Sociala medier har fått allt större betydelse när det gäller kommunikation mellan människor och för företag har explosionen av sociala medier inneburit både möjligheter och utmaningar. För att möta konsumenterna där de befinner sig har företag nu följt efter kunderna till de sociala medierna. I strävan efter att öka sin lönsamhet har företag tagit tillvara på sociala medier som en ny och effektiv e-handelskanal, en verksamhet som fått namnet social commerce. Social commerce är ett nytt fenomen i Sverige och handlar om försäljning av varor och tjänster via sociala medier. Vårt mål med denna studie är att undersöka anledningarna till varför några svenska företag har valt att använda sociala medier som en plattform för sin e-handel samt klargöra vad det är som gör att sociala medier är en lämplig plattform för e-handel. Studien har genomförts med hjälp av kvalitativa intervjuer med företag som på olika sätt bedriver social commerce. Undersökningen baseras på intervjuer med respondenter från totalt fem svenska företag där tre av dessa står i fokus för undersökningen. Dessa tre företag är; Comviq, Pocket Shop och Lagerhaus, som alla bedriver social commerce. Ytterligare två intervjuer har utförts med företagen Askås och Cloud Nine som utvecklar e-handelstjänster till den sociala medieplattformen. Resultatet av vår undersökning visar att de kommunikativa aspekter som sociala medier innehar underlättar spridning av information vilket är en viktig anledning till varför de undersökta företagen anser att sociala medier passar för e-handel. Den virala spridningen av online word-of-mouth har en enorm effekt tack vare att informationen kan spridas snabbt, effektivt och till många via människor i det sociala nätverket. Denna förmåga är ett viktigt skäl till varför de tre undersökta företagen använder sociala medier som en plattform för sin e-handel. I vår slutsats noterar vi att konvergensen mellan e-handel och sociala medier och konsumenternas behov av att delta är tecken på hur vårt förändrade sätt att kommunicera påverkar vårt sätt att konsumera. / Title: Social commerce - A study of how our changing way of communicating affects the way we consume Number of pages: 39 (43 including enclosures) Author: Linda Bogren Ericsson, Sara Eklöf Tutor: Ann-Marie Morhed Course: Media and Communication Studies C Period: HT 2011 University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University. Purpose/Aim: The purpose with this thesis is to study the phenomenon social commerce in Sweden and investigate the reasons why Comviq, Pocket Shop and Lagerhaus have chosen to use social media as a platform for their e-commerce. Furthermore, we want to clarify what it is that makes social media a suitable platform for e-commerce and how e-commerce can take advantage of the unique features that social media possesses. Material/Method: The study was conducted through qualitative interviews with companies who are in contact with social commerce in different ways. The study was based on interviews with respondents from five Swedish companies. Three of these companies, Comviq, Pocket Shop and Lagerhaus are all engaged in social commerce, and the other two, Askås and Cloud Nine are developers of e- commerce services for the social media platform. Main Results: The result of our study showed that Comviq, Pocket Shop and Lagerhaus chose to use social media as a platform for e-commerce in order to increase their sales. Furthermore, social media holds important communicative features that facilitate the dissemination of information. The viral spread of online word-of-mouth can quickly and effectively reach many people through the connected network within social media. This ability is an important reason for why the three companies use social media as a platform for e-commerce. It also emphasizes how e-commerce can benefit from a presence on social media. In our conclusion, we note that the convergence of e-commerce and social media, and the consumer’s need for participation are signs of how our changing way of communicating affects the way we consume.

My diploma thesis deals with external communication with a view to public relations. It´s applied on Robert Bosch company, spol. s r. o., Ceske Budejovice. The main objective was creating an own proposal of external communication for year 2012, aimed at one interest group of the company. This group includes university students with technical and economic specialization = potential future employees of the company. In my proposal there are some suitable elements from new trends in marketing communication (viral marketing, guerilla marketing, event marketing).

The target of this thesis is to design appropriate communication tools and channels from Marketing Communications area mainly for Business companies which engage in architectonic and project field. Recourses of this thesis will be theoretical findings from area of contemporary trends in Marketing Communication. These are applied in an analysis of present day state of the company. They are an initial point for particular design of Marketing Communication of the given company herewith.

Background: We currently live in a time when consumers trust more on social media and less on traditional advertising as a source of information for their purchasing decisions. Social media and traditional advertising must be integrated somehow so that marketers can communicate more effectively with their target market. In this investigation, the influence of music influencers on consumer behavior is analyzed, getting to the conclusion that the benefits of influencer and social media marketing increases customer experience and credibility, as it gives a brand the ability to communicate with its customers and develop a long-term relationship. The music resource is combined with the influence of the artist's personality to generate strategies that are effective but not totally rewarded by the consumers. Purpose: The purpose of this study is therefore to explore what influence Latin American artists have on the behaviour of Latin American consumers and how companies can use these motivations to structure their own marketing campaigns. Method: In order to carry out the following research work, the following stages are proposed: Firstly, a theoretical framework will be elaborated using the methodology of literature review, secondly a qualitative research which will consist of an empirical analysis the instrument chosen for this is an interview with a professional in the sector. And finally quantitative research The survey is the instrument chosen to collect the information that will drive the quantitative research proposed for this study. Conclusion: The results suggest that artists have an influence on the purchasing behaviour of Ibero-American consumers. By establishing connections between literature review, empirical data and surveys, a significant relationship was found that affirms the theory. The study reveals evidence that consumers in general can be influenced by music as a formative variable of the environment or atmosphere. The benefits of influencer and social media marketing increases customer experience and credibility, as it gives a brand the ability to communicate with its customers and develop a long-term relationship. The music resource is combined with the influence of the artist's personality to generate strategies that are effective but not totally rewarded by the consumers. From there, marketers should take this research into account when implementing artists in their campaigns in Latin America.

The aim of this master thesis is to consider appropriate solutions of entering the foreign market. After introducing of the company follow the external and internal analysis. The thesis proves a suitability of the target market, deals with a choice of the product portfolio. It also mentions and checks the expectations of new market’s behaviour. In the final part of the thesis we can find a proper suggestions for entering the target market, steps and measures, which the monitored company shouldn’t leave out.

Dans cette thèse, nous étudions deux applications des processus stochastiques au marketing internet. Le premier chapitre s’intéresse au scoring d’internautes pour les enchères en temps réel. Ce problème consiste à trouver la probabilité qu’un internaute donné réalise une action d’intérêt, appelée conversion, dans les quelques jours suivant l’affichage d’une bannière publicitaire. Nous montrons que les processus de Hawkes constituent une modélisation naturelle de ce phénomène mais que les algorithmes de l’état de l’art ne sont pas applicables à la taille des données typiquement à l’œuvre dans des applications industrielles. Nous développons donc deux nouveaux algorithmes d’inférence non-paramétrique qui sont plusieurs ordres de grandeurs plus rapides que les méthodes précédentes. Nous montrons empiriquement que le premier a de meilleures performances que les compétiteurs de l’état de l’art, et que le second permet une application à des jeux de données encore plus importants sans payer un prix trop important en terme de pouvoir de prédiction. Les algorithmes qui en découlent ont été implémentés avec de très bonnes performances depuis plusieurs années à 1000 mercis, l’agence marketing d’avant-garde étant le partenaire industriel de cette thèse CIFRE, où ils sont devenus un actif important pour la production. Le deuxième chapitre s’intéresse aux processus diffusifs sur les graphes qui constituent un outil important pour modéliser la propagation d’une opération de marketing viral sur les réseaux sociaux. Nous établissons les premières bornes théoriques sur le nombre total de nœuds atteint par une contagion dans le cadre de graphes et dynamiques de diffusion quelconques, et montrons l’existence de deux régimes bien distincts : le régime sous-critique où au maximum $O(sqrt{n})$ nœuds seront infectés, où $n$ est la taille du réseau, et le régime sur-critique ou $O(n)$ nœuds peuvent être infectés. Nous étudions également le comportement par rapport au temps d’observation $T$ et mettons en lumière l’existence de temps critiques en-dessous desquels une diffusion, même sur-critique sur le long terme, se comporte de manière sous-critique. Enfin, nous étendons nos travaux à la percolation et l’épidémiologie, où nous améliorons les résultats existants. / In this thesis, we study two applications of stochastic processes in internet marketing. The first chapter focuses on internet user scoring for real-time bidding. This problem consists in finding the probability for a given user to perform an action of interest, called conversion, in the next few days. We show that Hawkes processes are well suited for modelizing this phenomena but that state-of-the-art algorithms are not applicable to the size of datasets involved. We therefore develop two new algorithms able to perform nonparametric multivariate Hawkes process inference orders of magnitude faster than previous methods. We show empirically that the first one outperforms state-of-the-art competitors, and the second one scales to very large datasets while keeping very high prediction power. The resulting algorithms have been implemented with very good performances for several years in 1000mercis, a pioneering marketing agency being the industrial partner of this CIFRE PhD, where they became an important business asset. The second chapter focuses on diffusion processes graphs, an important tool for modelizing the spread of a viral marketing operation over social networks. We derive the first theoretical bounds for the total number of nodes reached by a contagion for general graphs and diffusion dynamics, and show the existence of two well distinct regimes: the sub-critical one where at most $O(sqrt{n})$ nodes are infected, where $n$ is the size of the network, and the super-critical one where $O(n)$ nodes can be infected. We also study the behavior wrt to the observation time $T$ and reveals the existence of critical times under which a long-term super-critical diffusion process behaves sub-critically. Finally, we extend our works to different application fields, and improve state-of-the-art results in percolation and epidemiology.

No description available.

<p>With an increasing number of users spending time on social media platforms and engaging with family, friends, and influencers within communities of interest (such as in fashion, cooking, gaming, etc.), there are significant opportunities for marketing firms to leverage word-of-mouth advertising on these platforms. In particular, marketing firms can select sets of influencers within relevant communities to sponsor, namely by providing free product samples to those influencers so that so they will discuss and promote the product on their social media accounts.</p><p>The question of which set of influencers to sponsor is known as <b>influence maximization</b> (IM) formally defined as follows: "if we can try to convince a subset of individuals in a social network to adopt a new product or innovation, and the goal is to trigger a large cascade of further adoptions, which set of individuals should we target?'' Under standard diffusion models, this optimization problem is known to be NP-hard. This problem has been widely studied in the literature and several approaches for solving it have been proposed. Some approaches provide near-optimal solutions but are costly in terms of runtime. On the other hand, some approaches are faster but heuristics, i.e., do not have approximation guarantees.</p><p>In this dissertation, we study the influence maximization problem extensively. We provide efficient algorithms for solving the original problem and its important generalizations. Furthermore, we provide theoretical guarantees and experimental evaluations to support the claims made in this dissertation.</p><p>We first study the original IM problem referred to as the discrete influence maximization (DIM) problem where the marketer can either provide a free sample to an influencer or not, i.e., they cannot give fractional discounts like 10% off, etc. As already mentioned the existing solution methods (for instance, the simulation-based greedy algorithm) provide near-optimal solutions that are costly in terms of runtime and the approaches that are faster do not have approximation guarantees. Motivated by the idea of addressing this trade-off between accuracy and runtime, we propose a community-aware divide-and-conquer framework to provide a time-efficient solution to the DIM problem. The proposed framework outperforms the standard methods in terms of runtime and the heuristic methods in terms of influence.</p><p>We next study a natural extension of the DIM problem referred to as the fractional influence maximization (FIM) problem where the marketer may offer fractional discounts (as opposed to either providing a free sample to an influencer or not in the DIM problem) to the influencers. Clearly, the FIM problem provides more flexibility to the marketer in allocating the available budget among different influencers. The existing solution methods propose to use a continuous extension of the simulation-based greedy approximation algorithm for solving the DIM problem. This continuous extension suggests greedily building the solution for the given fractional budget by taking small steps through the interior of the feasible region. On the contrary, we first characterize the solution to the FIM problem in terms of the solution to the DIM problem. We then use this characterization to propose an efficient greedy approximation algorithm that only iterates through the corners of the feasible region. This leads to huge savings in terms of runtime compared to the existing methods that suggest iterating through the interior of the feasible region. Furthermore, we provide an approximation guarantee for the proposed greedy algorithm to solve the FIM problem.</p><p>Finally, we study another extension of the DIM problem referred to as the online discrete influence maximization (ODIM) problem, where the marketer provides free samples not just once but repeatedly over a given time horizon and the goal is to maximize the cumulative influence over time while receiving instantaneous feedback. The existing solution methods are based on semi-bandit instantaneous feedback where the knowledge of some intermediate aspects of how the influence propagates in the social network is assumed or observed. For instance, which specific individuals became influenced at the intermediate steps during the propagation? However, for social networks with user privacy, this information is not available. Hence, we consider the ODIM problem with full-bandit feedback where no knowledge of the underlying social network or diffusion process is assumed. We note that the ODIM problem is an instance of the stochastic combinatorial multi-armed bandit (CMAB) problem with submodular rewards. To solve the ODIM problem, we provide an efficient algorithm that outperforms the existing methods in terms of influence, and time and space complexities.</p><p>Furthermore, we point out the connections of influence maximization with a related problem of disease outbreak prevention and a more general problem of submodular maximization. The methods proposed in this dissertation can also be used to solve those problems.</p>

Frågeställningar: Hur ser företags processer ut för att skapa innehåll till sociala medier? Hur engagerar sig konsumenter till innehåll som företag publicerat på sociala medier? Syfte: Det huvudsakliga syftet med studien är att beskriva och förklara företags processer för att skapa innehåll till sociala medier och analysera konsumenters engagemang till innehåll som företag publicerat. Studien syftar även till att tillhandahålla en konceptuell figur för hur förloppet att skapa, publicera och följa upp innehåll mellan ett företag och ett konsultbolag ser ut. Det avslutande syftet är att kunna ge rekommendationer till företag om hur de kan utveckla sitt användande av sociala medier som ett marknadsföringsverktyg. Metod: Studien hade en induktiv ansats med ett explorativt syfte. Undersökningen genomfördes med en kvalitativ metod. Data samlades in genom personliga intervjuer och genom en observationsstudie med en kompletterande intervju. En kvalitativ dataanalys utfördes för att analysera insamlad empirisk data. Resultat: Företags processer till att skapa innehåll är otillräcklig och det finns utrymme för förbättring. Det framkom även att konsumenter har ett större engagemang till innehåll som företag publicerat om konsumenternas vänner rekommenderat innehållet, om det är humoristiskt eller har ett välgörande ändamål. Teoretiskt och praktiskt bidrag: Det teoretiska bidraget är att utveckla processen till att skapa innehåll på sociala medier. Praktiska bidrag är i form av rekommendationer till företag angående hur de kan utveckla sitt användande av sociala medier som ett marknadsföringsverktyg. / Research questions: Do companies have processes to create content for social media? How do consumers engage in content that companies have published on social media? Purpose: The main purpose of this study is to describe and explain companies’ processes to create content for social media and analyze the consumers’ commitment to the content that companies have published. Another purpose is to provide a conceptual model for the course of creating, publishing and following up content between a company and a consulting firm. Finally we aim to give recommendations to companies about how they can develop their use of social media as a marketing tool. Method: The study has an inductive approach with an explorative purpose. The survey was performed using a qualitative method. The data was collected by means personal interviews and an observational study with an additional interview. This empirical data was analyzed using a qualitative data analysis. Results: The companies’ processes to create content are insufficient. The study also revealed that consumers have a greater commitment to content published by companies if their friends have recommended the content, if it is humoristic or related to charity. Theoretical and practical contributions: The theoretical contribution is to develop the process to create content on social media. The practical contribution is in the form of recommendations to companies about how they can develop their usage of social media as a marketing tool.

病毒行銷這個議題雖然主要是行銷理論的探究，但其原理卻是根據較基本的學門整合並配合擴散的現象建立的，因此這些本研究的結果不僅可以供網路行銷者的使用以外，也可以提供文化擴散、廣告行為、語文演變、甚至典範移轉的擴散行為研究之參考。 注射器與載體部份的實驗結果，操縱組與控制組效果差不多，甚至可說更差，但寄主組與進化組的效果則都有9倍以上的效果，可見選擇寄主十分重要，而注射器與載體則要配合寄主的設計才能有效果的發揮。這部份的結論與第四章最後一節的假設相同，因此該節的搭配原則設計方式可信度相當高。 因此綜合本研究的證據，回顧本研究在第二章所類比而得的，病毒行銷的架構假設，如下圖： 其中在如何使寄主消費與製造方面，確實可以類比為病毒在寄主體內的自我複製行為，而傳播則類比為衍生子行為、進化類比為突變子行為。病毒本體除了基因是預設的產品、服務等行銷目的以外，本研究也認為選定目標寄主可以提高病毒行銷的效果，因為以病毒來說，在一個全是可感染寄主的群體中與一個有多種寄主的群體中，當然是在前者的感染效率會較佳。而蛋白質外殼類比為載體相當正確，雖然單一效果不明顯，但其不可或缺性可以在進化部份的實驗以及個案研究中獲得證實。注射器在病毒生態中也是一個不明顯的角色，類比到病毒行銷中也是一個單一設計效果不明顯的部件，而其結構組成跟載體相同則也在某種程度上反應了載體與注射器是一體的兩面，一個專司防禦一個專司攻擊。 回顧一開始本研究所設定的病毒行銷暫時性的操作型定義，「所謂的病毒行銷是可以由行銷者依據行銷目的的不同，而為該目的設計出的一套專屬的、能夠經由自我擴散的方式以完成該特定行銷目的的完整線上行銷策略。」經由到現在的推理結果可以發現該定義可以擴展如下： 所謂的病毒行銷，是可以由行銷者依據不同的行銷目的（基因），根據不同的顧客族群（寄主）特性來選擇與設計的，為完成該特定目的的、專屬的、能夠經由特定管道（注射器）自我擴散的、擁有特定形式（載體）的一套線上行銷策略。 整理本研究重點如下： 1.任何公司都可以採用病毒行銷，用本研究的語言為，基因可以為任何產品、品牌、甚至策略目標。 2.當選擇的行銷目的確定了以後，目標顧客也同時被確定。行銷者的工作是尋找出來並設定為目標。換句話說，基因與目標寄主是成對的。 3.適當選擇或設計行銷目的的表現形式可以提高行銷效果。換句話說，經由適當設計過的載體可以提高病毒行銷的效果。 　4.要影響顧客的行為，必然要先能引起顧客的動機，而引起顧客動機的資訊也要能包含在病毒行銷之中。 　5.每一次的病毒行銷應該都是一套完整的行銷策略，唯有適切操作本研究所談及的四個部件才能發揮完全的功效。 　6.本研究所討論的病毒行銷與直銷、傳播研究所謂的二級傳播理論之差異如下表所示： ┌────┬─────────────┬────┬──────┐ │　　　 │病毒行銷 　　　　　　　│直銷 │二級傳播 　 │ ├────┼─────────────┼────┼──────┤ │傳播者　│包括顧客與傳播的中心點　　│顧客　　│傳播的中心點│ ├────┼─────────────┼────┼──────┤ │績效評估│經設計過後可以被估算 　 │可以 │不行 │ ├────┼─────────────┼────┼──────┤ │應用範圍│本研究中暫時限制為虛擬世界│實體世界│不限 　　　 │ └────┴─────────────┴────┴──────┘ / Viral marketing was first to be mentioned in the article of the fast company web site in december, 1996. In this article, the auther give virus marketing the defination of “a marketing method which spreads itself automatically”, and people who see this article adopted it, too. Although this defination is clear, many people treat viral marketing as another name of ”e-mail marketing”. e-mail marketing means using the e-mail system as a tool of marketing. For the characteristics of e-mail are convenient, cheap, public and “people spread it volunteerly”, most early examples of viral marketing use e-mail as their tool to spread. That’s the main reason the two concepts was confused. Objectives This research tries to reach three main objects： ● Give viral marketing an academic definition ,which means the marketing manager could repeat the approach to get similar result. ● Find the components of viral marketing so that the characters could be descripted ,and the main parts that should be operated could be assured. ● Try to find the relation between the viral marketing locus and the environment where it is happening. Research Structure According to biology theorem, virus’ life cycle was discovered almost completely. That’s the main reason for the research taking virus’ life cycle as a reference of reseach structure. To avoid of lacking any component which is important and to define the main category, the adapting is neccesary and decisive. After observing about 500 cases for 3 months, components of viral marketing was formed gradually. Under the strict analogy logic molted from the concept of “analogism”, the main components that should be operated was figured out. They are Injector, Carrier, Host, and Evolution. Injector and Carrier are both inside the “virus” which was made by the marketing manager or virus designer. Host is another name of customer. Evolution is an component which only bring obvious effects when the environment element was taked into consideration. Redraw the components’ relation as follows: In this model, there are four action which are not mentioned above. Produce explains where the virus from, Infecting refers to the reason that a virus could influnce host’s behavior, Consuming is the action to complete the full cycle. Spreading and evoluting was co-variating actions that were discussed in the evolution chapter. Case Choice For the different purposes in this research, the types of cases choosed were diversing and the amount was large. Most effort was taked in observing the e-mail everyday. Tracing each email, counting their spread period, and analyzing the success or fail key factors. To analogize the virus’ life cycle, the meanings of components in the real world are required. For this purpose, Hotmail, ICQ, and Ctrl-Mail were chosed as the real world cases of viral marketing. Hotmail and ICQ were both selected as sucessful examples of viral marketing extensively. Ctrl-Mail was chosed for their high technology background and technology-oriented company strategy so that viral marketing will not be misunderstanded as another IT method nor marketing concept but a mixture of concept and method. Research Methodology The first part of this research was based on the ground theory. To build the open category, about 200 cases was studied to defined the main category of viral marketing, and 3 primary cases was analyzied to analogize the structure of the research, using the research methodology of “Right Analogy”. Right Analogy is constructed on the same logic of anlogism, which requires 2 similar objects shall the same but one critical difference, and then the characteristics is analogied possible. Under the logic, the primary category can be constructed, and the theory can be extracted from the cases we observed. Conclusions 1. The definition of viral marketing can be described as follows:“ Viral marketing is an online strategy which is in an particular formation, can spread itself through the paticular chnnels and if marketing managers, designers, or any one who need it can design it personally to reach a particular object.” 2. Virus’ gene can be any product, brand, service, and even a strategy object. 3. When the marketing object was chosen, the target customer was assured at the same time. In another words, gene and host in viral marketing are coupled. 4. Proper represet formation can induce higher marketing effect, that is, a proper designed carrier is better. 5. The differences between viral marketing, direct selling, and second-level communication were showed as follows: ┌──────┬────────────┬───────┬─────────┐ │　　　 │Viral marketing │Direct selling│second-level │ │　　　 │ │ │communication │ ├──────┼────────────┼───────┼─────────┤ │communicator│Customer and the center │Customer │the center of │ │　　　 │of the communication │ │the communication │ ├──────┼────────────┼───────┼─────────┤ │Achievement │Can be estimated after │yes │no │ │estimation │being designed │ │ │ ├──────┼────────────┼───────┼─────────┤ │Applied │Virtual world limited │Real world │No limited │ │situation │in this research │ │ │ └──────┴────────────┴───────┴─────────┘