I takt med att reklamtröttheten ökar i västvärlden växer sig marknadsföringsstrategin influencer marketing allt starkare. Influencers, vilka i grund och botten är helt vanliga människor, har en stor makt på sina sociala medier med tusentals till miljoner följare. De gör reklamsamarbeten med företag mot pengar och gratis produkter, och i gengäld hjälper de företagen nå ut till enormt stora målgrupper. Utöver betalda samarbeten lägger de ut fina bilder vilka stärker deras varumärken, vilket vanligtvis innebär att framhäva sig själva som snygga, roliga och fina personer med ett fantastiskt och åtråvärt liv. Att influencer marketing är en effektiv form av marknadsföring har nog gått få förunnat, men utöver att påverka konsumenters köpbeteende påverkas konsumenter på ett djupare plan. Givet tidigare forskning som undersöker en något äldre kvinnlig målgrupp valdes unga kvinnor i generation Z som målgrupp för studien. Målgruppen är uppvuxna med sociala medier och är därför intressanta att undersöka. Således är studiens syfte att undersöka hur unga kvinnor i generation Z påverkas av influencer marketing på Instagram. För att svara på syftet har två frågeställningar formulerats. Studien har utförts med en kvalitativ metod som bestod av intervjuer med en urvalsgrupp på unga kvinnor i åldrarna 15-20 år samt med hjälp av bildanalyser av en influencers Instagramflöde, för vilket influencern Bianca Ingrosso valts. Studiens resultat visade att influencers påverkar unga kvinnor i generation Z i deras identitetsskapande och konsumentbeteende, bland annat genom att måla upp påhittade problem vilka de förstärker med ouppnåeliga, perfekta idealbilder samtidigt som de skapar starka relationer till sina följare. Detta gör att målgruppen, trots att de är kritiska till influencers och medvetna om att allt inte är så perfekt som det verkar på Instagram, jämför sig själva -– framförallt sina utseenden och sina liv – och ifrågasätter sin identitet. De konsumerar i hopp om att stärka identiteten samt för att lösa de uppmålade problemen och i försök att uppnå idealbilden. Detta bidrar till stress och press, och i vissa fall psykisk ohälsa. Att tillhöra en grupp är viktigt för målgruppens identitetsskapande och de upplever att Instagram bidrar till en rädsla för utanförskap, samtidigt som dyrkande av influencers och att hålla sig uppdaterade hjälper dem känna grupptillhörighet. De är dock generellt positiva till influencers i aspekten att de bidrar till underhållning och inspiration samt tycker sig se en positiv trend bland vissa influencers att allt inte längre måste vara perfekt, vilket får dem att känna starkare förtroende för dem. / As advertising fatigue increases in the western world, influencer marketing is growing ever stronger as a marketing strategy. Influencers, who are basically ordinary people, earn great power on their social media platforms with thousands to millions of followers. They partner with companies for money and free products, and in return, they help companies by reaching huge target groups. In addition to paid partnerships, they publish beautiful images that strengthen their brand, which usually means to emphasize themselves as good looking, funny and nice people with fantastic and desirable lives. The fact that influencer marketing is an effective form of marketing has probably been gaining ground, but in addition to influencing consumers' purchasing behavior, they also have some influence on them on a deeper level. Given previous research examining a slightly older female target group young women in generation Z were selected as the target group for this study. The target group hass grown up with social media and is therefore interesting to investigate. Thus, the purpose of the study is to investigate how women in generation Z are influenced by influencer marketing on Instagram. To answer the purpose, two questions at issue were formulated, and the study was conducted using a qualitative method that consisted of interviews with a sample group of young women aged 15-20 and with the help of image analyzes of an influencer's Instagram feed. The results of the study showed that influencers affect young women in generation Z by painting up inventive problems, which they reinforce with unattainable, perfect ideal images while creating strong relationships with their followers. This means that the audience, despite being critical of influencers and aware that everything is not as perfect as it seems on Instagram, compares themselves - their looks and their lives - and thus questions their identity and consumes in hopes of strengthening it and to solve the painted problems as well as trying to achieve the ideal image. This contributes to stress and pressure, and in some cases mental illness. Belonging to a group is important for the target group when creating their identity and they feel that Instagram contributes to a fear of exclusion, while cultivating influencers and staying up to date on social media helps them feel group affiliation. However, they are generally positive to influencers in the aspect that they contribute to entertainment and inspiration. They find themselves seeing a positive trend among some influencers that everything no longer has to be perfect, which makes them feel like they are able to trust them more.

My degree project has been developed through my research on the topics of originality, consumption, vanitas and consumer culture. It referneces the politics of consumption, desire, pollution, waste, the passing of time, the effect of decay, and death. The scene is a reconstruction of a "still life" scene, referencing Baroque painting. The light-box installation comprises coloured sculptures which are emblems of consumerism. The hanmade and the organic are joined in composition, as if united in ruin and decay. The sculptures resemble the still life genre and allude to memento-mori. The project also addresses the industrial food system. It emphasises efficiency, profit and power in ways that are narrowly constructed, sometimes at the expense of other environmental and social values. It consist of a glass-cast modern cornucopia. The glass captures decomposing traces and makes them solid and everlasting. Even with something so fragile and temporary as life, the material can freeze it in time. The glass captures life.

Internet has become increasingly ubiquitous and with the introduction of Web 2.0 technologies and concepts it has almost become second nature for many Internet users. This study attempts to view the “social life” of this “new” online environment through its current manifestation in the form of the popular social networking site Facebook. It argues that Facebook has become a tool for the management of one's self both online and offline and that people's reflexive relation to their self-identity is made visible through their engagement with this social media. How such a new form of social media incorporates itself into everyday life but also how the media acts as an extension of the reflexive self has been the main focus of this study.

The purpose of the study is to investigate how men and women experience personalized advertising, whether it affects the purchase decision and whether there are differences between men and women. A qualitative method has been used with the help of structured interviews within a delimitation of the Stockholm area. The theories used in this study consisted of the AIDA model, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Relationship Marketing (RM), Customization and Personalization and Consumer Culture Theory. Results of the study show that there are clear differences in how men and women experience Instagram. The main difference is that women have a more positive view of personalized advertising, which leads to actual purchases to a greater extent than men. The men in the study, on the other hand, show that it is negative to individualized advertising to a greater extent.

Keywords: ritual, rite of passage, social change, consumer culture, media This thesis deals with a ritual observed today in a panorama of extremely dense consumer culture in the highly industrialized society of Japan. The ritual in exam is known under the name of Shichigosan (translated into English as Seven-Five-Three) and it is observed by children of three, five and seven years of age. The ritual has its predecessors in various rural ritual observances that were associated to certain ages seen as threshold in the child's life. The consolidation of the urban pattern of the ritual went along with the transformation and urbanization during the Tokugawa shogunate from the 17th century onwards. The thesis describes the historical development of Shichigosan during which it has proved capable of adaptation to changing social and economic conditions without losing those elements that render it recognizable as a ritual mode of expression. The ritual in exam unfolds as a shared platform of meaning where basic social values, views on children and family life, and also individual perceptions emerge, are expressed and shaped at the same time. The main scope of the thesis is to interpret not only the reasons of the popularity of this observance, but more importantly, how its meaning in the modern Japanese...

This study aimed to examine how a company like Anamma creates a platform where people can connect and inspire others to buy vegan food and what strategies they use to do so. The empirical material consisted of eight posts on Instagram made by the Swedish vegan company Anamma. The posts are showing how vegan meals can be healthy, tasteful but also how it is good for the environment. Since the material in these posts were both text, pictures and animated videos a multimodal analysis was most suitable to get a valid and true result. Initially the posts were analyzed one by one. Then we summarized the result into three themes based on what was discovered during the first analysis. The study shows that Anamma is using strategic tools like the theory of Two-step-flow, or Word of mouth to make people hear about them. By using hashtags and tagging people they are creating a chain of equivalence, using the digital platform to spread their message. They also use words like, “together”, “all of us” and “save the planet” et cetera, which is assumed to make people want to be a part of making the world a better place. Also, they frequently use statistics as a strategy of persuasion to show how much less effluent vegan food is to the environment compared to meat. Using the word “Anamma-friends” is a strategy that helps create a strong community for their customers. All their strategies combined contributes to creating social identity and a feeling of belonging. However, this study is not a study of communication effects, since that would require a different approach. Therefore the conclusion of this study is that Anammas communication is effective and adequate towards the social context and can be seen as successful in relation to the purpose of the study.

American undertakers first began relocating from downtown parlors to mansions in residential neighborhoods around the First World War, and by midcentury virtually every city and town possessed at least one funeral home in a remodeled dwelling. Using industry publications, newspapers, photographs, legal documents, and field work, this dissertation mines the funeral industry's shift from business district to residential district for insights into America's evolving residential landscape, the impact of consumer culture on the built environment, and the communicative power of objects. Chapters one and two describe the changing landscape of professional deathcare. Chapter three explores the funeral home's residential setting as the battleground where undertakers clashed with residents and civil authorities for the soul of America's declining nineteenth-century neighborhoods and debated the efficacy and legality of zoning. The funeral home itself became a site for debate within the industry over whether or not professionals could also be successful merchants. Chapters four and five demonstrate how an awareness of both the symbolic value of material culture and the larger consumer marketplace led enterprising undertakers to mansions as a tool to legitimate their claims to professional status and as a setting to stimulate demand for luxury goods, two objectives often at odds with one another. Chapter five also explores the funeral home as a barometer of rising pressures within retail culture, from its emphasis on merchandising and democratized luxury to the industry's early exodus from the downtown as a harbinger of the postwar decentralization of shopping to the suburbs. Amidst perennial concerns over rising burial costs and calls for greater simplicity, funeral directors created spaces that married simplicity to luxury, a paradox that became a hallmark of modern consumer culture. Notwithstanding their success as retail spaces, funeral homes struggled for acceptance as ritual spaces. Chapter six follows the industry's aggressive campaign to dislodge the home funeral using advertisements that showcased the funeral home's privacy and homelike comforts. In the end, a heightened emphasis within consumer culture on convenience and the funeral home's ability to balance sales and ceremony solidified its enduring and iconic place within the vernacular landscape.

During the last years, the phenomenon of ultra-fast fashion, specifically the retailer SHEIN, has grown massively and became popular among young female consumers. SHEIN is also known for their polluting productions, bad working conditions, violating (social) sustainable laws and stealing designs from other designers. Still, this does not seem to impact the consumers' attraction towards clothes from SHEIN. The purpose of this research is to investigate the appeal of SHEIN for young female consumers. This research employs qualitative research methods to examine the empirical material in relation to three prominent theories: Hawkin Stern's "impulse buying theory", John Schouten and James McAlexander's "consumption subculture theory", and Russel Belk's "extended self theory". The empirical material for this research was obtained through 10 semi-structured interviews. Given the limited existing research on the phenomenon of ultra-fast fashion, an exploratory research design was chosen to investigate this topic. The empirical findings of this research can be divided into three different themes: The contradicting appreciation, The irrelevance of socioeconomic status and The SHEIN consumption subculture. The central theme lies in SHEIN’s big collection and the respondents’ appreciation for it. Another theme shows that there is not a clear pattern found between the socioeconomic status of the respondents and their SHEIN consumption. Lastly, around the consumption of SHEIN clothes, a consumption subculture is formed. This research is believed to contribute to the under researched area of ultra-fast fashion, as well as further develop and question the selective theories.

In Swedish society, food is the fourth most prominent area of consumption. The number of large grocery shops is increasing, and today a consumer can choose between several different brands for the same product. However, there is still a lack of knowledge about defining sustainable food consumption as well as a lack of knowledge about how the consumer receives communication about sustainable food consumption. By using semi-structured qualitative in-depth interviews with students from a Swedish university, this study investigates whether sustainable food consumption is relevant to young people living with limited resources and how they define the concept. The study also examines how the interviewees make sense of communication promoting sustainable food consumption. Results illustrate that sustainable food consumption is not as relevant for students due to today’s expensive food prices. However, these students were also motivated and informed. They knew how to consume sustainably but were constrained by the economic situation. In addition, the students had difficulty defining sustainable food consumption, while they had no problems defining the more general concept of sustainability. Secondly, the public opinion about communication to promote sustainability was negative because the messages were either misleading or not transparent enough; the recipients became confused and critical. The messages were therefor interpreted as inauthentic.

Farmers’ markets are often thought to be the hallmark of the local food movement. However, there appears to be relatively little research which considers farmers’ experiences there. Drawing on 12 open-ended interviews with 16 farmers on Vancouver Island, BC, I explore how farmers’ markets support small-scale farmers, although they are losing farmer focus. I explore three key themes in this research: mainstream economic assessments of farmers’ markets, how consumer culture affects small-scale farmers, and whether organic certification works for small-scale farmers. The intent of my research is not only to consider farmers’ experiences at farmers’ markets, but to show how to improve their current organization on Vancouver Island and elsewhere. As such, this refocuses farmers’ markets back to local food, small-scale ecological farming, and food sovereignty. / Graduate