Background and problem discussion: Today companies literally fight for consumers' attention. Competition has forced both marketers and companies to seek new unconventional ways to communicate with the market. This has lead to the development of the phenomenon known as social media. This form of media describes a selection of user generated content created by consumers’ to educate each other about products, brands, services, personalities and issues. Social media have become a major factor in influencing different aspects of consumer behavior including awareness, information acquisition, opinions, attitudes, purchase behavior, and post-purchase communication and evaluation. Purpose: Our study focuses on describing how and explaining why companies use social media in their marketing communication strategy. Methodology: We have used a hermeneutic and qualitative approach in our study. Our research is both descriptive and explanatory. The study is also of an abductive nature, relying on empirical data and theoretical conceptions. Our empirical data was collected through a personal interview with our case company, and through the company’s social media applications. Conclusions: Companies should use social media in their marketing communications because it allows them to inform their customers and create a two-way communication. This communication can help companies to influence consumers and differentiate themselves. It can also help strengthen the corporate identity, build confidence for the company as well as create relationships. Social media is a cost effective way to become global and create reach.

This study aims to describe how a company behind a well-established brand in the fashion industry has strategically chosen to communicate with their target market. Interviews with four individuals in different positions within the company have generated qualitative data, which is presented and analyzed in relation to the theoretical frame of reference in this study. The results show that the company does not use conventional marketing, but relies rather on marketing based word-of-mouth generated by its customer base due to its unique store concepts. Previous research has shown that this type of marketing strategy is effective and beneficial to the brand equity, a conclusion that is demonstrated to also apply to the survey object of this study. Furthermore, it is also shown that this is largely due to the distinct and coordinated image that the company maintains through strict standardization.

The rapid growth of the Internet has provided tremendous opportunities for laptop companies to offer quality of customer service. The prime drivers and motivations for offering such customer service through the web are to reduce service costs and to provide efficient and effective service to customers. In the business of laptop RANGS electronics Limited (REL) is a new company which aims to achieve business excellence through quality product by satisfying customer expectations. But what are the marketing media essential for building a successful customer service operation in REL business? This paper addresses this specific issue by isolating the essential elements from the available literature, and assessing them individually from interviews to obtain better insights and understanding. The respondents were Swedish, Chinese and Bangladeshi students studying in Orebro and Karlstad University. In order to find a suitable media for the REL marketing of laptop, the data gathered was analyzed and compared groups of concepts related to the purpose and the research question. The result suggests that online service delivery has greater charm to customers for its low or limited levels of complexity. The three important concepts to establish the service into customers mind are developing speedy service, increasing customer affiliation through networking and engaging customer into product marketing. This could help REL to design and develop robust foundations on which to build successful customer service operations. The foundations between the service and e-business were sometimes confusing. This paper clarifies some of these opacities.

With the advances of Internet technologies, Internet users can not only deliver instant text message through the Instant Messenger (IM), but enhance the effect of messages delivered with showing lively mood symbols or other pictures on IM. Moreover, Internet users can deliver their looks and voice to other users through webcam and microphone with IM, and IM business also provides convenient daily information through it. At present, Internet users haven¡¦t been charged with IM service yet, but IM business has used the popular software on business, including Internet advertisement and the information service of strategy cooperation. IM plays several roles as a product, information service plat, and marketing channel. It becomes a new commercial tool. The study takes Microsoft MSN Messenger as an applied empirical example. The purpose of this study is to analyze the MSN Messenger marketing strategy with the theory structure of IMC to construct the integrated marketing plan model of MSN Messenger; through the questionnaire survey for MSN Messenger users, the study approves the marketing strategy effect of ¡§MSN Messenger club¡¨ website, and provides the workable suggestions of marketing strategy for MSN business. The study finds that the MSN business unit is highly aware of IMC, and it takes integrated and multi marketing communication plans on MSN Messenger. According to the result of the analysis, the suggestions of marketing strategy includes to enhance the long-term interactive relationship with the resources and stakeholders, and explore more originally interactive advertisements and activities to gather the loyalty of MSN Messenger users. As for the website promotion of ¡§MSN Messenger Club¡¨, this study also suggests to develop more creative Internet suggestions advertisements with instant messenger, add the website¡¦s hyperlink on MSN Messenger or add the information tab service to enhance the relationship connection between website and software, and MSN can actively converge another related pictures resources to enrich the club website.

In the 21st century, the global economy is the era of knowledge-driven economy, focusing on innovation. Every culture has been influenced by the trend of globalization which makes a lot of traditional industries possess the potentiality to recreate. Therefore, many countries are trying hard to combine the creative products with commercial mechanism in order to reflect the characteristics of one's own culture. By doing so, it can strengthen people¡¦s identity with their own culture and incresase the additional value of the industries. When facing the trend of globalization, Taiwan has lunched the plan of the local cultural hall, which is the most representative local culture assets producing the cultural products of the extremely rich intention. And with the diversified marketing methods, Taiwan desires to build and construct a new kind of economy attitude which promotes the prominent Taiwanese international culture image. The local cultural hall has combined the local characteristic industry and specialize marketing strategies, to promote the development of economy of the local cultural industry and extend the function of cultural continuity. This research hopes to plan the way by combining concept and Strategic Planning Model of Integrated Marketing Communication, and make suggestion of marketing and promotion on the strategy to take the place of and raise the Hengchun Folklore Hall while setting up. This research is to go on by way of case study, collecting domestic and international relevant documents and case background materials and designing the foundation as the questionnaire at first. Then the researcher investigated through Delphi Method to understand, analyse and offer the way of Integrated Marketing Communication on the suggestion of local cultural industry practical operation. This research applied Delphi Method to the research approach. The respondents of the questionnaire represent the educational circle related to local cultural industry and the practice circle. The practice circles amounts to 20 people including relevant staff member and folk persons who are engaged in Integrated Marketing Communication and actually responsible for the business in the local cultural industry, the academia amount to 4 is by inviting professor's correlated curriculum or the scholars of the relevant topic of research. Analyse and process via statistical method, the main research findings will be described as follows:

A very distinguished point of online marketing is that it can collect data about the consumers* shopping processes rather than the shopping results only. That is, it cannot only collect order data but also the browsing and shopping cart data. So far, the browsing records have been used to analyze the Web server traffic. However, regarding the analysis of shopping cart data, it has not been found in any marketing research yet. The purpose of this study is trying to verify the value of shopping cart data by examining whether it can improve the performance of the marketing communication decisions. According to Source-Message-Media-Receiver (SMMR) communication model, there are three important Web marketing communication decisions. These decisions are who are the target customers, what message should be communicated, and how to communicate. For each above marketing communication decision, in order to check whether the data from shopping cart can improve its performance, this research proposed an algorithm that integrates the shopping cart data into each decision process. Three hypotheses have been proposed in terms of the value of each new proposed algorithm. Three experiments have been implemented to test these hypotheses. The results reveal that the proposed algorithms can improve the performance of the marketing communications decisions. However, it is only a starting point to integrate the shopping cart data into the marketing research. As the online shopping becomes more popular, it is worthwhile to put more efforts to understand the details about the value of the online shopping cart data.

<p>Celebrity endorsement consists of a written or spoken statement from a publicly known person, proclaiming the benefits of some product or service. Previous research on celebrity endorsement has proved it very successful in promoting brands or companies. Even though many marketing strategies exist, it can be especially effective for newly started ventures to apply celebrity endorsement in their approach. While celebrity endorsement may be a good way to overcome weaknesses, such as liability of newness and lack of legitimacy, new ventures often cannot afford to implement this strategy. Therefore, an option to this might be <em>local</em> celebrity endorsement.</p><p>This thesis investigates the impact of local and well-known celebrity endorsement on communication effectiveness.</p><p>Through a quantitative study, the authors have concluded that local celebrity endorsers are perceived more trustworthy and emotionally involved in the endorsement process than well-known celebrity endorsers. Local celebrities and well-known celebrities are perceived equally expert, attractive and capable of transferring meaning to the endorsed product. Local celebrity endorsement is overall more effective than well-known celebrity endorsement in communicating the endorsement message. It can therefore be a suitable tool for newly started ventures that cannot afford to employ more expensive, well-known celebrity endorsement in their quest for gaining quick reputational capital.</p>

<p>Background: Today firms are facing increased global competition, and it results in shor-ter product life cycles. The present situation demand firms to focus more on marketing and how to communicate with the customers. In the mar-keting field there has always existed a perceived dichotomy between B2B and B2C markets. It is said that B2B markets must be handled differently than B2C markets. Recently the perceptions have changed and it is said that B2B and B2C markets have more similarities than previously as-sumed, and this might affect the decision about which marketing tools to implement. This could even change the old way of thinking, which states that B2C marketing tools cannot be used effectively in a B2B market. Theories show that brand awareness is of crucial importance in B2C mar-kets. Will the change of market structure make brand awareness equally important in a B2B market?</p><p>Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to critically analyze the attitudes towards dif-ferent B2B marketing tools and the possible appropriateness of using B2C marketing tools in a B2B market in order to achieve brand awareness.</p><p>Method: A qualitative approach has been used in order answer the purpose of the thesis. ROL AB has been used as a case study, and 13 open phone inter-views have been conducted with existing and potential customers of ROL AB. Furthermore, two interviews have been conducted with firms that successfully use B2C marketing tools in B2B markets.</p><p>Conclusions: The typical characteristics of B2B markets show a tendency to blur. This insinuates that brands are gaining importance in the B2B market. In order to react to this change, B2B firms need to increase their brand awareness. The traditional relational (B2B) marketing tools seems no longer to be suf-ficient to be used alone but now need to be accompanied with transac-tional (B2C) marketing tools.</p>

Darbo tikslas Sukurti įmonės “Baltijos Pramogų Informacija” integruotos rinkodaros komunikacijos strategiją. Darbo uždaviniai - Situacijos analizės metu įvertinti įmonės vykdomą išorinę komunikaciją; - Empiriškai įvertinti esamų bei potencialių klientų požiūrį į eb.lt duomenų bazę, nustatyti aktualiausias duomenų bazių savybes bei išsiaiškinti priemones, kuriomis būtų galima lengviausiai pasiekti esamus bei potencialius klientus; - Remiantis situacijos analize bei empirinio tyrimo duomenimis, parengti UAB „Baltijos Pramogų Informacija“ integruotos rinkodaros komunikacijos strategiją. / Work goal To develop integrated marketing communication strategy at UAB “Baltijos Pramogų Informacija”; Work objectives - Evaluate company’s communication; - Empirically evaluate customers’ point of views towards eb.lt database, most important database features and identify most effective ways for reaching customers. - Develop intergrated marketing communication strategy based on situation and empirical analysis.

Magistro baigiamojo darbo tikslas yra įvertinus skirtingų socialinės žiniasklaidos priemonių panaudojimo kuriant integruotos marketingo komunikacijos planą efektyvumą, pateikti marketingo komunikacijos komplekso modelį, skirtą taikyti naujos internetinės drabužių ir aksesuarų jaunimui parduotuvės atvejui, komunikacijai parenkant ir integruojant tinkamas socialinės žiniasklaidos priemones. Teorinėje darbo dalyje analizuojamos rėmimo komplekso ir komunikacijos bendros naudos organizacijai, vartotojų elgsena socialinėje žiniasklaidoje bei socialinės žiniasklaidos integravimo į rėmimo kompleksą galimybės. Analitinėje baigiamojo darbo dalyje pateikiami ir analizuojami rezultatai tyrimo, atlikto statistinių informacinių technologijų Lietuvoje duomenų analizės bei anketinės apklausos apie komunikaciją socialinėje žiniasklaidoje, metu būdu. Projektinėje darbo dalyje įvertinamas skirtingų socialinės žiniasklaidos priemonių panaudojimo, kuriant integruotos marketingo komunikacijos planą, efektyvumas bei pateikiamas marketingo komunikacijos komplekso modelis, skirtas taikyti naujos internetinės drabužių ir aksesuarų jaunimui parduotuvės atvejui, komunikacijai parenkant ir integruojant tinkamas socialinės žiniasklaidos priemones. / Final aim of the work is to assess the different social media tools for use in developing an integrated marketing communications plan for the effectiveness of the integrated marketing communication model for the application of a new online clothing and accessory stores, young people, communication, and choosing the appropriate integration of social media. The theoretical part of this analysis support the complex communication and mutual benefit organizations, consumer behavior in social media and social media integration to support complex capabilities. Final analytical part provides an analysis of the results of studies of statistical information technology and data analysis in Lithuania questionnaire survey on the social communication media, in a way. Part of the design assessment of the different social media tools for use in creating integrated marketing communications plan, and the effectiveness of marketing communications complex model for the application of a new online clothing and accessory stores, young people, communication, and choosing the appropriate integration of social media.