The field of regulated financial services has been ill-served by marketing theory. As a consequence: (1) the nature of marketing in this sector has been misunderstood; (2) the key mechanism for generating new business in the field, namely, referrals, has been the subject of serious misapprehension; and, (3) the guidance offered to practitioners has been negligible. In particular, the role of the independent financial advisor (IFA) appears to have been conceptualised as a sales role, and the nature of the relationship between the IFA and the client has been addressed as though it were a straightforward buyer-seller relationship, with the IFA selling products to the client. It is unlikely that these conceptualisations were ever satisfactory and following recent regulatory changes in the sector they have become even less relevant. Since January 1st 2013 commission-based selling of financial investment products to consumers has been prohibited so that independent financial advice has become largely a fee-based service. The focus of this research is on referrals as a method of generating new business; the research context is the UK independent financial advice industry. The objectives of the study are to: (1) define and conceptualise referrals in the context of the financial advice industry; (2) develop a framework of the referral process; (3) provide practitioners with empirical evidence in connection with their embedded beliefs about referrals in this industry; (4) explore whether (as many practitioner believe) it is possible to actively manage referral generation within a financial advice business; and, (5) to investigate the importance of referrals as a means of generating new business for advisors. It was found that practitioners believe they influence referrals in four main ways: excellent service, higher qualifications, contact frequency and speed of response. However the results of this study clearly indicate that referrals are not the outcome of agency; they are a random occurrence, determined by happenstance and the result of an opportunist conversation between a prospect and a client. In turn, contrary to the advice of consultancy providers, asking for referrals was found to be ineffective and not welcomed by consumers. While word-of-mouth (WOM) often instigates referral generation, the value of WOM, needs be treated with caution, since consumers were found to have limited understanding of the service provided by independent advisors. Despite the importance consumers attribute to investment performance practitioners do not, commonly, provide investment benchmarks nor do consumers use analytical tools to assess the performance of their advisor. The absence of performance measures connects with the finding that practitioners have difficulty in describing what they do hence consumers are uncertain how to describe the service and what to say about it when asked.

Den här undersökningen syftar till att ge en ökad förståelse för kundomdömen online. Författarna har undersökt hur kommunikationen på omdömesplattformen Reco.se fungerar mellan företag och dess kunder. Många företag vet inte hur de ska hantera de kommentarer som skrivs om dem på omdömesplattformar idag. Därför har författarna från över 11 500 kommentarer och över 11 500 svar från totalt 964 företag, valt ut 5 företag, där de genomfört en kvalitativ textanalys med fokus på intertextualitet. Studien resulterade i en egen masskommunikationsmodell för elektronisk Word-Of-Mouth, en redogörelse för hur kommunikationen mellan företag och dess kunder fungerar på omdömesplattformen Reco.se samt att företag i allra högsta grad bör ha i beaktning hur de hanterar klagomål. Slutligen visar författarna hur man kan forma det digitala avtrycket som finns på internet samt konsten att kommunicera med kunden.

In recent years, mobility empowered by smart phones, tablets and numerous applications running on those mobile devices is transforming the way people live and work in the digital age. Innovations and new business models are emerging that take advantages of this rise of mobile computing. Despite tremendous opportunities promised by the transition to mobility, challenges exist before its full potential can be realized by society as well as by companies. For example, the spread of real-time targeting technologies in mobile display advertising creates a new challenge of how to efficiently allocate countless categories of advertising opportunities, or impressions, in real time. For another example, social broadcasting networks such as Twitter in the U.S. and "Weibo" in China are making it extremely convenient for consumers to spread word-of-mouth (WOM) among them, which both poses new challenges and offers new opportunities to companies wishing to harness the power of consumer WOM. The dissertation contains three essays exploring those issues. In the first essay, the concept of "smart market" for impression allocation is proposed, which emphasizes allocation contingent on uncertain supply and promotes coordination among advertisers across impression categories. A new theory is developed to solve the complicated optimization problem, which leads to a "decomposition and standardization" algorithm. In the second essay, I investigated whether and how Twitter WOM affects movie sales by estimating a dynamic panel data model using publicly available data and well-known machine learning algorithms. I found that chatter on Twitter does matter; however, the magnitude and direction of the effect depends on whom the WOM is from and what the WOM is about. The findings provide new perspectives to understand the effect of WOM on product sales and have important managerial implications. The third essay examines the possibility of designing social-broadcasting-based business intelligence (BI) systems that utilizes real-time information extracted from social broadcasting networks with text mining techniques. A new framework is proposed for this purpose and a Twitter-based BI system is designed and implemented that forecasts movie box office revenues during the opening weekend and daily revenue four weeks after the release of a movie. Preliminary results suggest that social-broadcasting-based BI systems have great potential and are worth exploring by both researchers and practitioners. / text

<p>Background: A coming of age of a generation named Generation Y, which holds negative views on commercial messages, has resulted in the need of special marketing methods which are known to be more alternative. Guerrilla Marketing, being such a method holds beneath it Undercover Marketing which is another method and has the potential of reaching this generation.</p><p>Purpose: Our purpose is firstly to define a theoretical placement of Undercover Marketing, secondly to define the theoretical views on ethics regarding the mentioned term and thirdly to see if there is a future, a will, and knowledge for its usage within the Swedish community of marketing practitioners.</p><p>Method: The research for this thesis is done in a qualitative method through a series of interviews with four advertising firms and one freelance artdirector. The interviews were compared to each other and to the frame of reference during the analysis in order to create a more complete picture.</p><p>Results: In this thesis we have seen that there is a future in the use of Undercover Marketing as it can prove to be the only method able to reach Gen Y. However it must follow certain rules to succeed and companies must take certain factors into consideration prior to attempting a marketing campaign including this particular method.</p>

Konkurrensen mellan aktörerna inom klädbranschen är idag stor och kommer förmodligen växa sig ännu större de kommande åren. Alla företag måste därför sträva efter att komma förbi det enorma kommersiella bruset för att finna köpare till sina egna produkter. Det gäller att finna ett unikt och annorlunda sätt att marknadsföra sig på och som står ut i mängden bland alla företag som vill nå ut till konsumenterna. Ett företag som lyckats hålla sig vid liv på den konkurrensutsatta marknaden är butikskedjan Weekday. Weekday har lyckats expandera, trots att företaget håller en ganska låg profil jämfört med övriga konkurrenter vad gäller marknadsföring. Företaget använder ingen traditionell marknadsföring, t.ex. genom annonsering och reklam, utan förlitar sig främst på ryktesspridning. Därför är Weekday ett väldigt intressant företag att studera ur marknadsföringssynpunkt.Syftet med studien är att utifrån de teorier vi använt oss av, undersöka och beskriva butikskedjan Weekdays kommunikationsstrategi, vilka eventuella brister som finns samt om kundernas attityder skulle förändras vid övergång till traditionell marknadsföring. Studien har främst haft ett beskrivande syfte, men även till viss del ett explorativt syfte. Vi har använt oss av en kvalitativ undersökningsmetod, då underlaget till empirin och analysen främst utgjorts av djupintervjuer med anställda inom företaget samt den enkätundersökning vi genomfört. Vår teoretiska referensram bygger främst på kommunikationsmodellen, marknadsmixen (4P) och olika varumärkesteorier. Den empiriska delen beskriver Weekdays bakgrund, kommunikationsstrategi, vilka kommunikationskanaler företaget använder samt vilket resultat vår enkätundersökning gav. I analysen diskuterar vi och jämför empirin och enkätundersökningen med de olika teoretiska modellerna vi valt. Vi försöker på ett konstruktivt sätt analysera både för- och nackdelar med Weekdays kommunikationsstrategi. Vi har i vår slutsats kommit fram till att Weekdays främsta kommunikationskanaler består av de fysiska butikerna, eventen, hemsidan samt den mer okontrollerbara metoden ryktesspridning. De främsta bristerna ligger i att deras nuvarande kommunikationskanaler inte räcker till i samband med den expansion företaget befinner sig i. För att kunna utvecklas behövs andra metoder än de som används idag och ett steg mot traditionell marknadsföring hade kunna vara ett alternativ. Kundernas attityder till varumärket kommer till viss del förändras, men vi anser att det är en konsekvens företaget får ta i samband med att verksamheten utvecklas. / Program: Butikschefsutbildningen

This research aims to investigate the role of consumer engagement in influencing loyalty and word-of-mouth through a user generated brand community on Facebook by collecting evidence from both quantitative and qualitative studies. A quantitative study is adopted to test the engagement dimension and its relationships with other constructs, such as participation, loyalty, and word-of-mouth, with a sample size of 551 collected among Facebook users in the UK. The empirical analysis from the quantitative data supports the ABC (i.e., affective, cognitive, and behavioural) dimensions of engagement as assumed in the study and finds a positive relationship between engagement, participation, loyalty, and word-of-mouth. Similarly, a qualitative study is adopted in the form of a semi-structured interview held with six user Apple brand champions from an Apple user generated online brand community on Facebook. A thematic analysis is conducted to analyse the engagement dimensions and their relationship to participation, loyalty, and word-of-mouth. In addition, the application of both the methods (i.e., the quantitative and qualitative studies) to investigate the main aim helps the research to attain complementarity. The combination of both methods provides evidence to justify the engagement dimensions and their relation to participation, loyalty, and word-of-mouth. The quantitative study supports the argued engagement dimensions and their relationship with other constructs, whereas the qualitative study explores other components of engagement and their relationship with similar constructs, as well as helping to enhance the relationships and dimensions of engagement. Moreover, this study contributes to marketing literature by empirically validating customer loyalty and word-of-mouth as outcomes of customer participation and engagement. No study so far has empirically investigated the effect of customer engagement on loyalty and word-of-mouth in a user-generated online brand community context. This enhanced understanding of vigour, personal identity, attention, absorption, sharing, and learning suggests that marketers should concentrate on the type of information presented, as well as the format in which information is presented outside the company’s networks. Community markers, such as feelings, emotions, excitement, contribution, and interaction with peers, contribute significantly to engaging and influencing loyalty and word-of-mouth with both the brand community and the brand itself.

Purpose: This paper aims to demonstrate that online complainants' reactions to a company's service recovery attempts (webcare) can significantly vary across two different types of dissatisfied customers ("vindictives" vs "constructives"), who have dramatically diverging complaint Goal orientations. Design/methodology/Approach: Online multi-country survey among 812 adult consumers who recently had a dissatisfying brand experience and turned to a marketer-generated social media site to voice an online complaint for achieving their ultimate complaining goals. Scenario-based online experiment for cross-validating the survey findings. Findings: Results suggest that "vindictive complainants" - driven dominantly by brand-adverse motives - are immune to any form of webcare, while "constructive complainants" - interested in restoring the customer-brand relationship - react more sensitively. For the latter, "no-responses" often trigger detrimental brand-related reactions (e.g. unfavorable brand image), whereas "defensive Responses" are likely to stimulate postwebcare negative word-of-mouth. Research limitations/implications: This research identifies the gains and harms of (un-)desired webcare. By doing so, it not only sheds light on the circumstances when marketers have to fear negative effects (e.g. negative word-of-mouth) but also provides insights into the conditions when such effects are unlikely. While the findings of the cross-sectional survey are validated with an online experiment, findings should be interpreted with care as other complaining contexts should be further investigated. Practical implications: Marketers have to expect a serious "backfiring effect" from an unexpected source, namely, consumers who were initially benevolent toward the involved brand but who received an inappropriate response.

<p><strong>Titel:</strong>             Produktplacering i bloggar: <em>En studie kring bloggar som effektiv marknadsföringskanal </em></p><p><strong>Författare:</strong>   Maria Mingo, Mälardalens Högskola</p><p><strong>Handledare:</strong> Lennart Haglund</p><p><strong>Kurs:</strong>            Kanditatuppsats i företagsekonomi, marknadsföring, distans</p><p><strong> </strong></p><p><strong>Nyckelord:</strong>   <em>Blogg, produktplacering, Word of Mouth, effektivitet, påverkan, kommunikationsprocessen, viral marknadsföring, Stealth Marketing, associationer, kreativt medieval, uppmärksammande, bearbetning,</em> <em>konsumentbeteende</em></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p><strong>Problem:</strong>       Då de privata bloggarna i Sverige på senare tid getts mycket uppmärksamhet i media inte bara för deras växande besöksstatistik utan även för deras, i stor utsträckning, dolda kommersiella intentioner är detta ett fenomen intressant att undersöka utifrån ett marknadsföringsperspektiv.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Syfte:</strong>            I och med att bloggen är en mediekanal som ständigt växer i antal är syftet                    med denna uppsats att se vilken funktion bloggen uppfyller som marknadsföringskanal för produktplacering. Studien ämnar ta upp de fördelar som kan nås genom användning av bloggen i kommersiellt syfte utifrån den potentiella påverkan denna typ av produktplacering kan ha på mottagare av budskap introducerade i bloggen. Värdet bloggen innehar som kommunikationskanal kommer att diskuteras utifrån dess vikt för avsändarna av budskapet, det vill säga de annonserande företagen.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Metod:</strong>         Studien baseras på en sekundärdataanalys av kommunikationsleden som skapas mellan de annonserande företagen, bloggarna och konsumenterna. Områdesrelaterad litteratur och andra marknadsförings- och konsumentbeteendeteorier har bidragit till att kartlägga produktplaceringens potential att nå uppmärksammande och påverkan hos konsumenter.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Slutsats:</strong>       I studien visas att effektiviteten bloggen kan inneha som marknadsföringskanal, återspeglas i många variabler, bland annat möjligheten att förena reklam med bloggens oberoende innehåll. Produktplacering i rekommendationsform, genom inflytelserika bloggare, kan medföra att informationsspridandet inte upplevs som påträngande och undkommer på så sätt att sållas bort som irrelevant information. Bloggläsare väljer själva blogg att besöka efter egna preferenser, något som tillåter företag att skräddarsy budskap för specifika målgrupper. Då läsarna på detta sätt tillåts att själva sköta spridandet av budskapet genom diverse marknadsföringstekniker, uppnås högre grad av trovärdighet då kongruensen mellan bloggtemat och det introducerade varumärket oftast är hög. Bloggen som kanal möjliggör dessutom skapandet av ömsesidiga relationer mellan företagen, bloggskribenterna och konsumenterna, något som tillåter en närmare och effektivare kommunikation mellan leden och ett starkare associationsschema. Då bloggen tillåter de introducerade budskapen ta tillvara på mediekontexten och framlyftas i den harmoni som skapas sinsemellan, elimineras även stor del av kommunikationsbruset som utgörs av andra faktorer som konkurrerar om konsumenters uppmärksamhet. Att låta bloggen utgöra ett komplement till ett företags ursprungliga kommunikationskanaler kan därför medföra effektiviserad exponering gentemot konsumenten och därigenom öka chansen att konsumenten både uppmärksammar och låter sig påverkas av reklamen.</p> / <p><strong>Title:</strong>             Product Placement in blogs: A study about blogs as an effective marketing channel.<em> </em></p><p> </p><p><strong>Author:</strong>         Maria Mingo, Mälardalen University</p><p><strong>Tutor:</strong>           Lennart Haglund</p><p><strong>Subject:</strong>        Bachelor Theses in Business Administration, Marketing</p><p><strong>Keywords:</strong>    <em>Blogs, product placement, Word of Mouth, efficiency, influences, the communication process, creative media-channels, attention, interpretation, consumer behaviour, associations</em></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p><strong>Problem:</strong>       The private blogs have lately gained a significant share of attention in the Swedish media, not only because of their increasing number of readers but also for their questionable commercial intentions. Therefore this subject is considered to be an interesting phenomena to explore from a marketing perspective.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Purpose:</strong>       Due to the increasing amount of blogs used in the media, the purpose of this essay has been to detect the function blogs play as a marketing channel for product placement. The study aims to discover the advantages that can be reached through the use of the blog for advertising purposes, through discussing what influence this type of product placement can have on the receivers of the communicated message. The value the blog has as a communication channel will be discussed through its importance for the senders of the message, in other words the advertising companies.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Method:</strong>       The study is based on a qualitative analysis of the communication flow that is created and established between the advertising companies, the blogs and the consumers. Literature and other theories regarding marketing and consumer behaviour have been used to state the potential that product placement has of reaching the consumers’ attention and affection.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>The research has shown that the efficiency a blog could have as a marketing channel is reflected in many variables, amongst them the possibility of integrating advertising with the independent content of blogs. Product placement, through recommendations given by influential bloggers, could cause the sharing of information not to be interpreted as forced-on advertising and thus avoids to be passed over as irrelevant information. As the consumers themselves choose what blogs to read according to their own preferences, the companies have the possibility to create a message that is highly adapted to the targeted readers. Through allowing the consumers to pass on the message themselves using this Word-of-Mouth technique, a higher level of credibility is achieved and reflected in the congruence between the theme of the blog and the brand that is being inserted into it. Using the blog as a communication channel allows reciprocal relationships to be generated between the advertising companies, the bloggers and the consumers. These relationships facilitate a communication that is closer and more effective and therefore provides greater possibilities of generating associations. A significant part of the communication interference [due to other factors competing for the consumer’s attention] can be eliminated through the harmony, which introducing a message in a suiting media context, brings. Therefore the use of the blog as an additional tool to a company’s usual marketing channels could result in a more effective type of exposure forced upon the client that could help to increase the chances of the consumer paying attention to, or be influenced by, the advertising.</p>

<p>Detta arbete kommer att ta upp området muntlig marknadsföring, eller som det kallas internationellt ”word of mouth”, som en metod för att beskriva kunders medverkan till att marknadsföra ett tjänsteföretag, som t.ex. hotell. Begreppet marknadsföring innebär en rad aktiviteter som ett företag utför, för att locka kunder. En del av dessa aktiviteter kan vara annonsering, eller broschyrer, som hotellet delar ut.</p><p>Syftet med undersökningen är att se hur ett hotells gäster har fått kunskap om hotellet och hur ”word of mouth” (WOM) har påverkat dem i sitt val.</p><p>Den metod och det material som har använts är en enkät som har delats ut och besvarats av gäster på ett hotell vilket är beläget i Eskilstuna.</p><p>Resultatet av undersökningen visar att de flesta av de personer som deltog var positiva till ”word of mouth”.</p><p>Slutsatsen av denna undersökning är att ”word of mouth” påverkar kunder som bor, eller ska bo, på ett hotell. Men även blivande kunder påverkas, i och med att de får rekommendationer av andra. Därför kan det vara klokt av hotell som vill ha fler kunder att satsa på ”word of mouth” marknadsföring.</p>

<p>Marketing of education is a phenomenon which has been developed throughout the increasing competition within the educational sector. The focus of this paper is the marketing made by upper secondary schools (grade 10-12) in Stockholm. The competition in this area is increasing partly due to the growing number of private schools. However, this is a phenomenon seen only in larger cities with several schools available. There are over 170 upper secondary schools in Stockholm and the students freely can choose among these. This fact is another contribution to the highly competitive market where the schools act.</p><p>The purpose of this paper is to study in which way schools in the educational sector use communication strategies to communicate a message to their target audience. The study highlights the communication between the school and the student. The method for the research is both qualitative and quantitative. Data has been collected from interviews with marketing managers at the schools and from surveys with students. A group- interview has also been made with students in secondary schools (grade 9) just before their upper secondaryschool choice.</p><p>The conclusions of the research are that all of the schools in the study actively work with marketing and are aware of the importance of marketing for their organisation. The schools examined in the study have all different communication processes, mainly because of thedifferent assets in terms of competence and marketing budget. The student’s attitudes towards the schools do most often correspond to the message the schools want to communicate. The paper shows that none personal communications, like advertising, direct commercials and radio commercials do not affect the student’s choice of school to any high extent. The factorsthat do affect the student’s choice are their plans for future profession, available programs on the school, geographical location and reputation.</p>