The course looks at contemporary approaches to communication and consumer behavior, departing in advertising and communication practices in online interactive media. Consumers’ onlinebehaviorand the firm / the marketers’ activities to interact with or influence these directly or through external agencies, affiliates, as well as different online media vehicles, will be examined, including companies’ possibilities for using online media for market research purposes and relationship building (direct marketing).

Progression of the course: The starting point is the consumer and his/her media use, based in theories of online consumer psychology and culture. Based on this, companies’ actions online in terms of short term advertising and promotional efforts, as well as long term branding efforts are analyzed and discussed. Topics and themes include online advertising campaigns (banner advertising, affiliate and online sponsoring, viral campaigns, etc.), online branding and IMC(Integrated Marketing Communication), online business models, and market research issues related to online marketing (online consumer surveying).

The aim of the course is to give students insight into newer psychological theories and models concerning the modern and postmodern consumer’s usage of online media in a socio-cultural context.Furthermore, the course aims at giving students deep theoretical as well as practical insights into the area of online advertising, promotion and branding, covering relevant types of online marketing channels (banner advertising, search-engine marketing, viral, direct marketing, etc), media-specific strengths and weaknesses for marketing communication, setting objectives, effects and evaluation. Also, the course aims to give insights into contemporary online market research methodology.

The course's debvelopment of personal competences:

The course aims at developing students’ competencies within relevant areas of online marketing and marketing communication. These include deciding on appropriate online media for reaching set marketing objectives, setting online media strategy, as well as knowledge within the field of online media marketing performance evaluation, and online market research.

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