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As digitalization has evolved over the years, the need for automating procedures for faster results has become stronger. Marketing automation is a software that automates an organization’s marketing activities. Its purpose is to deliver a firm’s personalized messages to the existing and potential customers. Consequently, marketing automation is closely related to content marketing which’s main attribute is to raise brand awareness, and having a higher brand awareness can ultimately affect the buying decision. It has been discovered that there is a lack of research in the existing literature about marketing automation and more specifically in how marketing automation can affect the buying decision by raising brand awareness. Therefore, this thesis aims to examine how marketing automation affects the buying decision through brand awareness and external branding. The theory was outlined by six concepts which were marketing automation, external branding, brand communication, brand awareness, and buying decisions. These concepts led the authors to create six different hypotheses in order to find a link between them.  The data were collected through a self-completion questionnaire, therefore a quantitative study with an exploratory purpose was conducted. The results from the 118 respondents of the questionnaire suggest that marketing automation influences the organizational buying decision by enhancing brand awareness. Moreover, marketing automation has a positive impact on external branding which also has a positive effect on the buying decision. Concludingly, this suggests that marketing automation does positively affect the B2B buying decision through brand awareness and external branding.

Everyday Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) plays a bigger role in companies’ work. People become more aware of how different organizations take care of their network. Certain consumer groups have expectations from companies’ CSR work, and they are willing to pay more for the brands of these firms compared to others. These facts have forced the companies to put more effort into their CSR work. On the other hand it has become an opportunity for corporations, which are forerunners in this area. CSR can be interpreted so that communities have expectations from the firms and the work the latter do for society’s good. Corporate Philanthropy (CP) is a part of CSR and a particular form of it. The reasons behind CP are not always apparent. Brand is the bridge between consumer and the product. One motive behind CP could be creating brand value and implementing particular products for consumers who appreciate the companies’ work for society’s good. Therefore we have formulated our research question as follows: What are the main reasons behind corporate philanthropy and how is it conducted in the firms? Our aim in this thesis is to emphasize CP as a part of CSR, to study how it is exercised in practice and to explore how firms’ philanthropic actions add value to their brands. We have limited our study to company perspective in order to get as accurate results as possible. To indentify the reasons to CP we have completed a qualitative study in the two Nordic countries: Finland and Sweden. The study has been done by semi-structured interviews for four companies, two in both countries. These companies are of two different sizes, large and small. Our study design is multiple-case study. Interpretivism and subjectivism constitute the philosophical basis for this research. The applied approach is deductive with inductive elements. In the theoretical framework we discuss CSR, philanthropy and branding in their different forms. We have linked these main theories together by relating older and recent theory to each other in a natural way. Earlier theories, which directly merge these two areas, do not considerably exist. Therefore we have had to make our own decisions to find the best path to reach our goal and find the main reasons behind CP. In the final part, analysis, we have related theoretical framework to empirical findings. We have linked different theories together and found if there is a connection between Corporate Philanthropy and creating brand value. We have also reflected on whether there are differences in the actions and aims for CP between the companies in these two Nordic countries.