I dag är det vanligt förekommande att företag använder sig av kändisar i sin marknadsföring. De hjälper till att stärka igenkännandet och får konsumenter att välja just den varan de marknadsför framför konkurrenternas varor. Men är det verkligen så bra att använda sig av kändisar? Finns det andra karaktärer som skapar större igenkännande? Vårt syfte är att ta reda på vilken typ av karaktär som skapar starkast igenkännande till ett varumärke. De karaktärerna vi har undersökt är kändisar, egenskapade fysiska karaktärer och egenskapade animerade karaktärer. Studien har genomförts med en kvantitativ ansats. Vi utformade en elektronisk enkät och delade den via Facebook och lät 125 stycken respondenter svara på enkäten. I enkäten hade vi lagt upp femton stycken bilder, varav fem bilder var på olika kändisar, fem bilder på olika egenskapade fysiska karaktärer och fem bilder på olika egenskapade animerade karaktärer. Sedan fick respondenterna svara vilket varumärke de kopplade samman karaktären med. Efter att ha sammanställt resultatet så kom vi fram till att egenskapade fysiska karaktärer hade starkast igenkännande, näst starkast hade egenskapade animerade karaktärer och svagast igenkännande av de tre kategorierna hade kändisar. Den främsta anledningen till det här resultatet tror vi beror på att de egenskapade karaktärerna inte kan förknippas med något annat varumärke. Vi tror även att det beror på att de varumärkena som hade starkt igenkännande har byggt upp reklamen som en serie och kommer med nya episoder ofta. / Today, it is very common practice that businesses use celebrities in marketing. They help to strengthen mainstream recognition, and make consumers choose the product they market ahead of what competitors offer. But is it that entirely well to only use a famous physical person? Are there other characters that could generate an even greater recognition? Our purpose is to find out what kind of characters, from real celebrities, fictionist physical persons and even animated/cartooned characters- create the strongest response from people when being associated with a brand. The study was done in a quantitate way. We made an online survey and shared it through Facebook, letting 125 individual responders answer it. In the survey, we included fifteen pictures without any other context. Five were of real celebrity persons, five of made up fictional physical characters and lastly five pictures of entirely made up non-physical animated characters. The survey entrants then had to answer which brand they associated with the 15 characters. After finalizing the results, we found out that the order of most recognition was the following: most recognition had made up fictional physical characters, second was made up fictional non-physical animated characters and last was real non-fictional celebrities. We believe the primary reason for this result is because the made up characters cannot be associated with any other brand other than the one that created them originally. We also believe that a big factor is that the brands using these characters have a bigger storyline to them, and make certain commercials appear in a serial structured way, with new episodes being added frequently.

Every year many students are graduating from their university and are faced with the difficulty of acquiring an employment, especially large difficulty in Sweden as the unemployment rate is large amongst young adults. The companies are also facing a challenge, of how to receive the best applicants to their job openings, to ensure they will stay competitive as companies. The authors are examining how the students will acquire employment by investigating what demands companies have on applicants and employees at their companies, and what demands the students in Umeå believe the companies have. It is also examined how the companies are marketing themselves to future employees and students and how these marketing efforts are perceived by the students. The theories of interest to examine the research questions mentioned concern employer branding, marketing tools and planned behaviour. This thesis is using a mixed method approach. In the qualitative part of the thesis the authors used semi-structured interviews that were conducted with companies within the business sector in the municipality of Umeå. A survey in the form of a self-completion questionnaire was used in the quantitative part to measure the perception of Umeå University’s business program students. The result showed that the companies valued experience within their field and personality traits highest. The students had a good understanding of what demands the companies had on their employees and felt that they could fulfil most demands, however having experience within the field the company operates within was most difficult. Most companies used marketing tools such as attending recruitment fairs, holding lectures or engaging in student run organisations. The students did like these techniques the best, i.e. marketing through the university and through recruitment fairs, however, did not appreciate marketing through advertisement. The students value the opportunity to talk to current staff at a company and therefore like recruitment fairs and activities that are organized by the university. The main recommendation is that the students should get more work experience and the companies need to make it easier for the students to achieve this, hence, it will enable the students to fulfil more criterions companies have on their employees.

Employer branding (som kan ses som ett företags arbetsgivarvarumärke) är ett begrepp som det under det senaste decenniet riktats mycket uppmärksamhet mot och i denna uppsats undersöks hur ett företags önskade interna employer brand överensstämmer med uppfattningen de anställda har om företaget i fråga. För att undersöka den interna uppfattningen har en kvantitativ undersökning genomförts i form av enkäter som sedan kompletterats med en kvalitativ undersökning bestående av intervjuer för att på så sätt få en djupare förståelse. Företaget som undersökts har nyligen tagit fram nya Brand Ideals som ligger till grund för deras önskade Employer Brand. Den empirska datan har tolkats utifrån de teoretiska begreppen ”värde & värdegrund”, ”företagskultur”, ”varumärke” och ”employer branding” samt tidigare forskning. Det som framkommit under enkätundersökningen och intervjuerna är att det verkar råda en samstämmighet mellan hur företaget vill uppfattas och hur de anställda faktiskt uppfattar företagets employer brand. Däremot har vi som forskare ställt oss undrande över vad det är de anställda faktiskt identifierar sig med samt hur resultatet sett ut om vi haft en högre svarsfrekvens, något vi tycker vore intressant för vidare forskning.

This thesis studies how NATO has changed the way it brands itself to Russia, from a cooperative and humanitarian stance in 2002 toward a critical and confrontational posture between 2006 and 2008. The study is based on a discourse analysis of NATO’s publications. In the political climate following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO’s NRC established a cooperative relationship with the new Russian Federation, which included offers of humanitarian aid in food and medical care. This study shows that under the NRC, from 2002 to 2006, NATO’s image toward Russia continued to be one of “Strategic Partner.” Between 2006 and 2008, the image NATO portrayed toward Russia reverted to confrontational. The analysis of NATO’s change can be understood by considering the definition of brand image: a symbolic construct created within the minds of people and consists of all information and expectations associated with a product or service.

Syftet med föreliggande undersökning är dels att undersöka hur företag inom den högteknologiska branschen arbetar med employer branding för att ses som attraktiv för potentiella framtida arbetstagare. Dels syftar även undersökningen till att få kunskap om vad ingenjörsstuderande, inom det för dessa högteknologiska företag intressanta utbildningar, finner attraktivt hos en framtida arbetsgivare. Metoden för undersökningen är därför både kvalitativ genom intervjuer och kvantitativ genom enkäter.   Resultaten från undersökningen visar att företagen aktivt arbetar med att synas, differentiera sig från konkurrenterna, ses som relevanta och uppfylla psykologiska kontrakt. De har insett vikten av att arbeta med employer branding för att kunna kompetenssäkra i ett tidigt stadie. De arbetar både internt samt externt för att bygga upp ett starkt employer brand som kommer skapa attraktion hos potentiella framtida arbetstagare. Resultaten visar även att det som ingenjörsstudenterna, som främst tillhör Generation Y, anser är viktigast när det kommer till vad ett företag bör erbjuda dem efter examen är känslomässiga attribut och främst ”Bra ledare/chefer”, ”Bra arbetsklimat”, ”Meningsfullt arbete”, ”Karriärmöjligheter” och ” Bra arbetsmiljö”. Vidare visar resultaten att det finns skillnader i de ingenjörsstuderades uppfattningar avseende deras ålder, tidigare arbetslivserfarenhet och kön. Undersökningen bekräftar således vad tidigare forskning visat.

Understanding brand age is potentially critical to a brand management program. When a brand begins to be perceived as older, even with the positive attributes aligned with the idea of traditional and established brands, consumers may begin to move away from the brand. This study defines the concepts of both perceived and preferred brand age. We look at how perceived brand age fits in with our current perspective on branding and can enrich our understanding of consumers’ personal preferences. As there is very little published work in the area of brand age three distinct set of studies were conducted in order to fully understand the meaning of brand age, explicate the construct and understand the antecedents and consequences. The first study involved a group of exploratory studies. The purpose of this initial group of conceptual studies was to explore current consumer understanding and interpretation of the concept of perceived brand age. These studies were used to inform and direct our subsequent research. Our second set of studies explicated the brand age concept. In the first project, we used a Likert scale designed to understand what cues consumers use to understand the age of a brand. The second project was a semantic differential research study to examine what specific characteristics are associated with younger brands, older brands or are neutral between the two. We also develop and test a model of consumer choice through the exploration of the relationship between perceived brand age and preferred brand age.

The purpose of this field study is to gain an increased knowledge and understanding regarding how Western Cape-based companies work with Employer Branding towards black students by describing, analyzing and concluding the included processes. To reach this purpose a qualitative method was used by interviewing three different representatives from Western Cape companies and one consultant agency working with the concept of employer branding as well as focus group discussions with students from universities in Western Cape. The theoretical framework involves an own-designed model including the different concepts relevant for our study: Talent Management, Diversity Management and Employer Branding in which the latter has been given the most focus. The empirical data includes how the participants perceive the Employer Branding work towards students in a Western Cape context: the black talent challenge. The analysis chapter follows the structure of the theory chapter and the empirical data is compared and analyzed from to the different concepts in the theoretical framework. The analysis demonstrates that companies in Western Cape tend to overestimate their Employer Branding efforts in terms of resources and variety. Our findings show that the black students in our study felt dissatisfaction with the Employer Branding efforts from Western Cape companies. The analysis show clear patterns that Employer Branding in the Western Cape area have a strong ethnicity diversity focus and especially around fulfilling legal requirements. The collaboration between companies and universities in Western Cape could improve drastically according to our empirical findings. Finally this thesis provides a few recommendations for further research as well as for the Western Cape companies.

No description available.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att studera om och i så fall hur intern employer branding i form av personalförmåner inverkar på medarbetarnas arbetstillfredsställelse och därmed deras benägenhet att stanna i företaget samt hur företaget kan nyttja personalförmåner för att behålla och attrahera medarbetare. I denna fallstudie, som genomförts i ett företag inom bank- och försäkringsbranschen, har datainsamlingen gjorts genom individuella intervjuer, fokusgruppsintervjuer, dokument, statistik samt ett skattningsformulär. Denna data bearbetades genom en kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Slutsatsen är att intern employer branding i form av personalförmåner påverkar medarbetarnas arbetstillfredsställelse positivt både indirekt och direkt. I och med det främjar förmånerna medarbetarnas benägenhet att stanna i företaget och vilja att tala gott om arbetsgivaren. Förmånerna skulle dock kunna ha större inverkan på medarbetarnas arbetstillfredsställelse om de kommunicerades ut mer effektivt. Medarbetarnas benägenhet att stanna beror dock inte enbart på deras arbetstillfredsställelse utan även på hur de uppfattar sina alternativ, d.v.s. potentiella arbetsgivare.

The role of branding in building distribution relationships has attained increased attention in the marketing literature lately and several studies have shown that branding is an effective tool for building stronger relationships between manufacturers and their distribution partners. Unfortunately these findings fail to explain how channel push strategies work independently of consumer pull strategies when it comes to building strong manufacturer brands. On one hand, it is asserted that close interaction between brand representatives and distribution channel members is a prerequisite for success, while it on the other hand is asserted that direct communication to end users is just as important. In terms of managerial implications this has often led to vague recommendations in crafting a "perfect blend" between push and pull strategies.These recommendations constitute a status quo, where marketing managers in manufacturing firms have been placed in between two strategies without clear recommendations on how they work independently of each other. This status quo is a problem in both academic research and managerial practice since distribution channel relationships are seen as an increasingly important source of competitive advantage. As a result, the theoretical foundation of a blended strategy might be reprioritized in advantage for better relationships with distribution channel members, which in effect make push efforts the prioritized channel for manufacturer brand management.This master thesis gives all its attention to channel push branding and provides essential insights into how a brand is built in the minds of distributors, resellers and end-users, through a channel-push strategy. A single case study design is used, investigating a telecom-brand focused solely on a channel push strategy. The investigation concerns the brand identity as well as interviews with distributors, resellers and end-users. The studied brand is analyzed through Aaker's (2002) conceptualization of consumer based brand equity, consisting of brand awareness, brand associations, perceived quality and brand loyalty. Although an equity model is used, the goal is not to assess brand value, rather to investigate how brand equity is built through a strict channel push strategy.Although this case illustrates both challenges and limitations, I strongly argue against the assertion that strict push strategies are something of the past. The studied brand is filled with relevant associations and functional attributes and has only suffered minor diversities between different intermediaries and regions. However, this case also shows that channel push branding is a complex procedure that requires careful and specific considerations. Main areas which should be considered are; limitations in awareness creation, difficulties in building brand associations, dependence of interpersonal relations and the activity of the end-user-brand relationship. My main contribution with this case study is a rich description of the underlying phenomena which constitute these considerations. Distribution channel relationships are an increasingly important source of competitive advantage, and I believe that this case provides a new perspective on channel push branding, both to practitioners and to researchers.