Due to digitalization, e-commerce and online presence is something most of us take for granted. Companies are moving more towards an internet-based arena of sales, rather than traditional commerce in physical stores. This development has led to that firms’ choses to market themselves through various online channels such as social media. Big data is our digital DNA that we leave behind on every part of the internet that we utilize. Big data has become an international commodity that can be sold, stored and used. The authors of this thesis have investigated the way international firms extract and use big data to construct customized marketing for their customers. This thesis has also examined the ethical perspective of how this commodity is handled and used, and people’s perception regarding the matter. This is interesting to investigate since very few researches has been previously conducted combining big data usage with ethics. To accomplish the aim of this thesis, significant theory has been reviewed and accounted for. Also, a qualitative research has been conducted, where two large companies that are working closely with big data has been investigated through a case-study. The authors have also conducted six semi-structured interviews with people between the age of 20-30 years old. The outcome of this thesis shows the importance of implementing ethics within the concept and usage of big data and provide insight into the mind of the consumer that has been lacking in previous research of this subject.

To capture diverse aspects of smart shopping for apparel, a comprehensive measurement based upon (a) shopping benefits and costs, (b) consumption economics, and (c) and consumer decision making stages was developed. Employing an extensive literature review, focus group interviews, personal interviews, and surveys, we developed the three-stage, seven-dimensional, and gender-neutral smart shopping measure for apparel. The smart shopping dimensions identified were: information search and planning in the prepurchase stage; effort/time savings, right purchase, and money savings in the purchase stage; and satisfaction and word of mouth in the postpurchase stage. The measure was validated with multiple tests and a structural model validated the significance of the proposed relationships among constructs. This study expanded the conceptualization of smart shopping for apparel by investigating cost and benefit components, by uncovering specific outcome constructs, and by identifying activities that generate smart shopper feelings. Suggestions for retailers as well as future research directions are provided.

Background:  The prevalence of augmented reality (AR) is on an upward trend and is expected to accelerate in growth in the upcoming years. This poses a strategic opportunity for marketers as it paves the way for incorporating AR into their marketing activities. However, a challenge for companies who wish to incorporate AR into their marketing is the lack of internal capabilities concerning AR among marketers. Research has shown that AR marketing (ARM) has several advantages such as it improves customer engagement, customer-brand relationships, customer’s purchasing intentions, and customer’s attitudes towards brands. The key factor that drives these positive outcomes of ARM is the enhanced hedonic and utilitarian benefits it provides. However, there is currently a lack of understanding regarding what utilitarian and hedonic benefits customers expect to derive from ARM. understanding these expectations is essential as their fulfillment is a determinant of how meaningful and satisfactory the ARM experiences are perceived.  Purpose:  The purpose of this study is to bridge the current research gap by exploring customers' expectations regarding the hedonic and utilitarian benefits of ARM and how well they perceive that these expectations are met and subsequently what this means for the overall customer experience.  Method:  The study is based on an exploratory qualitative research design with an abductive approach. The data were collected using semi-structured interviews with fifteen participants that were purposely sampled. This allowed us to get rich data and develop an in-depth understanding of customers’ expectations and experiences with ARM. The interviews were conducted in two rounds, the first round was to explore their expectations of ARM shopping applications while the second round was to explore their experiences. Between the two interviews, the participants used two ARM applications (IKEA Place & Wanna Kicks) and were asked to use them in their domestic setting. We analyzed the interview data using thematic analysis. By doing so we took a systematic approach to identify and compare similarities and dissimilarities in our data, leading to emerging themes. The results were compared to existing literature to identify new findings and develop conclusions.  Findings:  Our findings contribute to a deeper theoretical understanding of ARM by identifying and categorizing customers' hedonic and utilitarian expectations and shedding light on the specific AR attributes that contribute to these expectations. Furthermore, we also present novel insights into how ARM can provide meaningful customers experiences. Our findings have several theoretical and managerial implications offering valuable insights for the continuation of theoretical development and strategic marketing practices.

Digitaliseringen har gjort det möjligt för en integrerad multikanalslösning där fenomenet Omnichannel har fått stort genomslag. Omnichannel tillåter konsumenten att distribuera mellan olika kanaler under en och samma köpupplevelse och den sömlösa shoppingupplevelsen öppnar upp för ett inkongruent köpbeteende. Till skillnad från tidigare forskning som hävdar att konsumenter föredrar att handla kongruent, går Omnichannel i en annan riktning. Denna rapport syftar till att undersöka vilken påverkan kongruens och inkongruens har gällande attityder efter ett köp av kläder. Attityder efter ett köp utgår från tre nyckelvariabler: kundnöjdhet, bekräftelse av helhetsupplevelsen och benägenhet att sprida positiv Word of Mouth. Studien har en kvantitativ ansats där webbenkäter har använts och besvarats av 407 personer som har fått utvärdera sitt senaste köp av kläder. Studiens slutsats resulterar i att varken kongruens eller inkongruens inom köpbeteendet har en effekt på konsumentens attityder, medan kongruens inom kanaldistribution ledde till bättre attityder än för de konsumenter med ett inkongruent val av kanaler. Något som kan sägas gå emot Omnichannels grundstruktur. Sammanfattningsvis är det möjligt att säga att konsumenter som handlar utifrån ett hedoniskt köpbeteende både upplever en bättre helhetsupplevelse och är mer benägna att sprida positiv Word of Mouth. Konsumentens upplevelse av huruvida helhetsupplevelsen bekräftas, har en påverkan på deras vilja att prata positivt om sitt köp. / The digitalization has made it possible for an integrated multichannel solution where the phenomenon of Omnichannel has a big impact. It allows the consumer to move between different channels during the same shopping experience. The seamless shopping experience opens up for an incongruent shopping behavior. Previous research shows that consumers prefer to shop congruently where Omnichannel seems to go in a different direction. The report's purpose is to investigate how the consumer's behavior is affecting their attitudes. It has its foundation to find how congruent and incongruent is affecting the consumers' attitudes. The attitude is evaluated based on three key variables: customer satisfaction, confirmation of the overall experience and propensity to spread positive Word of Mouth. The study has a quantitative approach where web surveys have been used by 407 people who have evaluated their most recent purchase of clothes. The study concludes that neither congruence nor incongruence consumer behavior has an effect on the post-purchase behavior, while congruence in channel distribution led to better post-purchase behavior than for those consumers with an incongruent choice of channels. The importance is the consumer behavior that is shown at the buying decision. To conclude it is possible to say that consumers who shop based on hedonic consumer behavior both experienced a better overall experience and were more likely to spread positive Word of Mouth. The consumer's perception of how well their overall experience is confirmed has an impact on their willingness to talk positively about their purchase.

A full working day I spent measuring the minerals and oxides for glaze tests; 31g of feldspar, 11g of chalk, 32g of kaolin, 7g of dolomite, 13g of quartz, 10g of zirconium silicate. In total 32 tests. That means adding 32 different grams of oxides or stains to the mix of minerals written above. Labelling each batch with a specific code to separate them. The following day I spent filtering each test through 100 mesh and dipping 64 clay tests.  Out of these 64 tests I liked 4.  As a crafter I am used to having to do things more than once to find what I am searching for and my master project has been no different. I have let my attraction to colors, shadows, forms and in-between shapes guide me through these two years and this is where i ended up - with framed utilitarian objects in the shape of a cake.  Written here is a text about process, everyday and memory. My relation to the materials I work in and a reflection about using objects in a ritualistic way. I am writing this text from third- perspective, it has given me enough distance to myself and my practice (and process) to easier be critical and more direct regarding my subjects within my master project. The novel perspective gives the reader a chance to easily get closer to situations from a crafters point of view - how the plaster feels when mixing it with water and frustration towards norms around utilitarian objects. My project is named It’s a piece of cake and the series of utilitarian objects I made for my master project I call Tårtan (cake).

The advancement of artificial intelligence and its diverse applications have attracted great interests from several research scholars examining communication between humans and chatbots. Many have explained the motivations of chatbot use, however, less emphasis has been given to myriad customer experiential needs for the interaction with this AI-powered technology. Therefore, in the light of U&G theory, this thesis presents a conceptual framework for customer experience as the needs for chatbot use. SOR model was also adopted to establish the links among customer experience as organisms (utilitarian – perceived informativeness and credibility; hedonic – perceived transparency, enjoyment and engagement; anthropomorphism – mindful and mindless anthropomorphism; and social presence), their primary stimuli (functionality, communication style similarity and aesthetics) and responses (customer satisfaction and reuse intention). 417 convenient samples were collected from the UK where chatbots are widely used. Results from SEM revealed that perceived credibility, informativeness, enjoyment, functionality and communication style similarity hold the keys for customer satisfaction, while effects of anthropomorphism and social presence are not significant in this research setting. This study has enriched U&G theory by addressing customer experience as ones’ motivations to use chatbots. Also, it has presented a fresh understanding of customer experience in chatbot context by considering utilitarian, hedonic, anthropomorphism and social presence as dimensions of customer experience rather than merely measuring how customers think, feel, sense, act and relate. In addition, practical implications and direction for future research are discussed.

Marketing appeals often capitalize upon nostalgia. By highlighting periods of the past, practitioners hope to elicit positive associations in the minds of consumers between the past and desired responses, from purchases to donations to political support. Though less often, marketing appeals also draw upon the future as a way of making the featured good or service more appealing to potential consumers. Could these different temporal distances into the future or into the past impact the reaction of consumers? Could the context of a product being either hedonic or utilitarian have an influence on the outcome of these past or future based appeals? Further, in the case of balanced products with relatively equal hedonic and utilitarian natures, could the pairing of appeals related to different lengths of time into the past or future with hedonic or utilitarian appeal influence consumers as well? Exploring these possibilities through qualitative in-depth interviews with practitioners and consumers offers the potential to find answers and add to the body of knowledge. The fundamental premise of Construal Level Theory (Trope and Liberman, 2000) comes into play in this pursuit. Construal Level Theory states that psychological distance, be it temporal, spatial, social, or hypothetical (Trope, Liberman, and Wakslak, 2007) has an impact upon the decision-making outcomes of individuals due to their perception of the issues involved as being either abstract or concrete. It is in this context that this dissertation investigates the use of past-based and future-based appeals of varying temporal distances in relation to products of either a hedonic or utilitarian nature, as well as appeals based on either utilitarian or hedonic motivations. As a result of this analysis temporal distance was revealed to play a role in consumer responses, but a different one than initially expected. Rather than the temporal direction of either past or future favoring hedonic or utilitarian products and messaging, the relative proximity to the present proved to be the more powerful influence. The nearuture and near-past advertising treatments offered advantages to hedonic products, and faruture and far-past advertising treatments offered advantages to utilitarian products.

This thesis is a case study of a Polish city which faces a problem of high automobile share and little popularity of cycling in its residents’ modal split. In times when the world is facing climate change and there is a need of preserving scarce resources, it is essential that urban areas adopt a sustainability approach to the way they develop. Thus, this research focuses on what attitude is held by residents and local authorities of the subject city and how it should be facilitated so that biking for transportation becomes more common. With the approach of Ajzen’s (1991) theory of planned behaviour, the citizens’ perspective is investigated by a questionnaire where the results lead to dividing the population sample into seven groups based on their attitude. Such segmentation into population groups with respect to mobility can help promote sustainable mobility behaviour and is essential in order to address the problem successfully. Local authorities’ attitude is examined by interviews and secondary data analysis. A principal finding here is that in this city bicycle is a secondary or tertiary mode of transportation, while there is a prevailing automobile priority continuously being facilitated by the authorities. The problem lies in that it is not fully understood how bicycling can bring benefits to the city and that managing transportation is an essential part of sustainable urban development. The dissertation concludes with suggestions for both the residents and the authorities so that pro-sustainability behaviour can occur. Additionally, the analysis in this paper could be used in a number of similar cities in Poland.

This research utilizes liberal feminism and social learning theory to explore the relationships among gender, computer self-efficacy, utilitarian attitudes toward computers, and computer use by college students. The analysis includes comparisons of male and female college students at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University on computer use, on computer self-efficacy and on attitudes about the utility of computers. Data are derived from a self-administered questionnaire from a non-probability sample of 243 undergraduates enrolled in an introductory sociology course at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in the spring of 1996. Consistent with hypotheses, women in the sample report significantly lower levels of computer self-efficacy, although not of utilitarian attitudes toward computers, and consequently less computer use than men. Regression analysis shows that computer self-efficacy is a significant predictor of computer use, but that utilitarian attitudes are not. Implications for subsequent research and theory in this area include that computer use should be specifically measured as hours of use, that gender differences in computer use may be application-specific, and that a cause-and-effect relationship between attitudes about computers and computer use should be established. / Master of Science

Introduction : Une majorité de Canadiens adopte un mode de vie sédentaire qui est un facteur de risque important pour différents problèmes de santé. Dernièrement, des interventions en santé publique ciblent le transport actif pour augmenter la pratique d’activité physique. Objectif : L’objectif de cette étude est de quantifier la direction et la taille de l’association entre l’état de santé rapporté par des adultes montréalais et leur utilisation de la marche et du vélo utilitaires. Méthode : L’échantillon comprend 4503 résidents de l’Île de Montréal, âgés de 18 ans et plus, ayant répondu à un sondage téléphonique sur la pratique de l’activité physique et du transport actif. Des analyses de régression logistique multiples ont été appliquées pour examiner l’association entre l’état de santé auto-rapporté et la pratique du vélo (N=4386) et entre l’état de santé auto-rapporté et la pratique de la marche utilitaire (N=4350). Résultats : Les gens ayant une santé perçue comme bonne et moyenne/mauvaise ont une probabilité plus faible de pratiquer la marche utilitaire (OR = 0,740; p < 0,05 et OR = 0,552; p < 0,01) que ceux rapportant une excellente santé, alors que cette association n’est pas significative pour la pratique du vélo utilitaire dans notre étude. Conclusion : Bien que les résultats obtenus ne soient pas tous statistiquement significatifs, la probabilité d’utiliser le transport actif semble plus faible chez les adultes indiquant un moins bon état de santé par rapport aux adultes indiquant que leur état de santé est excellent. / Background: A majority of Canadians are physically inactive and have a sedentary lifestyle, which is an important risk factor for a variety of diseases. Recently, public health interventions have focused on active transport as means of increasing the level of activity in the population. Objective: This study’s aim is to quantify the direction and size of the association between self-rated health and active transport practices, i.e. utilitarian cycling and walking, among adult Montrealers. Methods: Data on physical activity and utilitarian practices were collected from 4503 adult residents of the Island of Montreal (≥ 18 years old), from one of two telephone surveys conducted in the spring and in the fall of 2009. Multiple logistic regression analysis was used to examine associations between self-rated health and utilitarian cycling (N=4386) and walking (N=4350). Results: Reporting a good and a fair/bad self-rated health was associated with a lower likelihood of practicing utilitarian walking (OR = 0,740; p < 0,05 and OR = 0,552; p < 0,01) than reporting an excellent health, but no significant association was found between self-rated health and utilitarian cycling in our study. Conclusions: Even though all results were not statistically significant, active transport practices appear to be less likely among persons reporting a poorer health in comparison to those reporting excellent health.