Consumers have increasingly become active online during the last twenty years and besides the whopping 600 mill. Facebook users worldwide, consumers engage in a multitude of different social networks and online communities with many different purposes, for instance, celebrating a brand, innovating, sharing a hobby, online gaming, videos, etc. On this background, it becomes increasingly important how companies can relate to social networks/ communitiesin order to create value in a long term perspective. First of all companies need to know the different reasons why and how consumers participate in social networkactivities, why do they share ideas, innovations, brand experiences, etc. and what cultures and processes develop these communities.It is an important precondition to get sufficient insight in these areas before firms begin to form a marketing strategy that includes how to relate to these communitiesand social networks. Consumers today have a lot of tools online that make them much more knowledgeable and critical receivers of marketing communication. In addition, negative Word-of-Mouth (WOM) spread very fast online e.g. on Twitter, blogs, social networks, etc. Thus, companies have to navigate in the online social landscape in order to create long term synergies and facilitate positive brand expressions. A foundation for this is to understand how to relate to these social networks.

The scientific research on online communities has grown during the last decade, but the academic world has only recently begun to study social networks and companies relationships with these networks. The course will be based primarily on theories on online communitiesand social networks, including social identity theory, culture theory and classic marketing areas like consumer behaviour, (corporate) branding, advertising and relationship marketing theory adapted to the topic of this course where relevant.
 

The main topics of the course are:

• Firm-community relationship synergy
• Community (culture) dynamics
• Social networks, social media and WOM creation
• Community initiation (start-up) and culture formation
• Marketing communication “to” and “with” communities
• Corporate brand alignment and brandcommunity co-creation; conflict or synergy?
   

The course's development of personal competences:

The course aims at developing students’ competencies to understand social network and communities and how companies can build fruitful long term relationships with these. This include a more detailed understanding of how firms can listen to, have dialogues with or intervene in relation to social networks and communities based on a profound understand of what these phenomena are and secure value creation for both parties.

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