Då konkurrensen om den bästa arbetskraften idag är hård har det blivit allt viktigare att framstå som en attraktiv arbetsgivare, varför många företag arbetar med aktiviteter som på senare tid kommit att rymmas under begreppet employer branding. Men hur går detta arbete till i praktiken? Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur företag kan arbeta med employer branding för att framstå som en attraktiv arbetsgivare i teknologstudenters ögon. Den tidigare forskning och de teorier som studien utgått ifrån rör dels employer branding, vilket handlar om att förmedla en tydlig bild om vad som gör en arbetsgivare unik och åtråvärd, och dels "Generation Y" vilket huvudsakligen avser 80-talister och handlar om deras livsuppfattningar och värderingar, där fokus i denna studie är deras krav och förväntningar på arbetsmarknaden. För att skapa sig en bättre förståelse kring hur företag kan arbeta med employer branding gentemot teknologstudenter har det gjorts en empirisk studie, dels i form av två samtalsintervjuer med två svenska storföretag som av studenter anses vara attraktiva arbetsgivare, och dels genom två fokusgruppsintervjuer med teknologstudenter. Resultaten i undersökningen visar varför dessa företag anser det vara viktigt att arbeta med employer branding, hur utformandet av deras arbetsgivarvarumärken har skett och hur bilden av dem ser ut idag, samt hur de kommunicerar ut sina arbetsgivarvarumärken. Resultatet visar också vad teknologstudenter har för krav och förväntningar på arbetets innehåll, arbetsvillkor och arbetsmiljö, samt hur de bildar sig en uppfattning om potentiella arbetsgivare. Några av de slutsatser som dras är att det är viktigt att ha ett unikt men samtidigt internt förankrat och sanningsenligt arbetsgivarvarumärke. Arbetsgivavarumärket bör också stämma överens med det övergripande "brandet" samt med den globala bilden av företaget om det nu finns någon sådan. Gällande kommunikationen av arbetsgivarvarumärket är det fördelaktigt att ha en balans mellan generell kommunikation med bredare träffyta och mer detaljerad kommunikation riktad till specifika grupper. Det är också viktigt att prioritera kvalitet framför kvantitet i valet av aktiviteter. Slutligen kan det konstateras att den mest effektiva kommunikationen är när de anställda pratar gott om företaget som arbetsgivare inför vänner och familj.

Research has indicated that positive and negative attitudes toward intercollegiate athletics can contribute to the perceptions of both congruency and incongruency with the established university mission and values. Core values are considered to represent philosophical viewpoints and organizational priorities, further providing a sense of purpose to stakeholders. As such, established core values are expected to be applied and enacted in daily interactions in order to fulfill the mission and vision of an organization. Over time, however, the increase in negative attitudes attributed to athletic department behavior brings into question their perceived alignment with the university core values and brand. The potential existence of incompatibility and misalignment among internal constituents concerning core values has been linked to the starting point for conflicts within the organizational setting. Thus, attitudes toward athletic department behavioral congruency or incongruency with stated university core values is worthy of investigation in order to determine the consequential impact on the university brand. The purpose of this study was to investigate stakeholder attitudes toward athletic department behavioral congruency with the stated core values of Texas A&M University and assess the subsequent implications for the university brand. Personal interviews (N=13) were conducted with individuals from each of six university internal and external stakeholder groups: current students, alumni, faculty/staff members, community members, athletic department personnel, and athletic department boosters. Findings revealed four primary themes: 1) 'Excellence' Equals Winning, 2) For Public Relations Purposes Only, 3) Separation and Isolation of the Athletic Department, and 4) Lack of Leadership from the Top-Down. Implications communicated the necessity of a consistent and accurate representation of the Texas A&M brand at all university levels. Further, the implementation of a unique, potentially more effective model for core value congruency and brand management was presented. Finally, the necessity of promotion and implementation of the core values from university and athletic department leadership was recommended for core value effectiveness and brand consistency.

<p><strong>Purpose </strong>The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how branding is exercised in a SME and to develop a model for how SMEs can implement branding. This means that we will especially focus on aspects that are important for a SME when building and strengthening a brand.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Background </strong>When looking at the concept of brand management, the wide range of literature gives examples of corporations such as Nike, Coca-Cola, and Apple who have been successful in the field. It rarely talks about how SMEs deal with branding, if at all. Brand management in SMEs has been widely overlooked, despite that a vast majority of the companies are SMEs.<strong> </strong>There are as mentioned obstacles when working with brand management in SMEs, but the existing literature is mainly focusing on how larger organizations should implement brand management and the benefits of doing so. We argue that there is lack of existing literature on how SMEs should implement branding.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Method </strong>To fulfill the purpose, a qualitative method was chosen. The study was done within a SME, Triumf Glass, where eight people were interviewed in a semi-structured way. This was done to investigate how branding is excercised in a SME.</p><p><strong> </strong></p><p><strong>Conclusion </strong>The outcome of the study is a model that describes the process we believe to be necessary for a SME to go through when building and strengthening its brand. The model consists of the phases brand essence, brand reflection and brand strategy which result in brand equity.</p><p><strong> </strong></p>

<p>This paper looks at the perceptions of people within and outside of Jönköping, regard-ing the main attractions/attributes within the Jönköping region and how they are being branded by the municipality. A model was formed to explain how consumer expecta-tions affect demand, and based on that a survey was handed out to find out consumers travelling habits, general perceptions about Jönköping and its branding. The results show that promotion has not been as successful as hoped and that Jönköping is still seen as a religious city among the respondents. A Las Vegas Entertainment Concept was formed to find out whether people would be willing to visit Jönköping more often if something „new‟ was presented. In conclusion, for consumers to visit more often new experiences have to be provided. It is all about the way Jönköping city is marketed in the future and what it will be able to offer to the different consumer segments visiting.</p>

<p>Traditionally, branding is all about differentiate the product from its competi-tors. When the brand is a place another level of complexity is added. A place has several different stakeholders that all have to communicate the same mes-sage in order to create a strong brand. Place marketing is a rather new theoreti-cal field and not many researchers have explored this phenomenon, therefore, there does not exist any common practice within this line of study. Compared to a product the stakeholders of a city often have quite different objectives, and therefore there is a risk that they communicate messages that contradict each other. Which features of a city is needed to create a strong brand?</p><p>The purpose of this thesis was to expore how the stakeholders within the city of Jönköping can cooperate in order to build a strong city brand.</p><p>The authors have chosen to focus on a qualitative method and personal inter-views as the primary source of information. The respondents that participated in this study were influential persons in leading positions within the main stakeholder groups in Jönköping, that is the public sector, the private sector and the university. Further the Managing Director of FMJ was interview. In order to determine, which of these stakeholders that were of interest the authours have used the snowball approach. To complement these findings secondary data, including three attitude surveys, have been analysed.</p><p>The authors have concluded that Jönköping does possess a few quite strong brand associations, however, the problem that the city has is the lack of an suf-ficient product to sell. A couple of years ago Jönköping established FMJ to take care of the external marketing and since than it has been many improve-ments, nevertheless the authors believe that another form of cooperation is needed. The city would have to develop a new organization with the base within the municipality, but it should include all the important stakeholders. The main tasks of this cooperation would be to integrate these stakeholders and build a strong product, which should emphasis the most important fea-tures of the Jönköping.</p>

<p>Background: Branding is a way for companies to differentiate their products and services from its competitors in the fierce competition in business today. This phenomena has up until recently mostly been used in the B2C context, but the importance of branding in the B2B context has been more and more acknowledged. Trade shows are a good way to find customers, and to display and sell products, but can it also be used to strengthen the brand of the exhibiting company? According to Nordiska Undersökningsgruppen (2001) 79 % of the participating companies in B2B trade shows claims to have strengthened their brand through the trade show. As few companies take part in organized research about their trade show performance, we were curious about how such a vast majority of companies knew that their trade show participation actually strengthens their brands.</p><p>Purpose: The purpose of our thesis is to explore how trade shows are used by subcontractors to strengthen their brand names, and how these companies measure brand strength.</p><p>Method: A case study has been conducted, examining four subcontractors participating at the Elmia Subcontractor trade show. In order to collect our primary data, we used questionnaires both prior to and after the trade show as well as face-to-face interaction during the trade show. We also chose to use the TSI model (Jansson, 2003) to examine what could be done in the different stages of the trade show process in order to maximize the com-panies’ results from it.</p><p>Conclusions: The conclusion of this thesis is that the brand image and thereby the strength of the brand of the trade show participating company is mainly a result of the face-to-face meeting. Since we have established that the view on branding in the investigated companies differ from the theoretical view in large, we believe that the relevance of the investigation mentioned in the background can be questioned. The companies lack procedures for measuring their brand strength.</p>

Thesis (DBA)--City University of Hong Kong, 2009. / "Submitted to College of Business in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Business Administration." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 138-153)

The research examines and explores the differences and similarities between how the social media platform of Facebook is used in the context of the basketball industry. The research centers on the respective Finnish and Swedish basketball leagues. More precisely, the study scrutinizes nine basketball teams social media representatives – four Finnish and five Swedish – perceptions on how their respective sport clubs act on the medium of Facebook, through the use of relevant marketing theories. “How do Swedish and Finnish basketball clubs manage their brands and fan clubs on Facebook?” In the recent years sport marketing has been researched extensively, however the research on sport marketing has focused solely on more established sport leagues (e.g. National Basketball Association, Premier League among other bigger leagues). The major emphasis in sport marketing has been on bigger leagues; this research focuses on the smaller and less established leagues of Finland and Sweden. There is a limited or no literature to be found of sport marketing, which specifically focuses on smaller national leagues. Additionally, the study adds knowledge to a relatively new and evolved way of marketing. Social media marketing research is at its infantry stage, at least when considering research done in more traditional marketing, thus the research could add knowledge to this young marketing sphere. The study is based on a social constructivist approach, where the social actor creates reality. The teams’ social media representatives had their own unique interpretations of team’s actions on the social media platform of Facebook. Moreover, the primarily reason for the study was to create understanding of the perceptional Facebook practices used by two countries basketball teams. The main research question was divided into three research objectives to get more accurate results. Relevant theories of branding and customer relationship management, where emphasis is on relationship marketing, were used to answer the three more specific research objectives. More specifically the theory of relationship marketing is used to identify the teams’ relationship management practices on the social media platform of Facebook and the theory of brand equity was used to understand how the teams’ build their brand image on the medium. Additionally, appropriate organizational definitions are used to recognize the underlying reasons why the sample teams are motivated to use the platform of Facebook. The results indicated that there were both similarities inside the examined country’s teams’ perceptions of Facebook activities and differences between these perceptional practices. However, the differences were of a lessening degree than similarities. Similarly, the country comparison showed that there were only minor differences between Facebook practices used by two countries’ club practices. The study gives a sound general view of smaller and less established sport league teams, thus the study could give a good foundation for further studies on other smaller and less established countries sport league clubs. Furthermore, it could also be used as a building block for a more extensive study, where perceptions of multiple club key stakeholders could be compared with each other to find similarities and differences between their perceptions gaps.

In recent years it has become way more important for organizations to use their brand to market themselves as an employer. In a market where organizations are competing for labor it has been known that the brand can make it possible for organizations to differentiate themselves as unique and attractive place of work. The concept is called Employer Branding and if an organization wants to suceed they have to have a clear and defined structure. The concept is well known among private organizations and not as common with the public sector. The purpose of this study was to examine how a small municipality in northern Sweden is working to be an attractive employer. The following questions were aimed to be answered: How do the municipality get their staff to work towards common goals and values? How is the municipality working to create a good management that promotes a friendly workforce? How is the municipality working to enhance their image? Semi-structured interviews were conducted to get the purpose of the study answered. Six employees were interviewed. The results showed what the municipality needs to focus on if they want to become an attractive employer. Evidence in the results showed that weak goals and values exists, there is a need for a clearer management, and that competence is neglected because of the municipality economy. The results are discussed and analyzed in relation to previous research and finally proposals is conducted for the studied municipality.

The UNESCO World heritage inscription has become popular with 1000+ sites nowadays, when it was introduced after the Second World War in order to protect significant areas such as landscapes and buildings. The popularity is visible in terms of touristic benefits and shows an attractive feature for the designated site, transforming the World Heritage label into a brand. However, this research finds the World Heritage brand is becoming weak in its ability to attract tourists which is in contrast with prevailing views found in preceding studies. The point of departure of this research is the situation on World Heritage Southern Öland what has influenced the scope of research focusing mainly on Nordic perspectives (Sweden, Denmark and Germany). The purpose of this paper is to call for improved stakeholder management at World Heritage sites to improve the brand and analyses the situation and practices in Sweden, Denmark and to a very limited extent, Germany. The research is based on theoretical stakeholder framework and cross-case analysis based on two case studies done in Denmark and Sweden employing data collection by interviews and questionnaires. It describes the stakeholder management and networking as contributors to the branding of the World Heritage sites. This paper shows various limitations of using the World Heritage brand and how World Heritage sites may attempt to strengthen themselves by creating a common network as well as using it as a local destination brand for commercial purpose.