Title: Is trust in SEM an intergenerational trait? Date: 2018-05-22 Level: Bachelor Thesis in International Marketing Author: Jesper Fredlund 930427 & Timmy Biedron 961128 Supervisor: Henrietta Nilson Problem formulation: How do age correlate with trust and attitude towards SEM on Google in Sweden? Purpose: The purpose of this study is to see if the Swedish Digital Natives are more likely to be trusting search engine marketing, as opposed to the older generations of Digital Immigrants, and by doing this gaining a better understanding of the attitudes towards search engines and search enginemarketing in Sweden. Theoretical framework: The theoretical framework of this paper consists of theories about BannerBlindness, Text Blindness, EHS Theory, Search Engine Marketing, Sponsored Links, Organic Links,Generations. Methodology: This is a quantitative study with 429 respondents in an online survey. It contains Swedish users of search engines divided into groups of those born before 1980 and those born after. Empirical findings: Our study found out that Digital Natives are slightly more likely to favour Search Engine Marketing than Digital Immigrants are. Conclusion: No matter the target of your Search Engine Marketing campaign you should approach itcautiously, since both Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants have been shown to hold a negative bias against these campaigns over organic links. Keywords: SEM, SEA, Search Engines, Search Behaviour, Organic links, Sponsored links.

People choose to spend a large amount of their time on the internet these days, which has led to an increase in search engine marketing. It is a form of online marketing that displays the ads as organic and sponsored links and is considered less intrusive by internet users. However, internet users' low perceived credibility towards online marketing, in general, seems to be affecting their perception of the two links as well. There is currently a gap in knowledge regarding what factors affect internet users' perceived credibility towards organic and sponsored links. This was explored in this study to see what affects the users' perception and how it could be raised. The trustworthiness, expertise, and attractiveness factors in the source credibility theory were utilized and explored to see if they affected the internet users' perceived credibility towards the links. This was achieved through a quantitative study and by conducting two questionnaires with sample sizes of 140 respondents each. The findings of this study indicate that the three factors positively affect internet users' perceived credibility. By performing a t-test on the combined results from the two questionnaires, it was also evident that which type of link it is, organic or sponsored, plays a significant role in how the users perceive the link’s credibility. The organic links have a more positive effect on the users' perceived credibility and are viewed as more credible than the sponsored links, suggesting a bias towards the sponsored links.

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