eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

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Research Objective: The primary objective of the research is both to clarify the advantages of social media applications when used as a marketing communications tool, and examine their effects on specified target group. Another approach is to evaluate how the brand image of the company differs depending on whether social media or traditional communication channels are used as a primary marketing communication method.

Research Methods: By applying a qualitative approach, the empirical part examines the actions and processes of a single Finnish international company that uses considerably social media applications beside of traditional marketing communication. The primary data collection is implemented by arranging theme interviews to randomly selected target group that includes potential customers as well as persons that have never used company’s products. Furthermore, to achieve more comprehensive picture of the topic, the secondary data includes articles, figures and reports from the social media field.

Primary Results: As a conclusion I can say that social media is more and more important element in contemporary marketing communication. Even though its current role is mainly supporting other channels, in coming years social media may be considered as a primary channel in many organization. As this study shows, audience, especially younger ones, is already pretty interested in creating content for others to read and conceive social media as very important channel to learn more about the brands and products. Even though the false information, unnecessary critics and negative word-of-mouth were seen as risks for company’s image as well as risks for consumers’ objective information flow, the positive associations as cheapness, flexible and possibility to fast information sharing were considered as stronger attributes and supports social media as marketing communication channel.