Purpose – The aim of this thesis is to explore the possibility of text mining social media, for consumer insights from an organizational perspective. Design/methodology/approach – An exploratory, single case embedded case study with inductive approach and partially mixed, concurrent, dominant status mixed method research design. The case study contains three different studies to try to triangulate the research findings and support research objective of using social media for consumer insights for new products, new ideas and helping research and development process of any organization. Findings – Text mining is a useful, novel, flexible and an unobtrusive method to harness the hidden information in social media. By text-mining social media, an organization can find consumer insights from a large data set and this initiative requires an understanding of social media and its building blocks. In addition, a consumer focused product development approach not only drives social media mining but also enriched by using consumer insights from social media. Research limitations/implications – Text mining is a relatively new subject and focus on developing better analytical tool kits would promote the use of this novel method. The researchers in the field of consumer driven new product development can use social media as additional evidence in their research. Practical implications – The consumer insights gained from the text mining of social media within a workable ethical policy are positive implications for any organization. Unlike conventional marketing research methods text mining is social media is cost and time effective. Originality/value –This thesis attempts to use innovatively text-mining tools, which appear, in the field of computer sciences to mine social media for gaining better understanding of consumers thereby enriching the field of marketing research, a cross-industry effort. The ability of consumers to spread the electronic word of mouth (eWOM) using social media is no secret and organizations should now consider social media as a source to supplement if not replace the insights captured using conventional marketing research methods. Keywords – Social media, Web 2.0, Consumer generated content, Text mining, Mixed methods design, Consumer insights, Marketing research, Case study, Analytic coding, Hermeneutics, Asynchronous, Emergent strategy Paper type Master Thesis

Denna studie är ett examensarbete utfört i Grafisk design och kommunikation vid Tekniska högskolan vid Linköpings universitet. Studien syftade till att undersöka till vilken grad konsumentgenererat innehåll används av företag och användare samt användarnas motiv till varför de skapar konsumentgenererat innehåll. Vidare kommer studien undersöka hur konsumentgenererat innehåll gestaltas samt vilka tillvägagångssätt som finns för att uppmana till konsumentgenererat innehåll och vilket som fungerar bäst. Med hjälp av tre olika metoder kunde syftet besvaras. Studien innefattade en empirisk förstudie, semistrukturerade intervjuer med personer som har förstahandserfarenhet av konsumentgenererat innehåll samt genom en observation och bildanalys på två utvalda företags Instagramkonton. Resultatet av studien påvisar att det finns flera olika tillvägagångssätt för företag att uppmuntra till konsumentgenererat innehåll på Instagram. Det framkommer även varför användare motiveras till att skapa konsumentgenererat innehåll, en av dessa motivationer är att bidra till informationssökning. Innehållets gestaltning tenderar att spegla företagets värderingar. / This study is a bachelor dissertation project carried out at the program Graphic Design and Communication at the department of Technology at Linköping University. The study aimed to investigate the extent to which consumer-generated content is used by companies and users as well as users' motives for why they create consumer-generated content. Furthermore, the study will examine how consumer-generated content is designed and what approaches are available to encourage consumer-generated content and which works best. Using three different methods. Using three different methods, the purpose could be answered. The study includes an empirical feasibility study, semi-structured interviews with people who have first-hand experience of consumer-generated content and through an observation and image analysis on two selected companies' Instagram accounts. The results of the studies show that there are several different approaches for companies to encourage consumer-generated content on Instagram. It also appears why users motivate the creation of consumer-generated content, and one of these motivations is to contribute to information retrieval. The design of the content tends to reflect the company's values. / <p>Examensarbete utfört i Grafisk design och kommunikation vid Tekniska högskolan vid Linköpings universitet</p>

Denna studie är ett examensarbete utfört i Grafisk design och kommunikation vid Tekniska högskolan vid Linköpings universitet. Studien syftade till att undersöka till vilken grad konsumentgenererat innehåll används av företag och användare samt användarnas motiv till varför de skapar konsumentgenererat innehåll. Vidare kommer studien undersöka hur konsumentgenererat innehåll gestaltas samt vilka tillvägagångssätt som finns för att uppmana till konsumentgenererat innehåll och vilket som fungerar bäst. Med hjälp av tre olika metoder kunde syftet besvaras. Studien innefattade en empirisk förstudie, semistrukturerade intervjuer med personer som har förstahandserfarenhet av konsumentgenererat innehåll samt genom en observation och bildanalys på två utvalda företags Instagramkonton. Resultatet av studien påvisar att det finns flera olika tillvägagångssätt för företag att uppmuntra till konsumentgenererat innehåll på Instagram. Det framkommer även varför användare motiveras till att skapa konsumentgenererat innehåll, en av dessa motivationer är att bidra till informationssökning. Innehållets gestaltning tenderar att spegla företagets värderingar. / This study is a bachelor dissertation project carried out at the program Graphic Design and Communication at the department of Technology at Linköping University. The study aimed to investigate the extent to which consumer-generated content is used by companies and users as well as users' motives for why they create consumer-generated content. Furthermore, the study will examine how consumer-generated content is designed and what approaches are available to encourage consumer-generated content and which works best. Using three different methods. Using three different methods, the purpose could be answered. The study includes an empirical feasibility study, semi-structured interviews with people who have first-hand experience of consumer-generated content and through an observation and image analysis on two selected companies' Instagram accounts. The results of the studies show that there are several different approaches for companies to encourage consumer-generated content on Instagram. It also appears why users motivate the creation of consumer-generated content, and one of these motivations is to contribute to information retrieval. The design of the content tends to reflect the company's values. / <p>Examensarbetet är utfört vid Institutionen för teknik och naturvetenskap (ITN) vid Tekniska fakulteten, Linköpings universitet</p>

With the gradual rise of Web-2.0 based platforms, Internet users were given the possibility to interact with each other in virtual communities. Originating from this development was the concept of user-generated content (UGC), which implies that people were able to enrich each other’s user-experiences by sharing creative efforts and communicating openly (O’Reilly, 2007).   As Web 2.0 features continued to grow, marketers became aware of the opportunities this new development online created and how they could use it to their advantage (De Chernatony &amp; Christodoulides, 2004). The development online however also faces companies with challenges, as consumers now are able to create and share opinions and thoughts about brands, which to an extent is uncontrollable by companies (Christodoulides et al., 2012). Just as marketer-controlled communication can create new brand associations in the minds of consumers, for better or worse - so can also externally-generated communication, such as brand-related UGC, do.   Knowing that consumers generally trust what other consumers say about products more than marketing communication (Cheong &amp; Morrison, 2008; Song &amp; Yoo, 2016), and that there does not exist much research on how consumers perceive brand-related UGC, this is a considerably important topic to study. A classic way of studying communication effectiveness is through credibility, which is argued to be a major determinant of whether consumers accept and adopt what is communicated (e.g. Hovland et al., 1953). Thus, the purpose of this thesis is to gain an understanding of how consumers assess credibility of brand-related UGC and furthermore, what their consequent responses are.   A qualitative approach was taken as the purpose is to gain insight rather than proving a point. The interviews were semi-structured and formed around three Instagram posts relating to a specific brand, which were deliberately chosen based on the content of the theoretical framework developed. Through using these example cases, interviewees’ first reactions could be captured and their reasoning around credibility could be followed and discussed.   The results from this study indicate that there exists a certain level of irritation as well as a scepticism towards brand-related UGC. This seem to stem from a suspicion that most content that promotes products and brands is part of sponsored collaborations, into which consumers put noticeably much distrust. Beyond questioning sponsorship, it was also found that the source played a particularly important role when assessing credibility. When a source is familiar, it is easier to determine credibility of brand-related UGC, and credibility furthermore increases with perceived expertise, attractiveness and trustworthiness. The channel through which a message is communicated also matters, as it is more difficult to be ingenuine through a video than an image or a text, which implicated that consumers may find videos more credible than other media formats. The message itself was also deemed to influence the credibility assessment, as the message was questioned both based upon common sense but also on knowledge and previous experience.   As for practical implications, this study indicates that encouraging or generating positive brand-related UGC through paid collaborations, is a balancing act, into which much consideration needs to be put. With the evident irritation that consumers feel when it comes to brand-related UGC, marketers should be careful to push too much positive brand communication onto the consumer, or it will turn negative. To come across as genuine, the “who”, ”what” and ”how” of communication should be carefully considered.