Title: Choosing the right marketing strategy on social media: A study on how restaurants affect consumer attitudes through different types of marketing on Instagram. Level: Final assignment for Bachelor Degrees in Business Administration Authors: Tim Prasertsri, Jakob Johnson Supervisor: Jonas Molin och Lars-Johan Åge Date: 2018 - 05 Aim: The purpose of this study is to understand which marketing strategy that is most effective for restaurants on social media. The study examines how consumers' attitudes to advertising are affected depending on whether they are obtained directly through a corporate account or indirectly through influencer marketing. One part of the study is also to investigate whether an influencer's degree of expertise in the field of affairs has an impact on consumer attitudes. Method: In this deductive study we have used a quantitative method in the form of a web-based survey. The survey conducted a total of 118 responses, which then became 110 following our selection. The questionnaire was processed in SPSS and a descriptive analysis, a correlation analysis and a cluster analysis were conducted. The results were then placed against our theoretical framework to conduct a discussion that shaped our conclusions. Conclusion: This study shows that consumer attitudes are affected differently depending on the market strategy applied. The result of this study is that influencer marketing is the market strategy that has the greatest positive impact on consumer attitudes in cases where it interacts with a high level of expertise. Furthermore, this survey showed that advertising from a corporate account proved to be a reliable marketing strategy. In summary, influencer marketing is preferable if companies choose the right influences. Contribution: This study has contributed to increased understanding within the marketing strategies; influencer marketing, advertising directly from corporate accounts and how they affect consumer attitudes. The practical contribution of the study shows that restaurants should use influencer marketing with a high degree of expertise as well as advertising directly from corporate accounts to make their marketing more effective. Keywords: Social media marketing, influencer marketing, influencer, Instagram, restaurant industry, two-step flow theory, message sidedness, consumer attitudes / Titel: Välja rätt marknadsföringsstrategi på sociala medier: En studie om hur konsumenters attityder påverkas av olika marknadsföringsstrategier på Instagram. Nivå: C-Uppsats, examensarbete i företagsekonomi Författare: Tim Prasertsri, Jakob Johnson Handledare: Jonas Molin och Lars-Johan Åge Examinator: Agneta Sundström Datum: 2018 - 05 Syftet: Syftet med denna studie är att förstå vilken marknadsföringsstrategi som är mest effektiv för restauranger på sociala medier. Studien undersöker hur konsumenters attityder till reklam påverkas beroende på om den erhålls direkt via ett företagskonto eller indirekt genom influencer marketing. Ett delsyfte till denna studie är att undersöka om en influencers grad av expertis inom sakområdet har en påverkan på konsumenters attityder. Metod: I denna deduktiva studie har vi använt oss av en kvantitativ metod i form av en webbaserad enkätundersökning. Enkätundersökningen bidrog till totalt 118 svar som sedan resulterade i totalt 110 efter att vårt urval utförts. Enkätsvaren har bearbetats i SPSS och därefter genomfördes en deskriptiv analys, korrelationsanalys samt en klusteranalys. Analysresultaten ställdes sedan mot vårt teoretiska ramverk och avslutades i en diskussion som formade våra slutsatser. Slutsats: Studien visar att konsumenters attityder påverkas olika beroende på vilken marknadsföringsstrategi som tillämpas. Resultatet av denna studie är att influencer marketing är den marknadsföringsstrategi som har starkast positiv effekt på konsumenters attityder i de fall där den interagerar med en hög grad av expertis. Vidare visade denna studie att reklam direkt från företagskonton visat sig vara en reliabel marknadsföringsstrategi. Sammanfattningsvis är att influencer marketing är att föredra, om företagen väljer rätt influencer. Uppsatsens bidrag: Denna studie har bidragit till ökad förståelse inom marknadsföringsstrategierna influencer marketing och reklam direkt från företagskonton samt hur de påverkar konsumenters attityder. Studiens praktiska bidrag visar att restauranger främst bör använda sig av influencer marketing med hög grad av expertis och även reklam direkt från företagskonton för att effektivisera sin marknadsföring. Nyckelord: Social media marketing, influencer marketing, influencer, Instagram, restaurangbranschen, tvåstegshypotesen, message sidedness, konsumentattityder

Background The emergence of the Internet, and in particular social network sites, has led to the appearance of new powerful actors, i.e. Social Media Influencers, with the power to persuade their audience. This introduced a middleman in the company-consumer relationship and a new stakeholder to build relationships with. Small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) marketing activities differ from traditional practices. SMEs need to be more creative when engaging in Influencer Marketing given their resource constraints. The presence of a relationship can help SMEs to increase and improve their brand image, support the launch of new products and most essentially avoid large investments of Influencer Marketing. Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore the methods Swedish SMEs use in their relationship building activities with influencers, as well as the underlying dimensions related to those methods. Method An inductive research approach is utilized, with the aim to extend the current knowledge available about relationship building with influencers. The use of a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews allowed the exploration of how SMEs build relationships with influencers from a management perspective. Conclusion This thesis indicates that Swedish SMEs’ relationship building activities are influenced by certain underlying dimensions. These are adherence to brand values, timeline of the collaboration, nature of the product, paid and earned forms of collaborations and the types of relationships SMEs establish: formal and informal. The means used by SMEs when building relationship with influencers were identified as communication, events, feedback and gifts. Further, resource constraints did not appear to influence how SMEs build relationships with influencers but instead the type and number of influencers they work with.

The first section of this paper looks specifically at the concept of greenwashing from a theoretical perspective. It aims to establish exactly what greenwashing is, what it involves and how it has been used. The second section incorporates both the first section of this paper, and delves deeper into how greenwashing has been present in social media. The third section of this paper is a case study. This section has been broken down into three categories of industries in consideration of greenwashing practises. The first is ‘The Obvious’ - this looks at the obvious examples of industries that use greenwashing practises. ‘The Overlooked’ looks at the industries which are often disregarded in terms of greenwashing practises. The last is ‘The Unexpected’ which looks into the industries that focus on supporting the environment and would not commonly be associated with any form of greenwashing practises at all. This case study aims to identify how the selected companies chosen for the study have been associated with greenwashing in the past, and how their current social presence may still be contributing to greenwashed advertising. As the concept of greenwashing is based on a theory developed around two decades ago and mostly consisted of very direct claims and statements using traditional advertising mediums such as billboards and magazine adverts, and considering the amount of well-known corporations who were proven guilty of such greenwashing practises, it would be ignorant to consider that such practises have simply subsided and ceased to occur. Corporations are aware of being called-out with negative press, especially with regards to issues such as false environmental practises, therefore as the advertising industry has changed with time, wouldn’t such greenwashing practises have adapted as well? Corporations in the past have learnt that direct greenwash statements have backfired negatively, therefore in collaboration with the use of social media, the prospect of using subtle, or even subconscious greenwash strategies seem to create an issue which requires investigation.

It is in the interest of organizations to understand that the public demand for quick and easy accessibility is growing at a rapid pace. However, the transition from traditional marketing strategies to social media marketing is not a straightforward process, but more complex.The aim of the thesis is to, from a bottom-up perspective, draw conclusions from a comparative study of the social media praxes of Umeå-situated businesses and organizations.The study indicates that the transition into social media still continues, but that there has been a change in organizations’ mindsets. It also shows that the application of a bottom-up approach provides new ways of viewing and understanding activities within social media.It is in the interest of organizations to understand that the public demand for quick and easy accessibility is growing at a rapid pace. However, the transition from traditional marketing strategies to social media marketing is not a straightforward process, but more complex.The aim of the thesis is to, from a bottom-up perspective, draw conclusions from a comparative study of the social media praxes of Umeå-situated businesses and organizations.The study indicates that the transition into social media still continues, but that there has been a change in organizations’ mindsets. It also shows that the application of a bottom-up approach provides new ways of viewing and understanding activities within social media.

Social media has become an integral part of consumers’ lives and a popular platform for interactive marketing communication. In an age boasting of unprecedented digital connectivity, loneliness (defined as perceived social isolation) has, paradoxically, becoming widespread, affecting consumers’ preferences for products and brands in the marketplace. The present research extends the feelings-as-information theory and develops a conceptual framework in which loneliness modifies people’s cognitive processing style and induces concrete thinking in the context of evaluating social media messages. Using a mixed methods research approach, I first take a close look through the lens of a qualitative study at what it is like for the average consumer to experience loneliness. Additional experiments show that lonely consumers have higher digital engagement with concrete (vs. abstract) social media ads. Broadly, my findings on the effects of loneliness on consumers’ digital engagement with social media ads highlight the fact that loneliness may render different types of social media ads (abstract versus concrete) more or less effective.

The role of internet and the digitalized world are more relevant than ever before. The new phenomena of digital marketing has created a paradigm shift of existing marketing with new ways to market. Social media plays a significant role in this change, since it allows businesses to easily engage with its customers and to maintain relationships. For small and local businesses, this change has created great opportunities to interact more with the local audience. However, not all such businesses have the sufficient knowledge to optimize the usage of social media. The focus of the study is to explore the current usage of social media in local businesses context. Furthermore, we will suggest social media marketing strategies that will help local business to improve its customer relations. The qualitative approach is applied in this study by using interviews and observations, which is the main source of primary data collection. The conclusion was that local grocery stores still rely much more on traditional marketing methods. However, local grocery stores still use and value social media, but most are unclear of the true benefits and strategies when using social media. Lacking strategies consist of planning the social media marketing strategies, but also lacks the formal management of critical situations on social media. Overall, local stores perform well in building relations with its customers using social media however, there is a scope of further improvements.

The marketing possibilities on the Internet is growing and so are social media marketing. The budget devoted for marketing activities on social media is constantly increasining every year and the time users are spending on social media is also increasing. Among the increasing activities comes a vast amount of data which create endless of opportunities for companies to optimize their marketing activities. In marketing the most important has always been to know your customers and how to reach out to them. The Internet and data that comes with it has made it possible for companies to get to know their customers even better and to reach them with more precision if data is correctly used.   A gap was identified from the litterature search which showed that it is not always clear how to utilize social media for marketing and it is not easy to analyze and interpret the data derived from social media. This has lead to a lack of knowledge on how data can be used for social media activities. From the identified gap regarding data usage in social media marketing, a research question was formulated:   “How is data used in brand’s strategies for social media?”   A qualitative research design conducting semi-structured interviews was used to examine the research question. A purposeful sample of eleven respondents, defined as experts within the research field, from ten different companies was selected. A pilot study was carried out to get insights in the identified gap, to set a base for the theoretical framework, and to optimize the interview questions. All respondents represented agencies except for the respondent in the pilot study.   Academics and business communities are interested in how data is used in marketing purposes and therefore it was elaborated further in this thesis to how data can be used in social media activities. Branding activities are becoming more engaged with its customers, thus marketers need to keep up to date with the new and emerging trends. Furthermore, the aim was to explore how data is used in social media marketing and how data affect decisions in social media strategies.   The results found in this study shows that data is used to define audiences on social media and to enable a greater reach of the messages for the audiences. The audience is defined by data analysis mostly based on consumer behavior in social media. To achive reach marketers use programmatic buying tools, which are based on data and ultimatley enables conversions among the audience. Data is also analyzed by opinion mining where data insights can show what topics customers are engaged in. Data insights can further give direction on how content can encourage engagement among the targeted audience. Lastly, the result shows that it is important to have knowledge about how to analyze, interpret, and use data insights in order to create successful social media activites.

The aim of the thesis is to analyze the influence of the promotion in the social media for educational services. Current work covers all the definitions and overviews of the literature that is relevant for the understanding of the chosen topic. Theoretical data was followed by the examples of implementation of tools that could help the enterprises to promote the goods and services on the local market. The practical part of the thesis is standing on the research of the business that provides educational services in Ukraine and how investments in the development of social media tools are showing the rise of the sales for the company. I consider my work to be helpful in understanding all crucial areas in social media marketing. The aim of this study is to offer valuable insights into the development campaign process that would help Meat Studies to attract more students to educational services of the company.

Diploma thesis "Hosel's marketing potentials" concerns Hostel Marabou Prague and it's possibilities on the marketing field. The work is framed by the Marketing process and structured itno four parts - Situation Analysis, Defining of marketing strategy, Marketing mix decisions and Implementation. The main benefit of the work consist in analysis of the specific segment of tourist market (young independent travellers, so called backpackers) and creating of marketing cocept, that fully responds to character of the demand, trends on the market and firm's aims and finally takes advatage of promotion and distribution possibilities of the New media, Web 2.0 in particular.

Abstract In today’s society, clothing companies and their consumers have an increased presence on social media where they interact with each other in different ways. This relatively new kind of interaction can have many advantages for both clothing companies and consumers. It makes it possible for the clothing companies to meet their consumers on the consumers’ home ground, and for the consumers to interact with the clothing companies. How the presence of clothing companies on social media is perceived among the consumers and whether or not this is in line with what the consumers’ expect from companies’ presence on social media, is still not completely developed. To help the clothing companies to increase their knowledge about their consumers’ needs and what they expect of the clothing companies while being present on social media, the intention is to answer the following research question: “What are the female consumers’ perceptions and expectations of the Facebook & Instagram usage by clothing companies?” The purpose with this degree project is to increase the understanding of how consumers perceive and expect clothing companies to act toward them on the social media channels Facebook and Instagram, in order to satisfy their needs. We aim to specifically explain how clothing companies’ are perceived on the social media channels Facebook and Instagram, based on consumers’ experiences of clothing companies’ activities. Furthermore, we aim to provide insight into what consumers expect from a presence of clothing companies on Facebook and Instagram. With this, we want to help the clothing companies to create a better relationship between them and their consumers on Facebook and Instagram. In this explorative study, a qualitative sampling method has been used. The data collection consists of 8 semi structured in-depth interviews of female students at Umeå university. The biggest reasons for why the female consumers perceive that clothing companies have an online presence is to: Act as a source of information, communicate and socialize with their consumers and to create value by being more available. They furthermore expect clothing companies on Facebook to provide their consumers with: To make it more comfortable/easy to shop online, act as a source of information and to communicate and socialize with consumers. On Instagram the female consumers perceived that clothing companies’ want to have a presence to: Be a part of the consumer’s everyday life, reach the consumer in a relaxed way, communicate and socialize with consumers. On Instagram, the consumers expect clothing companies’ presence for: To reach the consumer in a relaxed way, make it more comfortable/easy to shop online, create value by being more available. These activities taken into consideration will increase the understanding for clothing companies’ online presence and lead to a better relationship between the clothing companies and their female consumers. The study contributes with new theoretical knowledge about the consumer’s perspective on clothing companies on social media. Our findings show that previous recommendations regarding how companies should try to act on social media is too general, and needs to be applied based on consumer preferences, needs and the specific social media channel. The empirical contribution are the reasons that the consumers expect clothing companies to have for being present on Facebook and Instagram.