Examining blog marketing credibility in Finland - do consumers trust sponsored recommendations?
No Thumbnail Available
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
School of Business |
Master's thesis
Ask about the availability of the thesis by sending email to the Aalto University Learning Centre oppimiskeskus@aalto.fi
Author
Date
2017
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Marketing
Language
en
Pages
56
Series
Abstract
Utilizing social media in consumer brands’ marketing has been a rising trend during the last decade. Social media offers marketers new ways to connect with consumers and raise brand awareness, engagement and profitability. The large variety of different social media services gives brands the opportunity to be present in channels that fit their brand best. Along with the rise of social media, blogs have gained immense popularity among consumers. As bloggers have become social media personalities and gained significant audiences, marketers have also realized their potential. Marketers increasingly recruit bloggers into collaborations, as bloggers effectively reach consumer audiences and can have a real effect on their audience’s behavior. Blogs are a modern-day form of eWOM, where information is passed from one consumer to another. However, as bloggers increasingly enter into sponsored collaborations with marketers, the credibility of blog marketing has been questioned. Sponsorship enables bloggers to produce interesting content for their followers, but simultaneously it raises questions about the reliability of sponsored recommendations. This thesis aims at answering the question whether Finnish consumers perceive blog marketing as credible. The data was gathered with a survey that was sent out to Finnish blog readers through two lifestyle blog portals. The questionnaire received 230 responses, which were included in analysis. Results were generated quantitatively using exploratory factor analysis, t-tests and ANOVAs. Results show that blog marketing credibility in Finland is on a fairly good level, but room for improvement exists. The study contributes to existing knowledge of the state of blog marketing credibility from the consumers’ perspective in Finland. It generates knowledge of the demographic factors of Finnish lifestyle blog readers as well as brings insight into how Finnish lifestyle blog readers rate different aspects of credibility concerning bloggers and sponsored blog posts. It also suggests that consumers’ trust in blog marketing may vary depending on their use motivations and level of participation in blogs. Future research should venture deeper into how blog marketing credibility can be managed, how credibility affects purchase intentions and how potential audiences and bloggers can be better identified.Description
Thesis advisor
Tikkanen, HenrikkiSihvonen, Antti
Goukhotsev, Alexander
Keywords
social media marketing, blog marketing, word-of-mouth, media credibility, purchase intention
