As the world economies have shifted from being production-based to knowledge-based each country has to develop their technologically literate workforces to stay globally competitive. A low interest in the engineering profession among younger students has caused insufficient support for the workforce demand. Marketers must adapt their efforts to recruiting young people even before they attend college as this focused cohort tend to make career plans early. As today’s teenagers have been using digital media constantly since they grew up, they are frequently called digital natives. They perceive social networking sites, where they can communicate with friends and exchange information with people all over the world, as essential parts of their lives. This makes social networks great promotional tools, as digital natives share experiences and opinions about products and services online, creating a kind of electronic word-of-mouth, which is characterized as the future of social media marketing communications. To investigate in what ways digital natives’ absorb online marketing, the purpose of this research is to provide a better understanding of how technical high schools can address digital marketing activities to attract more students. The thesis was compiled after inquiries from the Swedish nationwide senior high school Teknikcollege, and it is conducted as a quantitative explanatory study, where primary data was collected through an online questionnaire distributed among junior high school students in Luleå and Överkalix. A total of 239 answers were collected and 182 answers were analyzed using statistical techniques. The results suggested that senior high schools should focus their online marketing efforts on visual social media channels, and that people based trust is the most important factor when using the peripheral route to persuade digital natives.

現今社群媒體已經是人們生活的一大部分，而網路提供了更容易與消費者接觸的平台給廠商呈現其廣告訴求，廣告訴求是一種策略，利用其所呈現的訴求說服消費者作出購買決策，或是改變消費者對於品牌的態度。本研究探討廣告內容的訊息訴求對於消費者購買決策的影響，並利用推敲可能性模型分析消費者的決策路徑。 因為先前針對推敲可能性模型的決策路徑主要都是以推論為主，本研究設計了一個測量中央及邊陲路徑的問卷，藉此了解受測者實際感受到的決策路徑。而整體的問卷透過一個網路實驗收集資料，結果發現廣告訴求對思考路徑有顯著的關係，理性的廣告訴求會使消費者傾向於使用中央路徑；感性的廣告訴求則會使消費者傾向於使用邊陲路徑，而認知需求會對這個關係有交互作用的影響。同時也發現思考路徑對於購買意願會有顯著影響，不同的產品類型會對於這個關係有交互作用的影響。 / Social media and the Internet are inseparable elements of modern human life. Online advertising becomes a popular method for vendors to access their consumers. Advertising appeals are important in attracting consumers’ attention of products and services. In this study, we investigate the effect of online advertising appeals on consumer’s purchase decision using the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) that proposes a central-peripheral dual-route persuasion mechanism. We designed an instrument to measure the perceived route in decision processes and applied it in an online experiment to examine how different appeals affect the central and peripheral routes in consumers’ decision processes. The results indicate that advertising appeals have significant effect on decision routes. Cognitive needs are found to have interaction effects. Decision through different routes also have significant effect on consumers’ decision, while product types have moderation effects.