem that this report addresses is that currently there are not good enough ways of measuring and keeping track of the performance of work assignments or routines in some departments in the company. The qualitative method of semi-structured interviews has been used for gathering data in this research. The data have been analyzed with the method of content analysis. The result of the research is that there are several aspects that need to be considered when encouraging and motivating users to share knowledge in a web-based platform for knowledge sharing and to use it as a tool for performance measurement. The main aspects identified in this research are corporate culture, choice of performance measures, managers’ responsibility, visibility and usage of the performance data and availability of the web-based platform. These aspects concern the attitude of the company and how to encourage and motivate the users to want to use the web-based platform.

Background: Throughout recent years, the amounts of competitions on Instagram have increased and is now a popular marketing tool for companies to use. The strong competition in digital marketing has led to the need for brands to effectively utilize this marketing strategy. However, what motivates users to participate is a subject that lacks previous research. Hence, the question of what motivates the users to participate remains. Purpose: The purpose of this study is, therefore, to explore the motivational factors for women in the ages between 16-25, which leads to participation in contests on Instagram. Further, this research additionally aims to proceed with the knowledge of UGC and partly investigate how companies can use the appeared motivational factors when designing and formulating contests.  Method: For this qualitative study, 15 interviews were conducted, using a phenomenological interview approach.  Conclusion: The main conclusion from the analysis was that several motivational factors were discovered that had not earlier been presented in previous research, the most significant one being the social aspects. Furthermore, the size of the prize and the non-motivational factors proved to be of importance for the users. Secondly, factors relating to entertainment, aesthetics and the desire to win were proved to be of high importance as well. Lastly, several managerial applications have also been discovered that could help businesses when forming contests on Instagram.

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Folksonomier, system som låter användare klassificera innehåll, blir allt vanligare på webben. Typiskt sker denna klassificering genom att användare fritt beskriver innehållsobjekt med hjälp av nyckelord.Denna uppsats presenterar en underökning av hur nyckelord förhåller sig till varandra hierarkiskt, inom ett folksonomisystem. Undersökningen är baserad på ett webbgränssnitt, där besökare kunde förfina eller förkasta förslag på hierarkier av nyckelord. Dessa förslag genererades utifrån av ett verkligt folksonomisystem.Efter analys av 400 inkomna svar dras slutsatsen att flera aspekter av metodologin måste förfinas för att tydliga resultat ska kunna uppnås. Förslag på sådana förändringar presenteras slutligen. / Folksonomies, systems for user classified content, are becoming more common on the web. Typically, these classification systems let users describe content objects by assigning them keywords ("tags").This thesis presents a study on how keywords in a folksonomy system relate hierarchically. The study is based on a web interface, where visitors could refine or reject suggestions of hierarchies of keywords. Suggestions where generated from a real folksonomy system.After analysis of 400 responses, the conclusion is made that to reach clear results, several aspects of the methodology have to be modified. The thesis ends with presenting possible ways to achieve this.

User-generated content (UGC) is a ubiquitous phenomenon on the Internet. UGC inform, entertain, and facilitate conversations among online users. The three essays of this dissertation examine different antecedents of UGC characteristics with text analytics. The first essay explored the effects of psychological distance on UGC positivity and found that spatial and temporal distance boost UGC positivity. The second essay investigates the effects of social media integration on the linguistic characteristic of UGC and showed that social media integration leads to increased review quantity, while more emotional, less rational and less negative language in UGC content. The third essay examines the impact of book-to-film adaptation on the rating and linguistic characteristics of UGC. The results suggest that, after the release of book-to-film adaptations, book ratings decline, and the use of language reflecting viewing, comparison and affective processes increase in book reviews. To summarize, the three essays in this dissertation contributes to research on UGC by improving our understanding on the various antecedents of UGC characteristics. / Business Administration/Marketing

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.

Journalists rely on image and video verification to support their investigations and often utilize open source tools to verify user generated content, but current practice requires experts be involved in every step of the process. Additionally, lacking custom tools to support verification efforts, experts are often limited to the utility of existing, openly available tools, which may or may not support the interactions and information gathering they require. We aim to support the process of geolocating images and videos through crowdsourcing. By enabling crowd workers to participate in the geolocation process, we can provide investigative journalists with efficient and complete verification of image locations. Parallelizing searching speeds up the verification process as well as provides a more extensive search, all while allowing the expert to follow up on other leads or investigative work. We produced a software prototype called GroundTruth which enables crowd workers to support investigative journalists in the geolocation of visual media quickly and accurately. Additionally, this work contributes experimental results demonstrating how the crowd can be utilized to support complex sensemaking tasks. / Master of Science / Journalists rely on image and video verification to support their investigations and often utilize freely available tools to verify online and digital content. Currently, experts are involved in every step of this verification process, researching and confirming or refuting the claims of images or videos. Since experts often do not have access to custom tools, they rely on already existing tools, which do not always meet their needs. One type of image verification is geolocation, in which investigators work to identify the location where a photo or video was made. We aim to support this process through crowdsourcing. By enabling a large number of people, most with no experience or prior training, to help find the location, we can provide investigative journalists with efficient and complete verification of image locations. Multiple people searching at the same time speeds up the verification process as well as provides a more extensive search, all while allowing the expert to follow up on other leads or investigative work. We produced a software prototype called GroundTruth which enables novice individuals to support investigative journalists in determining the location of images and videos quickly and accurately. Additionally, this work contributes experimental results demonstrating how these individuals can collectively support complex sensemaking tasks.

Yes / This study uncovers hotel brand positioning and competitive landscape mapping by text-mining user-generated content (UGC). Rather than relying on a single dimension of consumer evaluation, the current study detects brand attributes by using both customer preferences as well as perceptual performance to develop meaningful insights. For this, the study combines content analysis and repertory grid analysis (RGA) to answer three key research issues. 111,986 hotel reviews from two biggest Chinese cities are used to explore and visualize the competitive landscape of six selected hotel brands across three hotel categories. Findings from the study will not only advance the existing literature on brand positioning and competitive landscape mapping but also help practitioners in developing brand positioning strategies to fight competitors within and across hotel categories.

Yes / This paper aims to explore the important qualitative aspects of online user-generated-content that reflects customers’ brand-attitudes. Additionally, the qualitative aspects can help service-providers understand customers’ brand-attitudes by focusing on the important aspects rather than reading the entire review, which will save both their time and effort. We have utilised a total of 10,000 reviews from TripAdvisor (an online-travel-agency provider). This study has analysed the data using statistical-technique (logistic regression), predictive-model (artificial-neural-networks) and structural-modelling technique to understand the most important aspects (i.e. sentiment, emotion or parts-of-speech) that can help to predict customers’ brand-attitudes. Results show that sentiment is the most important aspect in predicting brand-attitudes. While total sentiment content and content polarity have significant positive association, negative high-arousal emotions and low-arousal emotions have significant negative association with customers’ brand attitudes. However, parts-of-speech aspects have no significant impact on brand attitude. The paper concludes with implications, limitations and future research directions.

This thesis examines the complex relationship between impulsive buying behavior,perceptions of brand "coolness," and their impact on Generation Z consumers. Datacollected from 11 semi-structured interviews reveals that witnessing impulsive purchasesonline can have both positive and negative effects on a brand's perceived coolness. Key factors in this dynamic include the allure of community and a desire for socialvalidation. Using the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) framework, impulsivepurchase posts (User-Generated content) act as stimuli, triggering emotional responsesthat influence brand perception. Consumers are more likely to make impulsive purchasesfrom brands they consider cool as a means of aligning themselves with a desirable imageor group. However, excessive exposure to impulsive buying posts can undermine abrand's exclusivity and diminish its cool factor. The study finds that coolness is inherently subjective, with individual interviewees' valuesand experiences shaping their responses. Brands that prioritize community, authenticity,and a carefully cultivated sense of exclusivity are best positioned to navigate the complexrelationship between impulsive purchase behavior and overall brand perception.