Tuta, köra, gilla och interagera. En kvalitativ uppsats om bilindustrins kommersiella kommunikation på sociala medier.

Abstract

This thesis is based on how interactivity and social media has changed how the car industry works when it comes to digital marketing. This is also the purpose of this thesis, the research questions are as follows: 1. Which social media platforms do the companies choose to invest their time in, and why? 2. Have new forms of interactivity on social media led to changes in marketing strategies? 3. What strengths and weaknesses do the interviewees perceive in relation to interactivity on social media? These research questions are answered through a qualitative method; this qualitative method is done with semi structured interviews. The respondents were five people, three from one company called organisation X, and two people from a company called organisation Y. These semi structured interviews are based on two different theories, the interactivity theory and the relationship marketing theory. With the information that both the interview and the theoretical background gives, it is easy to analyse the research questions. Based on the nature of qualitative interviews it gives this insight to the qualities and motivations of the respondents and their experiences. The method helps get more detailed information on the car industry and their view of interactivity when it comes to social media. New types of social media, such as TikTok, have put more focus on different types of marketing strategies to enable the usage of new types of interactivities (Steinhoff et al., 2018:370–371). The results are therefore based in both theory and interview answers, which makes this essay have an abductive inquiry. This type of inquiry gives a unique way of understanding the way in which the subject is studied and understood. This gives the results an interesting way of viewing how individuals in these companies view the subject. While also based in theory gives a scientific base to the essay and therefore to the results. The results show an increase in the use of digital interaction from both organisations, while understanding the complicated notion that digital interaction is. The usage of social media platforms is similarly used for both organisations. However, the size difference of the organisations means that the local parts of the organisations have different opportunities of how much resources they can give to digital interaction.